Pendeen St Just, Cornwall

Historical Description

Pendeen, a village and a chapelry in St Just-in-Penwith parish, Cornwall. The village stands on the coast, at Portherras Cove, 7 miles WNW of Penzance station on the G.W.R. It has a post and money order office under Penzance; telegraph office, St Just. The chapelry was constituted in 1845. Population of the ecclesiastical district, 2281. There is a parish council consisting of fifteen members. Pendeen House was the birthplace of Dr Borlase the antiquary. The rocks possess interest for geologists. The two principal mines of the parish are Botallack and the Levant. The latter is the prospering mine. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Truro; gross value, £272 with residence. The church is modern and handsome, and the tower was heightened in 1889 some few feet, in order to receive a clock and bell. There are Wesleyan, Bible Christian, and Methodist chapels.

Transcribed from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England & Wales, 1894-5

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Ancient County	Cornwall
Hundred	Penwith
Poor Law union	Penzance

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Church Records

The parish register dates from the year 1849.

Churches

Church of England

St. John the Baptist (parish church)

The church of St. John the Baptist, erected in 1851 from the designs and under the superintendence of the Rev. Robert Aitken, at a cost of about £2,000, the greater part of the work being voluntarily executed by the villagers, is a cruciform building of granite in the Early English style, modelled on the plan of the ancient cathedral of Iona, and consists of chancel, nave, transepts, south porch and an embattled western tower containing a clock, inserted in 1889, and 10 tubular bells, installed in 1908, at a cost of £242: there are 20 windows in the church, all of which are stained; on the north side of the chancel is a handsome marble tablet to the children and grandchildren of the late Rev. Robert Aitken, a former vicar: a memorial brass has been placed in the floor of the chancel within the communion rails to the Rev. Robert Aitken: the church contains 500 sittings.