Newquay, Cornwall

Historical Description

Newquay, a village in St Columb Minor parish, Cornwall, with a station on the G.W.R., 296 miles from London. It stands on a small bay of its own name, continuous SSW with Watergate Bay, and under shelter of Towan Head, 7 miles WSW of St Columb Major. It is a coastguard station, the seat of a considerable pilchard fishery, and a rising watering-place; and it has a head post office, good inns, a harbour, with a pier, and a lifeboat station. There are an Oddfellows' hall, a Freemasons' lodge, and a lecture-hall. New waterworks were opened in 1894. The harbour has been much improved and enlarged by the Cornwall Mineral Railway company and the G.W.R. A beach of firm smooth sand extends 3 miles adjacent to it, beneath a range of romantic cliffs; a sandstone of recent origin, formed from blown sand, and compact enough to be quarried for building purposes, is on the shore; and rocks of much interest to geologists are in the neighbourhood. The church, erected in 1857, has been twice enlarged-in 1873 and 1881. There are Congregational, Baptist, Methodist, and Bible Christian chapels. The scenery all along the coast is extremely picturesque and grand. The population of the urban sanitary district of Newquay is 1891.

Administration

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

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

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Newquay from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (New-Quay)

Maps

Online maps of Newquay are available from a number of sites:

• Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• Google Streetview.
• National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
• OpenStreetMap.
• old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
• Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)

Newspapers and Periodicals

The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Cornwall papers online:

• Royal Cornwall Gazette
• Cornishman
• West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser
• Lake's Falmouth Packet and Cornwall Advertiser

Visitations Heraldic

We have a copy of The Visitations of Cornwall, by Lieut.-Col. J.L. Vivian online.