Name: ST DAY
Council: Kerrier District Council
Location: St Day is in mid-west Cornwall, about 2 miles to the east of Redruth off the B3298
Main period of industrial settlement growth: 1750-1850; especially 1815-40
Study Area: Gwennap
NGR: SW 7242
Main industry: Marketing and servicing (for mining)

Industrial history and significance

A late medieval pilgrimage and market centre, also serving a well-established local tin industry in the 16^th- 17^th centuries, experiencing decline by the early 18^th century. With the growth of the ‘Copper Kingdom’ in Gwennap from about 1750 onwards, St Day entered a period of growth as a market and servicing centre. After setbacks in the Napoleonic Wars period, the early 19^th century (especially the 1820s-30s) was a boom period. The town was not industrial in the sense that industries located here – although mines came right up to the edge of the settlement, most miners lived in surrounding hamlets. It was shops, merchants and markets that dominated the town, serving the surrounding, incredibly rich, mining industry. This gave rise to an unusual number of commercial businesses and properties, that survived to WWI, largely by then as a result of remittance from emigrated workers – the population, wealth and activity in St Day declined steadily from about 1870 onwards – today there is less population than in 1841.

St Day is, therefore, a relatively unaltered, if not fossilised, example of a boom-time market centre for the richest and perhaps most famous copper mining district in the world – it is now fundamentally a residential village.

The Mining Villages Regeneration Scheme, which includes St Day, has achieved very useful results, which should be built upon and further developed.

Although many of the finest and most extravagant have gone, St Day still possesses an unusual number of shopfronts, restoration and re-use of which could form the basis of useful regeneration strategies and funding packages.

This settlement forms part of the proposed Cornwall & west Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site Bid, and is considered an important part of the context for the Bid.

Downloads:

The downloads offered below represent the different elements of the CISI St Day Report including the core text and the four illustrative map figures
 

Title	Description	Format	Size
CISI St Day report	Report text.		857kb
Figure 1	Location map		596kb
Figure 2	Historical development map		510kb
Figure 3	Surviving historical components map		515kb
Figure 4	Gazetteer sites, existing designations and recommendations map		611kb

Last Updated: 08/01/2004. © Cornwall County Council, Historic Environment Service.