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History of St Keverne Parish Council
| Extracts from St Keverne Parish Council 1894 to 1994
a booklet compiled by Michael Wearne (then Chairman)
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Introduction
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The ecclesiastical parish is the most
ancient type of local government in Europe, and in
England has been used for some civil purposes
since the 8th Century. Our present system is in a
continuous line of development since the 16th
Century. Then, under Elizabeth I, the parish was
responsible for poor law administration.
No doubt most parishes looked after their poor
well, but there are plenty of cases on record of
resistance to accepting paupers from outside the
boundaries. Perhaps this was less likely to
happen in St. Keverne than in for example, a
parish in Berkshire; fewer people go through St.
Keverne on the way to somewhere else - there
isn't much somewhere else to go to.
By the 18th Century St. Keverne ran its own
affairs through the Vestry, made up of the Vicar,
church wardens and a number of overseers elected
annually by the rate payers. Their heaviest
responsibilities were the relief of the poor and
the maintenance of the highways; they were
empowered to levy rates to pay for these. They
also punished minor offences and generally dealt
with the minutiae of local affairs. There were
four areas, Turn Trelan, Turn Traboe, Turn
Tregarne and Turn Bean (which included St.
Keverne village).
It was the poor that demanded most attention and
money. For example, in 1764 at a meeting held at
the home of Sampson Incledon (now the White Hart)
a house was hired at a rent of £6 per year
in which one Miles Exelby was to maintain and
employ the poor on a 7 year contract. Exelby
received 1/6d per week for each person in his
charge and was provided with a cow and grazing
and a bushel of barley at 12/- a bushel every
fortnight. Dr. Incledon was paid £2.2s.0
for setting Francis White's leg. There was an
extra in those days before anaesthetics; 9d was
paid for 'liquor' at the time of the
setting, though it not clear if it was for the
surgeon or the patient. Incidentally at about
this date Dr. Incledon's wife gave birth to a
son, Charles Incledon, who was to achieve great
fame as a singer, so great that George III
described him as the 'British national
singer'.
The Poor Rate was set at 2/- in the £
(pound) on 108 properties, yielding in total of
£127.4s.0d. |
By 1813, at the end of the Napoleonic wars with
all the distress they brought this had increased
to £1,338.5s.6d assessed on 200
properties. In 1816 Col Sandy of Lanarth held a
meeting of landowners and farmers and they
decided that they would meet part of their
obligations by giving employment on a sliding
scale of rent value. If the latter was £30
the farmer would give 1 day's work per
fortnight. At the top end of the scale,
£200 required 6 days work per week. There
were 35 men involved with 30 wives and 104
children.
By 1834 the poor law authorities began to group
parishes into unions, a move which produced the
distinction between the civil and ecclesiastical
parish. The practical result in the Lizard
peninsula was the Meneage Workhouse.
The other main responsibility of the old parish
councils was the maintenance of highways and in
St. Keverne this meant 'rab' - local and
evidently much used in road-making. There is a
pit at Dolly's (just beyond the recently made
picnic area there) which many local people can
remember being worked, but there were others. In
1795 John Pascoe was paid £3 .2s.6d for
breaking 300 loads of rab at 21/2d per load,
probably between 5d and 10d per ton. Those
working on the roads were paid between 1/3d and
1/6d per day with no mention of how many hours
there were in a working day.
There were, as today, other general
responsibilities. In 1802 Prudence Richards was
paid 2/- for cleaning the river at Porthallow
'several' times. 1803 a special parish
rate was levied to build a cliff wall at
Coverack. The bill for drawing stones was
£2.5s.0d and 32 days work on the cliff cost
£2.8s.0d (plus 10/11d for liquor). It is
not clear if this was the total bill, but we can
be fair certain that it was nowhere near the
£400,000 that the last addition in 1990
cost.
Over succeeding years other responsibilities
were added in a some what haphazard manner so
that by the late 19th Century it was possible to
find many as six different authorities operating
in the same parish - the vicar, church wardens,
the overseers, rural sanitary boards, highway
boards and the vestry all in various
combinations, sometimes overlapping, sometimes
separate, St. Keverne, with its vestry
substantially unchanged since the 18th Century,
was relatively simple.
By the end of the 19th Century the need for some
standardisation nationally was perceived as
desirable; the enormous improvements in
communications (railways, the general post and
the telegraph) spelt the end of isolated and
independent developments. The 1888 and 1894 Local
Government Acts set a standard pattern of local
government over the whole of the country. County
councils were instituted, some parishes became
urban districts, the remainder were designated
parish councils and received the civil functions
of the councils, the ecclesiastical functions
remaining with the church. A clear distinction
which continues to this day. |
We must beware, however, of thinking that
everything after 1894 suddenly became clear and
well-defined. Certainly the responsibility for
highways was finally taken out of the hands of
the parishes, but the poor laws followed a
separate line of development and, in fact, the
whole process was as piecemeal as any student of
English reform would expect.
This is the point at which this short history
should start. Unfortunately there are one or two
gaps in the minutes and the longest and most
damaging is that caused by the loss of the first
minute book which covered the years from 1894 to
1911. We can console ourselves with the thought
that the changes between those two dates will
have been less than in any other eighteen years
in the century. The minutes we have give a
flavour of that remote world before the First
World War.
They can also give a great deal of frustration.
Matters appear and re-appear, there is annoyance
at delay, disagreement between councillors, the
tension builds then suddenly the whole issue
disappears and the reader is left with no idea of
the outcome, if indeed there was one. Thus we
hear of the proposals at a meeting held at the
request of the District Councillors on May 30th
1919 for the construction of "workmen's
dwellings" and a number of heated arguments
about their location and distribution between
various parts of the parish, but nothing about
what happened in the end. Reading the minutes is
rather like being in a goldfish bowl made of some
material which allows you only fleeting glimpses
of the outside world.
They are, however, the proper basis for a
history of the Parish Council. I should emphasise
at this point that this is not a history of St.
Keverne whether village or parish; it is of the
parish through the eyes of the Parish
Council.
In what follows I have two main objects.
The first is to give an insight into the customs
and atmosphere of that other world by following
the history of one or two incidents which make
complete and interesting narratives. These are
from earlier in the period.
My second object has been to trace developments
in the main areas of the Council's
responsibility up to the present day.
In following both these I have had to select
rigorously and I am aware that I shall have left
out matters which many will regard as essential.
I can only plead that everything will seem vital
to somebody, and everything just could not be
included.
My thanks to our Clerk, Brenda Marsh, and to
Councillors John Lambrick and Jim Rogers. Frank
Curnow also helped initially but was sadly unable
to be with us throughout. David Mason made one
inspired contribution. I am grateful for what
they did but accept full responsibility for any
mistakes.
January, 1994 Michael Wearne |
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