St Ive Parish
| The parish of St Ive is situated in
South Eastern Cornwall. It should not be confused with St Ives which
is a fishing port and popular holiday destination in the far West of
Cornwall. St Ive is pronounced locally as St ‘Eve’
Right. Caradon Hill from St Ive, Pensilva is the development of dwellings towards to crest of the hill in the centre |
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| St Ive is a large rural parish of 5888 acres. To the north the parish is bordered by the south east corner of Bodmin Moor and Caradon Hill is prominent from most points within the parish. Also to the north is the parish of Linkinhorne which shares much the same history affected by the mid Victorian mining boom, as does St Cleer, another parish which forms the eastern boundary. The A390 Callington to Liskeard road goes across the southern part of the parish where the parishes of Menheniot and Quethiock lie. To the east the River Lynher divides the parish from South Hill. |
 St Ive, where the modern houses blend in with the old. |
The parish has two ancient encampments dating from prehistory. One is at Tokenbury on the edge of the moor and the other is a large conical hill on the eastern border of the parish with the River Lynher running around two sides of it, this is known as Cadsonbury. The ancient manor of Trebeigh was run by the monks of Tavistock Monastry until the Norman invasion. In 1150 it was given to the Knights Templar to enable them to raise money for the crusades. There is a long standing but unsubstantiated legend that there is a tunnel from Trebeigh to the church in which the knights used to hide all their valuables. It is likely that St Ive village developed as this time as a dormitory for the freed workers on the estate. |
| The estate later passed
to the Hospitallers of St John, until the Dissolution. After this it
passed to the heirs of the Killigrew's of Woolston and by marriage to
John Wrey in whose family it remained until the 1960's. Other estates
mentioned in the Domesday Book are Appledore, Bicton and Penharget.
The parish used to be a large rural area of rolling landscape with wooded valleys and the population was sparse with the largest village being St Ive itself, sited on the A390. However the demography of the parish was radically altered with the mid Victorian mining boom centred around Caradon Hill. South Caradon Mine situated just over the parish border was at one time the largest and most prosperous copper mine in the world and miners flocked to the area seeking employment in the 1830’s to 1850’s, especially as at this time the mines further west were beginning to fail. On the very edge of the moor under the shadow of Caradon Hill a mining settlement was established, originally known as Bodmin or Bodmon Land it is now called Pensilva. As the Caradon mines began to fail (from the 1870’s onwards), the population fell as many left the area to find work with a large percentage of those emigrating. St Ive went back to its peaceful rural existence. In 1930 Pensilva was described as “a Moorland village ….. the inhabitants are chiefly smallholders and farmers, regrators and retired business men and army and navy pensioners.” |
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The next influx of population to the parish was in the 1970’s and 1980’s when many new bungalows were built in Pensilva – the modernised miners cottages are still there, but surrounded with new estates. Pensilva is now the largest village in the parish, but the traditional centre has always been the village of St Ive. St Ive itself has largely avoided the 1970’s estates of modern pebble-dash bungalows. It has even managed to retain the identities of the three parts of the village, St Ive Keason, St Ive Parkfield and St Ive Church End. Right. Millennium House, a new social/sports/education centre built in Pensilva. |
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