Bolventor, Cornwall Genealogy

England Cornwall



Parish History
Bolventor (Cornish: Bedhasbold) is a hamlet on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall.

Bolventor is the location of the famous Jamaica Inn coaching inn. It is bypassed by a dual carriageway section of the A30 trunk road; before the bypass was built the village straddled the A30 road.

Daphne du Maurier, a former resident, chose Bolventor as the setting for her novel about Cornish smugglers titled Jamaica Inn. The inn that inspired the novel has stood beside the main road through the village since 1547. It is now a tourist attraction in its own right and dominates the village.

The small church (dedicated to the Holy Trinity) that lies to the east of the village closed some years ago. A mile from Bolventor there was a chapel of St Luke (from the 13th to the early 16th century): the font is now at the church of Tideford, Cornwall. Bolventor parish was established in 1846 (before that date the village was in St Neot, Cornwall parish) but has now been merged with Altarnun, Cornwall.

The village is said to take its name from the "Bold Venture" that it must have appeared to build a farm in this moorland, but this is probably folk etymology, as "Bol-" is a common prefix in Cornish placenames.

Holy Trinity church now redundant is a residential dwelling.

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Church records
To find the names of the neighbouring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Contributor: Include here information for parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts, non conformist and other types of church records, such as parish chest records. Add the contact information for the office holding the original records. Add links to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection

Images of parish registers were briefly available online in historic records (formerly Record Search), but quickly disappeared. It is unknown when they will reappear on FamilySearch.org

The way point contains an incorrect loading for Botus-Fleming parish burials 1813-1992 This is a known issue and has been reported to engineers for future correction

Cornwall Online Parish Clerks
An extremely useful resource is the Cornwall Online Parish Clerks page for the parish http://www.cornwall-opc.org/Par_new/a_d/bolventor.php

Census records
Contributor: Include an overview if there is any unique information, such as the census for X year was destroyed. Add a link to online sites for indexes and/or images. Also add a link to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection.

Parts of the parish bordering St Neot may be found on some census enumerations listed in Bolventor, and on other census records as part of St Neot. Therefore a family may have remained in the same place and not be found on a different census unless St Neot is also searched. There are also some with the same circumstance with Altarnun.

http://www.1881pubs.com/ for details of public houses in the 1881 census

Cornwall Online Census Project

Poor Law Unions
Launceston Poor Law Union

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Cornwall Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers
Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Web sites
Contributor: add any relevant sites that aren’t mentioned above.