Bolventor, Cornwall Genealogy

Guide to Bolventor, Cornwall ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
BOLVENTOR, a chapelry in Altarnun and St. Neot parishes, Cornwall; 7 miles N of Liskeard railway station, and 9 SW of Launceston. It was created on 24th June 1848 from parts of Altarnun, St Neot and Cardinham parishes. See Genuki for more information.

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 place names.

Holy Trinity church now redundant is a residential dwelling.

Find Neighboring Parishes
Use England Jurisdictions 1851 Map
 * Type the name of the parish in the search bar
 * Click on the location pin on the map
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 * Click "List Contiguous Parishes" to find the neighboring parishes

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
The Church of England (Anglican) became the official state religion in 1534, with the reigning monarch as its Supreme Governor. Non-Conformist refers to all other religious denominations that are not the official state religion.

Church of England
Due to the increasing access of online records: Hover over the collection's title for more information Other Websites These databases have incomplete parish coverage.
 * Individual parish coverage for databases in this table are inconsistent and should be verified
 * Dates in the following table are approximate
 * The Genealogist Parish Registers - Cornwall ($)
 * UK Websites for Parish Records - Links to online genealogical records
 * Online Genealogical Index - Links to online genealogical records
 * Cornish Parish Records

Non-Conformists (All other Religions)

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at FindMyPast ($), index and images (coverage may vary)

Census Records
Cornwall Online Census Project

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.

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

Websites
Bolventor in GENUKI