Minster, Cornwall Genealogy

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

Parish History
MINSTER (St. Metherian), a parish, in the union of Camelford, hundred of Lesnewth, E. division of Cornwall, 3¼ miles ENE from Bossiney. The Wesleyans have a place of worship.

Minster St Materiana is an Ancient Parish in the county of Cornwall. Other places in the parish include: Boscastle. Boscastle is the principal settlement in the parish of Forrabury, Cornwall and Minster. It is 14 miles (23 kilometres) south of Bude and 5 miles (8 kilometres) north-east of Tintagel. Forrabury parish church, dedicated to St Symphorian, is in Boscastle at OS Grid Ref SX095908.

However, the mother church of Boscastle is dedicated to St Materiana and nestles among the trees of Minster Wood in the valley of the River Valency half-a-mile east of Boscastle at OS Grid Ref SX110904. The original Forrabury / Minster boundary crossed the river so the harbour end of the village was in Forrabury and the upriver area in Minster. The churches were established some time earlier than the settlement at Boscastle (in Norman times when a castle was built there). The Celtic name of Minster was Talkarn but it was renamed Minster in Anglo-Saxon times because of a monastery on the site. Until the Reformation St Materiana's tomb was preserved in the church. (Another spelling of her name sometimes used is 'Mertheriana' but the usual Latin form is Materiana.) For many years the Anglican parishes of Forrabury and Minster have been in the charge of a Rector who is responsible for a group of adjoining parishes as well as these. Minster Church was damaged by the flood of August 2004 and in the following year archaeological work was done at the church to obtain a clearer idea of the history of the building.

The parish is part of the Boscastle with Davidstow United Benefice within the Diocese of Truro.

Civil Registration
Births, 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
Minster parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

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

Records are also available at the Cornwall Record Office.

Cornwall Online Parish Clerks
An extremely useful resource is the Cornwall Online Parish Clerks page for the parish which includes images of the church.

Census records
Cornwall Online Census Project

Poor Law Unions
Camelford 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
There are many maps and gazetteers showing English places. Valuable web sites are:


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Websites
Minster in GENUKI