Newquay, Cornwall Genealogy

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

Parish History
NEW-QUAY, a hamlet, in the parish of St. Columb Minor, union of St. Columb Major, hundred of Pyder, E. division of Cornwall. This place is situated on the shore of the Bristol Channel. There are places of worship for Baptists and Wesleyans.

Newquay, (Cornish: Tewynn Pleustri) was a chapelry of St Columb Minor Ancient Parish in Cornwall.

The parish was created 1882 from part of the Ancient Parish and the current church dedicated to St Michael and designed by Sir Ninian Comper, was built in 1911 since the expansion of the town had made the chapelry inadequate.

The church was destroyed by an arson attack on 29 June 1993 but has since been reopened (rededicated in 1996). The stained glass windows and rood screen feature St Michael, the three other archangels, and Jesus Christ and Mary the Blessed Virgin.

The modern parish is within the Diocese of Truro.

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

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.

Images of parish registers are available online at FamilySearch Images refer to Cornwall Record Office reference: P 165

Cornwall Online Parish Clerks
An extremely useful resource is the Cornwall Online Parish Clerks page for the parish.

Census records
Cornwall Online Census Project

Poor Law Unions
St Columb Major 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
Newquay in GENUKI