Kea Cornwall Family History Guide

Kea is a chapelry of Kenwyn Ancient Parish in Cornwall.

Other places in the parish include: Come to Good, Penweathers, and Hugus.

Alternative names: Landege, St Kea

Parish church:

Parish registers begin:

Parish registers: 1559
Bishop’s Transcripts: 1607

Nonconformists include: Bible Christian Methodist, Society of Friends/Quaker, and Wesleyan Methodist.

Table of Contents

Adjacent Parishes

Parish History

The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870

KEA, or St. KEA, a parish and a sub-district in Truro district, Cornwall. The parish lies on the Falmouth and Redruth railways, 2¼ miles SSW of Truro; is bounded, on the E, by the river Fal, on the N, by Kenwyn, on the W, by Gwennap; and contains parts of the chapelries of Baldhu, Chacewater, and Mithian. Post town, Truro. Real property, £7,158; of which £1,234 are in mines. Pop. in 1851, 3,752; in 1861, 3,949. Houses, 824. The property is subdivided. The manor belongs to Viscount Falmouth. Guddern is the seat of the Bowdens. Nanceavallan belonged to the Albalandas, and passed to the Boscawens. Carlyon was the birthplace of the knight Sir Tristram. Tin and copper are worked; silver is smelted; and ochre is found. There are some barrows. The manor or parish was known at Domesday as Landegey; and it is alleged to have taken the name of Kea from a saint who is fabled to have come from Ireland in a granite boat, but it may have taken the name from Kea the Virgin or from Pope Cains or St. Kew. The living is a vicarage, annexed to the vicarage of Kenwyn, in the diocese of Exeter. The church was built, on a different site from the old one, in 1802; has a pinnacled tower; contains paintings of Mrs. Killiow, niece of Reynolds; and, in 1869, was contemplated to be rebuilt, at a cost of about £2,500. The tower of the old church still stands; and a chapelry-church, erected in 1858, stands beside it. There are chapels for Independents, Baptists, Wesleyans, and Bryanites, national schools, and alms-houses with £53 a year. The subdistrict contains also St. Feock parish. Acres, 10,703. Pop., 6,360. Houses, 1,271.

Source: The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales [Wilson, John M]. A. Fullarton & Co. N. d. c. [1870-72].