Records are held at various repositories :-
The Cornwall Record Office in Truro is where the church registers are lodged, as well as many other documents. The search engine on the National Archive site, www.a2a.org.uk is useful for looking up the document references before your visit.
The Courtney Library at the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro
An 1881 map can be viewed at www.old-maps.co.uk
St Austell Poor Law Union was formed on 2nd February 1837, the story of the workhouses can be found at www.workhouses.org.uk
Also the following site has information on other types of institutions, such as prisons, orphanages, cottage hospitals and is still expanding. www.institutions.org.uk
The University of Leicester has a useful searchable source of historical directories covering a period of time from the 1850s to 1920s
Tracing your Cornish Ancestors
David Stick is the Online Parish Clerk (OPC) for Tywardreath. OPCs are volunteer genealogical researchers helping people to find their family connections at no cost. He is a member of Cornwall Family History Society where you can see the sort of things that are possible. If you would like David to advise you, please email him.
Historical notes
The Vanishing Harbour
Once a tidal reach
The once natural harbour with tidal fingers searching inland, up almost to where they built the Priory at Tywardreath, to St Blazey, through the marshy land to Treesmill, up the Polmear valley as far as Lower Lampetho.
Until the end of the 18th century the bay and harbour must have been wonderfully busy place, with fishing-boats and trading vessels tacking to and fro, seiners casting their nets in the creeks, the ferry being rowed back and forth from Little Par to the Sloop Inn on the Par shore.
The level of the bottom rose and the harbour which once had fifty or sixty feet of water at high tide became a drying waste of sand and shingle. In 1773 the tide still reached St Blazey Church, and even up to 1800 high water reached one mile north of Par.