Kilkhampton, Cornwall Genealogy

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

Parish History
KILKHAMPTON, a village, a parish, and a sub-district, in Stratton district, Cornwall. The village stands 2¾ miles W of the river Tamar at the boundary with Devon, 3½ E of the coast near Lower-Sharpnose point, and 4 N by E of Stratton town and r. station; was once a market town.

Kilkhampton St James the Great is an Ancient parish in Cornwall and includes Stebb and Thurdon. Kilkhampton Church, with its magnificent Norman south doorway and lofty buttressed Perpendicular tower of eight bells, is dedicated to St James the Great and is at least 450 years old. But some historians claim parts of it to be around 1000 years old. It is one of many churches dedicated to this saint on a pilgrims' route, which leads ultimately to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. The church contains an impressive monument to the Cornish hero Sir Bevil Grenville. Other features of interest are the south porch (dated 1567), a fine series of benchends of the first half of the 16th century. (The benchends are from the same workshop as those of Launcells, Cornwall and Poughill Poughill, Cornwall.)

The tenor bell was found to be cracked in 2006: after repairs, it was re-hung and the full peal of eight bells were first heard again on Sunday 23 September 2007.

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
Kilkhampton 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.

The history, registers and much more have been contributed by the Online Parish clerk for Kilkhampton.

Census records
Cornwall Online Census Project

Poor Law Unions
Stratton 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

 * parish website
 * Thomas Greenaway Premier ofManitoba Canada was born in the village
 * James Yeo political figure in CanadaPrince Edward Island
 * Cornish Royalist leader in the English Civil war
 * includes image of memorial within the church
 * and son http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Granville,_2nd_Earl_of_Bath Mp forLaunceston, Cornwall
 * Kilkhampton in GENUKI