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Redruth is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England. The population of Redruth was 14,018 at the 2011 census. In the same year the population of the Camborne-Redruth urban area, which also includes Carn Brea, Illogan and several satellite villages, stood at 55,400 making it the largest conurbation in Cornwall. Redruth lies approximately at the junction of the A393 and A3047 roads, on the route of the old London to Land's End trunk road (now the A30), and is approximately west of Truro, east of St Ives, north east of Penzance and north west of Falmouth. Camborne and Redruth together form the largest urban area in Cornwall and before local government reorganisation were an urban district. [edit] HistoryTraditionally in the Penwith Hundred, the town has developed away from the original settlement, which was near where the present Churchtown (around St. Euny's Church) district of Redruth stands today. This location is a steeply wooded valley, with Carn Brea on one side and the now-called Bullers Hill on the other. The presence of shallow lodes of tin and copper lying east to west made it an advantageous site for extracting metals, including, tin, lead and copper. The first settlers stayed by a crossing in the river and started extracting metal ores, and this process turned the colour of the river red. Historically, Redruth was a small market town overshadowed by its neighbours until a boom in the demand for copper ore during the 18th century. Copper ore had mostly been discarded by the Cornish tin-mining industry but was now needed to make brass, an essential metal in the Industrial Revolution. Surrounded by copper ore deposits, Redruth quickly became one of the largest and richest mining areas in Britain and the town's population grew markedly, although most miners' families remained poor. In the 1880s and 1890s the town end of Clinton Road gained a number of institutions, notably a School of Mines and Art School in 1882–83, St. Andrew's Church (replacing the chapel in Chapel Street) in 1883 and, opposite, the Free Library, built in 1895. The Mining Exchange was built in 1880 as a place for the trading of mineral stock. By the turn of the 20th century, Victoria Park had been laid out to commemorate the Golden Jubilee (of Queen Victoria in 1897) and this part of town had taken on its present appearance — a far cry from the jumble of mining activity that had taken place there in the early 19th century. Redruth was making its transition from a market town dominated by mines and industry to a residential centre. By the end of the 19th century, the Cornish mining industry was in decline and Britain was importing most of its copper ore. To find employment, many miners emigrated to the newer mining industries in the Americas, Australasia and South Africa. Cornwall's last fully operational mine, South Crofty at Pool between Redruth and Camborne, closed in March 1998. Other mines in Cornwall have re-opened and closed again in the period since 1998. For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Redruth. [edit] Research TipsOne of the many maps available on A Vision of Britain through Time is one from the Ordnance Survey Series of 1900 illustrating the parish boundaries of Cornwall at the turn of the 20th century. This map blows up to show all the parishes and many of the small villages and hamlets. The following websites have pages explaining their provisions in WeRelate's Repository Section. Some provide free online databases.
https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/CON/Jacobstow
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