St Clear Cornwall
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ST
CLEER
Like nearby Minions, this parish on the southern slopes of Bodmin Moor was overwhelmed, and transformed, by a copper -mining boom in the mid-nineteenth century which has been compared, in its intensity and in its social and economic repercussions, to the North American gold rush. Here is A.K. Hamilton Jenkin, for instance: 'On Saturday nights after pay-day, the populous villages of Caradon Town, Pensilva, Minions and Crows Nest were crowded with men, and resembled in character the mining camps of Colorado and the For West.'
There
are older historical stories to be told here too; the parish contains
the impressive Neolithic chamber tomb of Trethevy Quoit and the
decorated and inscribed King Doniert's Stone, which was probably
erected by Durngarth, the last Cornish king to be recorded in what used
to be called the 'Dark Ages', who drowned in AD 875,
In the village itself is St Cleer holy well, in a beautiful fifteenth-century building; there used to be a total immersion (or 'bowssening') pool here which was used for the attempted cure of the insane.
