Chyandour

Coordinates: 50°07′34″N 5°31′37″W / 50.126°N 5.527°W

Chyandour

Chyandour (Cornish: Chi an Dowr,^[1] meaning "house of the water") is a small settlement within the town of Penzance in west Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is on the north-east edge of the town straddling the A30 trunk road. The Chyandour Brook rises near Carfury and flows into Mount's Bay at Chyandour.^[2]

Historically, Chyandour was one of the boundaries of the Borough of Penzance, and was the site of large tin smelting works.

Industry

The Bleu Bridge inscribed stone; the inscription (in bad Latin) reads: "QVENATAVCI IC DINVI FILIVS" which translates as "Quenataucus (lies) here, son of Dinuus" (apparently the two names are Irish and not Cornish, and date from the sixth century)

In around 1660 John Tremenheere, in anticipation of Penzance becoming a Stannary town, set up a smelting works, just outside the Borough of Penzance's boundary at Chyandour.^[3] In 1760 when Thomas Bolitho arrived in Penzance from Penryn, the smelting works at Chyandour was run by the Praed family. By the time tin production was at its maximum the business was run by the Bolitho family who lived in Coombe House, and in 1867 bought the estate at Trengwainton, Madron.^[4]

Still in use, the Bolitho Estate Office was built in 1860, and at that time the first floor was a bank with the vault under the caretaker's ground floor accommodation. Wagon drivers would stop at the bank to collect their money before driving up Chyandour Coombe to the smelting works. The smelting works contained four furnaces. The tin ore was heated and the tin flowed into cast iron crucibles where it was re-heated to remove impurities. Anthracite was brought in by sea, the ship landing on the beach near the Chyandour Brook. The cargo was carried through the three tunnels under the railway line and hauled up the slipway to the smelting works. The works closed in 1912 and was demolished in 1930; some of the walls and crucibles can still be seen.^[4]

References

1. Place-names in the Standard Written Form (SWF) : List of place-names agreed by the MAGA Signage Panel Archived May 15, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.. Cornish Language Partnership.
2. Ordnance Survey: Landranger map sheet 203 Land's End ISBN 978-0-319-23148-7
3. Sagar-Fenton, Michael (2015). Penzance The Biography. Stroud: Amberley Publishing. ISBN 978 1 4456 4263 5.
4. Christopher, Madge (13 August 2015). "Madron: Smelting". The Cornishman. p. 33.