St Just in Penwith, Cornwall

Description
Just, St, or St Just-in-Penwith, a village and a parish in Cornwall. The village stands on high ground, between two wild valleys under Cam Bosavem, near the coast, 4 1/2 miles NNE of Lands End, and 7 W of Penzance station on the G.W.R., with a post, money order, and telegraph office. To distinguish it from other villages in the parish, it is called St Just Church Town, and has two hotels and a weekly Saturday market. Acreage of the civil parish, 7621 of land and 129 of water and foreshore; population, 6119; of the ecclesiastical, 3838. The land is bleak, and to a great extent barren. The rocks are chiefly granite and slate, but they include rich lodes of tin and copper, contain iron, bismuth, hornblende, talc, garnet, opal, and many other minerals, and exhibit features of great interest to geologists. The mines now worked in this district are the Botallack and the Levant, which give employment to a very large number of people, and the workings of which extend for some distance under the sea. Eock basins are in several parts of the parish, stone circles are at Botallack and Tregaseal, and masses of granite, called Giants' Quoits, are between Cam Bosavem and Balleswidden. Roman paterae, urns, coins, and other Roman relics have been found; a Roman Christian monument is in the church, and traces of an ancient amphitheatre, 126 feet in diameter, and retaining till the 18th century six tiers of stone benches, adjoin the village. Tradition says that, in the 7th century, after the conquest of Cornwall, Ethelbert and six other Saxon kings dined in the parish at a stone called Mayne, or at Mean in Sannen. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Truro; net value,, £300 with residence. Patron, the Lord Chancellor. The vicarage of Pendeen is a separate benefice. The church is a good building of granite and stone in the Perpendicular style, with an embattled western tower, and contains some memorials to the Millett and Chenhall families; the building was restored in 1865. There are Wesleyan, United Free Methodist, and Bryanite chapels, a market-house, literary institution, science and art classes, almshouses, and ruins or traces of three ancient chapels. Dr Borlase, the historian of Cornwall, was a native.