GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.
This parish, like those adjoining, Camborne and Crowan, has been long celebrated for its mines, but it does not resemble them by reposing in part on granite, being confined entirely to rocks of the slate series.
The porphyritic courses are not so common here as in Gwennap; but they often assume a very interesting form, occurring as insulated masses, which in some cases are perfectly granitic, and at the same time afford every indication of their having been formed contemporaneously with the slate. The most curious geological phenomenon of this parish is to be met with in Relistion Mine, where one of the lodes, (metalliferous veins) at a considerable depth, is composed of rounded pedules, cemented together in a hard solid mass; at first sight it would be pronounced to be a decided conglomerate of derivative origin; but on a more close examination it is found to have the spheroidal structure, which is common to many rocks, and which in regard to this mineral was probably coeval with its original formation.
GWITHIAN.
HALS.
Is situate in the hundred of Penwith, and hath upon the north the Irish Sea, or St. George’s Channel, and that creek or cove called Gwithian Bay, east Illigan, west Phelack, south Gwyniar.
The entry occurs, Rex tenet Canardi-tone, in the Domesday tax 20 William I. 1087.
For in this parish is the voke lands of the great and privileged manor of Coner, or Conner-ton, which claims by prescription not only the royalties and jurisdiction within its limits, but also over the whole hundred of Penwith (id est, the head tree). Hence it is that this manor of Connerton is privileged not only with the jurisdiction of a Court Leet or Baron for the whole hundred of Penwith, within which two courts are tried all matters of debt and damage between party and party within the same, (life, land, and limb excepted,) wherein heretofore infinite number of causes have been depending, by reason of its being the most remote part of the kingdom from the Courts of Westminster; the steward or judge of which courts, (which offices commonly are vested in one person,) takes his deputation from the now lord of the manor, viz. Sir John Arundell, of Lanherne, Knight, and not from the King or Duke of Cornwall’s stewards, as other bailiwicks do.