Pol-gooth is in Cornish the old pit or mine. Mr. Hals mentions, as a matter of astonishment, its having produced above five hundred thousand pounds weight of tin in less than forty years, and that it paid a fifth dish or share to the proprietor of the soil. Nothing can more clearly evince the enlarged scale of working in modern times; 500,000 pounds weight of tin in forty years would give an average of 12,500 pounds weight for each year, and at the recent price of four pounds sterling for a hundred weight of tin, about £2,200 a year. In some of the later workings perhaps thirty or forty thousand pounds have been expended in an outfit, or what is called bringing the mine into a course of working, in the purchase of steam engines, and of various other elaborate machines; and instead of paying a fifth part of whatever minerals are raised, free of expense to the proprietors of the soil, an eighteenth or perhaps a twenty-fourth share is all that can reasonably be demanded or afforded after such an outlay of capital, which small share, however, usually amounts to a greater value than did the fifth or sixth part received in former times.
The manor and village of Burngullo belonged to the Robarts’s, of Lanhidrock, and have descended to Mrs. Agar.
The manor of Trewoon belongs partly to the family of Hawkins, and partly to Tremayne and Hoblyn.
St. Mewan measures 2,240 statute acres.
| £. | s. | d. | |
| Annual value of the Real Property, as returned to Parliament in 1815 | 1633 | 0 | 0 |
| Poor Rate in 1831 | 322 | 18 | 0 |
| Population,— | |||
| in 1801, 780 | in 1811, 626 | in 1821, 1174 | in 1831, 1306 |
giving an increase of 67 per cent. in 30 years.
The fluctuations in amount of population in this parish
are owing to the occasional working or discontinuance of Polgooth mine.
Present Rector, the Rev. William Hocker, jun. instituted in 1801.