Present Rector, the Rev. Charles Worsley, instituted in 1813.
GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.
Under the head of St. Cleather, a peculiar calcareous rock was noticed, consisting of a variety of hornblende and calc spar, either distinctly conjoined in a granular or laminated form, or so intimately blended, as to form an homogeneous green rock. A large bed of this peculiar rock occurs at Grylls or Garles, near the western boundary of the parish. An attempt was made here to burn this rock as a limestone for agricultural purposes; but after several trials it was abandoned; for, unless great care be taken in selecting those parts alone in which calc spar mainly abounds, the whole charge of the kiln vitrifies, or runs into a slag, owing to the great fusibility of hornblende, the other constituent of this calcareous rock.
LESTWITHIEL.
HALS.
The manuscript relating to this parish is lost.
TONKIN.
Lestwithiel is in the hundred of Powder, and is surrounded to the west, north, and south, by Lanlivery; to the east it has Fowy river between it and St. Winnow. As for the name, I take it to be a corruption of Les-uchel, i. e. the lofty place, as having been from all antiquity the chief seat of the Dukes, &c. of Cornwall. Mr. Camden in Cornwall saith, “the Uzella of Ptolemy is seated, and has not yet quite lost its name, being called at this day Lestuthiell, from its situation. Now uchel, in British, signifies the same as high and lofty.” But of this more when we come to describe the town. As for Mr. Carew’s derivation, who calls it Lostwithiel, from the Cornish Losswithiall, which in English, saith he, signifieth a lion’s tail, it is so ridiculous, as not to be worth repeating; neither doth the word carry that sense. This parish is a vicarage, valued in the King’s books at £2. 13s. 4d.