BlackwaterSt. Agnes

Blackwater at a glance

Blackwater and Chacewater: two former mining villages between Truro and Redruth

Blackwater and Chacewater are neighbouring villages in mid Cornwall, between Truro and Redruth, and both grew up around mining. Blackwater (Dowrdu in Cornish) is in the parish of St Agnes and sits on the old course of the A30, north of the road that now bypasses it. Chacewater is a village and civil parish about three miles east of Redruth, in a valley between hills.

Blackwater is the birthplace of John Passmore Edwards, the Victorian philanthropist and journalist, who funded the Blackwater Institute, founded in 1890, and 69 other public buildings. The village has a primary school and a pub, the Red Lion. The Truro and Newquay Railway ran through Blackwater from 1903 to 1963. Nearby, the Wheal Concord and Wheal Briton mines were worked again in 1980 and produced 21,000 tonnes of tin before closing in the 1980s.

Chacewater has a church, St Paul's, built in 1828 and rebuilt by Edmund H. Sedding in 1892 with the tower kept. John Passmore Edwards gave the village its Literary Institute in 1893. Today there is a health centre, a primary school, a village hall and a small selection of shops. Cornish wrestling tournaments with prizes have been held in the village for at least two centuries.

Chacewater station opened in 1852 under the West Cornwall Railway and closed to passengers in 1964. Trains on the Cornish Main Line still run through. The area has a rich mining history, with Wheal Busy, formerly called Chacewater mine, Killifreth Mine and Wheal Jane all nearby, and the Coast to Coast cycle route passes close to the village.