Lawhitton Rural

Lawhitton is an ancient parish in East Cornwall, located southeast of Launceston near the River Tamar. The area is thinly populated and scenic, with a landscape of farmland and wooded valleys. Historically, the estate was granted by King Ecgberht to the Bishop of Sherborne in 830 AD and later passed to the Bishops of Exeter, serving as a bishop's peculiar manor. The parish has a quiet, traditional character, shaped by centuries of agricultural use and its position on the Cornwall-Devon border.

History: Lawhitton has a long and distinguished history, being one of the earlier Cornish areas to be mentioned in historical documents. In 830 AD, King Ecgberht of Wessex gave the estate of Landwithan to the Bishop of Sherborne, comprising what would become Lawhitton, Lezant, South Petherwin, and Trewen. The property was transferred to the Bishops of Crediton in 909 and then to the Bishops of Exeter in 1050, remaining as the Bishop's Peculiar Deanery of Lawhitton until it was disbanded in 1850. The medieval village was once a market town, and ruins of an episcopal palace were formerly identified at Sheers Barton. In 1894, the ancient parish was split by the Local Government Act into Lawhitton Urban and Lawhitton Rural, as the former lay within Launceston's borough boundaries. The parish church, St. Michael, features a 13th-century tower and a Norman font. The economy has historically been agricultural, and today Lawhitton Rural remains a quiet, sparsely populated parish with a sense of its long ecclesiastical and manorial history.