Truro

The origin of Truro's name is debated. It has been said to derive from the Cornish tri-veru meaning "three rivers", but authorities such as the Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names reject this theory. There are doubts about the "tru" part meaning "three". An expert on Cornish place-names, Oliver Padel, in A Popular Dictionary of Cornish Place-names, called the "three rivers" meaning "possible".[4] Alternatively the name may derive from tre-uro or similar, i. e. the settlement on the river Uro.[5][6]

The earliest records and archaeological finds of a permanent settlement in the Truro area date from Norman times. A castle was built there in the 12th century by Richard de Luci, Chief Justice of England in the reign of Henry II, who for his services to the court was granted land in Cornwall, including the area surrounding the confluence of the two rivers. The town grew in the shadow of the castle and was awarded borough status to further economic activity. The castle has long since disappeared.

Richard de Lucy fought in Cornwall under Count Alan of Brittany after leaving Falaise late in 1138. The small adulterine castle at Truro, Cornwall (originally the parish of Kenwyn), later known as "Castellum de Guelon" was probably built by him in 1139–1140. He styled himself "Richard de Lucy, de Trivereu". The castle later passed to Reginald FitzRoy (also known as Reginald de Dunstanville), an illegitimate son of Henry I, when he was invested by King Stephen as the first Earl of Cornwall. Reginald married Mabel FitzRichard, daughter of William FitzRichard, a substantial landholder in Cornwall. The 75-foot (23 m)-diameter castle was in ruins by 1270 and the motte was levelled in 1840. Today Truro Crown Court stands on the site. In a charter of about 1170, Reginald FitzRoy confirmed to the burgesses of Truro the privileges granted by Richard de Lucy. Richard held ten knights' fees in Cornwall prior to 1135 and at his death the county still accounted for a third of his considerable total holding.[7]

By the start of the 14th century Truro was an important port, due to its inland location away from invaders, prosperity from the fishing industry, and a new role as one of Cornwall's stannary towns for assaying and stamping tin and copper from Cornish mines. The Black Death brought a trade recession and an exodus of the population that left the town in a very neglected state. Trade gradually returned and the town regained prosperity in the Tudor period. Local government was awarded in 1589 by a new charter granted by Elizabeth I, giving Truro an elected mayor and control over the port of Falmouth.

During the Civil War in the 17th century, Truro raised a sizeable force to fight for the king and a royalist mint was set up. Defeat by the Parliamentary troops came after the Battle of Naseby in 1646, when the victorious Parliamentarian general Fairfax led his army south-west to relieve Taunton and capture the Royalist-held West Country. The Royalist forces surrendered at Truro while leading Royalist commanders, including Lord Hopton, the Prince of Wales, Sir Edward Hyde, and Lord Capell, fled to Jersey from Falmouth.[8] The mint was moved to Exeter.

Later in the century, Falmouth was awarded its own charter, giving it rights to its harbour and starting a long rivalry between the two towns. The dispute was settled in 1709 with control of the River Fal divided between them. The arms of the city of Truro are "Gules the base wavy of six Argent and Azure, thereon an ancient ship of three masts under sail, on each topmast a banner of St George, on the waves in base two fishes of the second."[9]

Boscawen Street in 1810

Truro prospered in the 18th and 19th centuries. Industry flourished through improved mining methods and higher prices for tin, and the town attracted wealthy mine owners. Elegant Georgian and Victorian townhouses were built, such as those seen today in Lemon Street, named after the mining magnate and local MP Sir William Lemon. Truro became the centre for society in the county, even dubbed "the London of Cornwall".[10]

The Cathedral in 1905, before completion of the spires

Throughout those prosperous times Truro remained a social centre, and many notable people came from there. Among the noteworthy were Richard Lander, an explorer who was the first European to reach the mouth of the River Niger in Africa and was awarded the first gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society, and Henry Martyn, who read mathematics at Cambridge, was ordained and became a missionary, translating the New Testament into Urdu and Persian. Others include Humphry Davy, educated in Truro and the inventor of the miner's safety lamp, and Samuel Foote, an actor and playwright from Boscawen Street.

Truro's importance increased later in the 19th century, with an iron-smelting works, potteries, and tanneries. From the 1860s, the Great Western Railway provided a direct link to London Paddington. The Bishopric of Truro Act 1876 gave the town a bishop and later a cathedral. The next year it was granted city status. The New Bridge Street drill hall was completed in the late 19th century.[11]

Mining declined in the early 20th century, but Truro remained prosperous as a developing administrative and commercial centre of Cornwall. Today it remains the county retail centre, but like other places, faces concerns over replacement of speciality shops by national chain stores, erosion of identity, and doubts about how to accommodate growth expected in the 21st century.

River Kenwyn which converges with the Allen to become the River Truro

Truro lies in the centre of western Cornwall, about 9 miles (14 kilometres) from the south coast, at the confluence of the rivers Kenwyn and Allen, which combine as the Truro River – one of a series of creeks, rivers and drowned valleys leading into the River Fal and then to the large natural harbour of Carrick Roads. The valleys form a steep-sided bowl surrounding the city on the north, east and west, open to the Truro River in the south. The bowl shape, along with high precipitation that swells the rivers and a spring tide in the River Fal, were major factors in the 1988 floods that seriously damaged the city centre. Since then, flood defences have been constructed, including an emergency dam at New Mill on the River Kenwyn and a tidal barrier on the Truro River.

The city is surrounded by several protected natural areas such as the historic parklands at Pencalenick, and larger areas of ornamental landscape, such as Trelissick Garden and Tregothnan further down the Truro River. An area south-east of the city, around and including Calenick Creek, has been designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Other protected areas include an Area of Great Landscape Value comprising agricultural land and wooded valleys to the north east, and Daubuz Moors, a local nature reserve alongside the River Allen close to the city centre.

Truro has mainly grown and developed around the historic city centre in a nuclear fashion along the slopes of the bowl valley, except for fast linear development along the A390 to the west, towards Threemilestone. As Truro has grown, it has encompassed other settlements as suburbs or districts, including Kenwyn and Moresk to the north, Trelander to the east, Newham to the south, and Highertown, Treliske and Gloweth to the west.

Sunday morning on Pydar Street

Truro urban area, which includes parts of surrounding parishes, had a 2001 census population of 20,920.[14] By 2011 the population, including Threemilestone, was 23,040. Its status as the county's prime destination for retail and leisure and administration is unusual in that it is only its fourth most populous settlement.[14] Furthermore, population growth at 10.5 per cent between 1971 and 1998 was slow compared with other Cornish towns and Cornwall as a whole.

Major employers include the Royal Cornwall Hospital, Cornwall Council, and Truro College. There are about 22,000 jobs available in Truro, compared to only 9,500 economically active people living in the city. Commutes into Truro are a major factor in its traffic congestion. Average earnings are higher than in the rest of Cornwall.

Housing prices in Truro in the 2000s were 8 or more per cent higher than in the rest of Cornwall. Truro was named in 2006 as the top small city in the United Kingdom for rising house prices, at 262 per cent since 1996.[15] There is heavy demand for new housing and a call for inner-city properties to be converted into flats or houses to encourage city-centre living and reduce dependence on cars.

Georgian architecture at Walsingham Place

Map of Truro

  City/parish border

  Forestry

  Countryside

  Urban area

Truro City Council, a city/parish council, is based upstairs at the Municipal Buildings in Boscawen Street. It runs parks, gardens and planting, mayoral and civic events, support of its overseas twinning, and tourist information. It also considers planning issues and is involved in creating the Truro and Kenwyn Neighbourhood Plan in association with Cornwall Council. The city divides into four wards: Boscawen, Moresk, Tregolls and Trehaverne, with 24 councillors elected for four-year terms.[28] Cornwall Council (a unitary authority) has its base at Lys Kernow (formerly County Hall) west of the city centre. It administers planning, infrastructure, development and environmental issues.

The elected City Council forms Truro's lowest level of government,[29] as one of 213 parish bodies in the county. The governance layer above is the unitary Cornwall Council, directly under central government.[30][31] It covers Truro's public library, parks and gardens, tourist information centre, allotments and cemeteries.[32] It is affiliated to Truro Chamber of Commerce and other civic bodies.[33][34]

Truro's borough court was first granted in 1153; it became a free borough in 1589,[35] then a city in 1877, receiving letters patent after the Anglican diocese was located there in 1876.[36] However, it forms the eighth smallest in the UK in terms of population, city council area and urban area.[37]

St Mary's Truro (early 19th-century engraving)

St George's Church

St John's Church

St Paul's Church

The old parish church of Truro was St Mary's, which was incorporated into the cathedral in the later 19th century. The building dates from 1518, with a later tower and spire, dating from 1769. [8]

Parts of the town were in the parishes of Kenwyn and St Clement (Moresk) until the mid 19th century, when other parishes were created. St George's church in Truro, designed by the Reverend William Haslam, vicar of Baldhu, was built of Cornish granite in 1855; it is lofty and imposing. The parish of St George's Truro formed from part of Kenwyn in 1846. In 1865 two more parishes were created: St John's from part of Kenwyn and St Paul's from part of St Clement.[41][42] St George's contains a large wall painting behind the high altar which was the work of Stephany Cooper in the 1920s. Her father Canon Cooper had been a missionary in Zanzibar and elsewhere. The theme of the mural painting is "Three Heavens": the first heaven has views of Zanzibar and its cathedral (a happy period in the life of the artist); the second heaven has views of the city of Truro including the cathedral, the railway viaduct and St George's church (another happy period in the life of the artist); the third heaven is above the others which are separated from it by the River of Life (Christ is represented bridging the river and 17 saints including St Piran and St Kenwyn are depicted in this part).[43]

Charles William Hempel was organist of St. Mary's Church for forty years from 1804, supplementing his income by teaching music. In 1805 he composed and printed Psalms from the New Version for the use of the Congregation of St. Mary's, and in 1812 Sacred Melodies for the same congregation. These melodies became very popular.

The oldest church in Truro is at Kenwyn, on the northern side of the city. It dates from the 14th and 15th centuries, but it was almost entirely rebuilt in 1820, having deteriorated to the point where it had been deemed unsafe and had to be shut.[44]

St John's Church (dedicated to St John the Evangelist) was built in 1828 (architect P. Sambell) in the Classical style on a rectangular plan and with a gallery. Alterations were carried out in the 1890s.

St Paul's Church was built in 1848. The chancel was replaced in 1882–1884, the new chancel being the work of J. D. Sedding. The tower is "broad and strong" (Pevsner) and the exterior of the aisles are ornamented in Sedding's version of the Perpendicular style.[45] In the parish of St Paul is the former Convent of the Epiphany (Anglican) at Alverton House, Tregolls Road, an early 19th-century house. The house was extended for the convent of the Community of the Epiphany and the chapel was built in 1910 by Edmund H. Sedding.[45] The sisterhood was founded by the Bishop of Truro, George Howard Wilkinson, in 1883 and closed in 2001 when two surviving nuns moved into care homes. The sisters had been involved in pastoral and educational work and care of the cathedral and St Paul's Church.[46] St Paul's Church, built with a tower on a river bed with poor foundations, has fallen into disrepair and is no longer in use. Services are now held at the churches of St Clement, St George, and St John. St Paul and St Clement form a united benefice, as do St George and St John.

Only one Methodist chapel remains in use, in Union Place (Truro Methodist Church), which has a broad granite front (1830, but since enlarged). There is a Quaker Meeting House in granite (c. 1830) and numerous other churches, some meeting in their own modern buildings, e. g. St Piran's Roman Catholic church and All Saints, Highertown, and some in schools or halls. St Piran's, dedicated to Our Lady of the Portal and St Piran, was built on the site of a medieval chapel by Margaret Steuart Pollard in 1973, for which she received the Benemerenti Medal from the Pope.[47] The Baptist church building occupies the site of the former Lake's pottery, one of the oldest in Cornwall.

A free grammar school associated with St Mary's Church was endowed in the 16th century. Its distinguished pupils have included the scientist Sir Humphry Davy, General Sir Hussey Vivian and the clergyman, Henry Martyn.[8]

The former Truro Girls Grammar School was converted into a Sainsbury's supermarket.[48]

Educational institutions in Truro today include:

• Archbishop Benson – A Church of England voluntary aided primary school
• Polwhele House Preparatory School — since the closure of Truro Cathedral School educating also the 18 boy choristers of Truro Cathedral
• Truro School — a public school founded in 1880
• Truro High School for Girls — a public school for ages 13–18
• Penair School — a state co-educational science college for ages 11–16
• Richard Lander School — a state co-educational technology college for ages 11–16
• Truro College — A further and higher education college attached to the Combined Universities in Cornwall
• University of Exeter Medical School[49]

Lower Lemon Street

Truro has many proposed development schemes and plans, the majority of which are intended to counter the main problems it faces, notably traffic congestion and lack of housing.

Major proposals include the construction of a distributor road to carry traffic away from the busy Threemilestone-Treliske-Highertown corridor, reconnecting at either Green Lane or Morlaix Avenue. This will also serve the new housing planned for that area.[50]

Changes are proposed for the city centre, such as pedestrianisation of the main shopping streets and beautification of a list of uncharacteristic storefronts built in the 1960s.[50] New retail developments on the current Carrick District Council site and Garras Wharf waterfront site will provide more space for shops, open spaces and public amenities.[50] Along with the redevelopment of the waterfront, a tidal barrier is planned to dam water into the Truro River, which is currently blighted by mud banks that appear at low tide.[50]

Controversial plans include the construction of a new stadium for Truro City F.C. and the Cornish Pirates, and relocation of the city's golf course to make way for more housing. A smaller project is the addition of two large sculptures in the Piazza.[51]

• Diocese of Truro
• List of topics related to Cornwall

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Truro.

• "Truro" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 27 (11th ed.). 1911.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Truro (England).

• Truro at Curlie
• Truro City Council website
• Cornwall Record Office Online Catalogue for Truro
• Truro – historic characterisation for regeneration (CSUS)
• Enjoy Truro – official guide to the city, including latest news and events (provided by Totally Truro, the local not-for-profit Business Improvement District)