Bodmin
Bodmin is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated south-west of Bodmin Moor.
The extent of the civil parish corresponds fairly closely to that of the town so is mostly urban in character. It is bordered to the east by Cardinham parish, to the southeast by Lanhydrock parish, to the southwest and west by Lanivet parish, and to the north by Helland parish. At the 2021 census the population of the parish was 16,909.
Bodmin became the county town of Cornwall in 1838 when the main courts for the county moved there from Launceston. Bodmin gradually lost county town functions to Truro; in 1889 the new Cornwall County Council chose to base itself in Truro, and the county's main courthouse moved to Truro in 1988.
Situation and origin of the name
The name of the town probably derives from the Cornish "Bod-meneghy", meaning "dwelling of or by the sanctuary of monks". Variant spellings recorded include Botmenei in 1100, Bodmen in 1253, Bodman in 1377 and Bodmyn in 1522. The Bodman spelling also appears in sources and maps from the 16th and 17th centuries, most notably in the celebrated map of Cornwall produced by John Speed but actually engraved by the Dutch cartographer Jodocus Hondius the Elder in Amsterdam in 1610.The hamlets of Cooksland, Little Kirland, Dunmere and Turfdown are in the parish.
History
founded a monastery in Bodmin in the 6th century and gave the town its alternative name of Petrockstow. The monastery was deprived of some of its lands at the Norman Conquest but at the time of Domesday still held eighteen manors, including Bodmin, Padstow and Rialton. Bodmin is one of the oldest towns in Cornwall, and the only large Cornish settlement recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086. In the 15th century the Norman church of St Petroc was largely rebuilt and stands as one of the largest churches in Cornwall. Also built at that time was an abbey of canons regular, now mostly ruined. For most of Bodmin's history, the tin industry was a mainstay of the economy.An inscription on a stone built into the wall of a summer house in Lancarffe furnishes proof of a settlement in Bodmin in the early Middle Ages. It is a memorial to one "Dunoatus son of Mecagnus" and has been dated from the 6th to 8th centuries.
Arthur Langdon records three Cornish crosses at Bodmin; one was near the Berry Tower, one was outside Bodmin Gaol and another was in a field near Castle Street Hill. There is also Carminow Cross at a road junction southeast of the town.
The Black Death killed half of Bodmin's population in the mid 14th century.
Rebellions
Bodmin was the centre of three Cornish uprisings. The first was the Cornish Rebellion of 1497 when a Cornish army, led by Michael An Gof, a blacksmith from St. Keverne and Thomas Flamank, a lawyer from Bodmin, marched to Blackheath in London where they were eventually defeated by 10,000 men of the King's army under Baron Daubeny. Then, in the autumn of 1497, Perkin Warbeck tried to usurp the throne from Henry VII. Warbeck was proclaimed King Richard IV in Bodmin but Henry had little difficulty crushing the uprising. In 1549, Cornishmen, allied with other rebels in neighbouring Devon, rose once again in rebellion when the staunchly Protestant Edward VI tried to impose a new Prayer Book. The lower classes of Cornwall and Devon were still strongly attached to the Roman Catholic religion and again a Cornish army was formed in Bodmin which marched across the border into Devon to lay siege to Exeter. This became known as the Prayer Book Rebellion. Proposals to translate the Prayer Book into Cornish were suppressed and in total 4,000 people were killed in the rebellion."Bodmin Town"
The song "Bodmin Town" was collected from the Cornishman William Nichols at Whitchurch, Devon, in 1891 by Sabine Baring-Gould who published a version in his A Garland of Country Song.Governance
There are two tiers of local government covering Bodmin, at parish and unitary authority level: Bodmin Town Council and Cornwall Council. The town council is based at the Shire House on Mount Folly, which had been built around 1840 as lodgings for visiting judges hearing cases at the Shire Hall on the opposite side of the road.Bodmin Town Council is made up of sixteen councillors who are elected to serve a term of four years. Each year, the council elects one of its number as mayor to serve as the town's civic leader and to chair council meetings.
The town is part of the North Cornwall parliamentary constituency, which is represented by Ben Maguire MP.
Administrative history
Bodmin was an ancient parish. As well as the town itself, the parish also covered surrounding rural areas, particularly to the west and north of the town. Bodmin was also an ancient borough, being described as a borough from at least the 12th century. It was a seigneurial borough controlled by St Petroc's Priory until the priory was dissolved in 1539. A new municipal charter was issued by Elizabeth I in 1563 incorporating the borough, granting it certain rights of self-government.The borough only covered the central part of the parish around the town itself. From the 17th century onwards, parishes were gradually given various civil functions under the poor laws, in addition to their original ecclesiastical functions. In some cases, including Bodmin, the civil functions were exercised by subdivisions of the parish rather than the parish as a whole. In Bodmin, poor law functions were administered separately for the areas inside and outside the borough boundary. In 1866, the legal definition of 'parish' was changed to be the areas used for administering the poor laws, and so the old parish was split into two civil parishes: 'Bodmin Borough' matching the borough, and 'Bodmin' covering the rural parts of the old parish outside the borough. The Bodmin parish was renamed 'Bodmin Rural' in 1934, and was abolished in 1939, when it was split between the neighbouring parishes of Helland to the north and Lanivet to the west.
In 1836, the borough was reformed to become a municipal borough under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, which standardised how most boroughs operated across the country. The borough council met at Bodmin Guildhall on Fore Street, parts of which date back to the 17th century.
The borough was abolished in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972, with district-level functions passing to the new North Cornwall District Council. A successor parish called Bodmin was created at the same time covering the area of the abolished borough, with its parish council taking the name Bodmin Town Council. North Cornwall was in turn abolished in 2009. Cornwall County Council then took on district-level functions, making it a unitary authority, and was renamed Cornwall Council.
Bodmin Borough Police
As part of being made a municipal borough in 1836, Bodmin was given its own police force, replacing the old system of parish constables. Bodmin Borough Police existed from 1836 to 1866. The creation of the Cornwall Constabulary in 1857 put pressure on smaller municipal police forces to merge with the county force. The two-man force of Bodmin came under threat almost immediately, but it would take until 1866 for terms of amalgamation to be agreed. After a public enquiry, the borough force was disbanded in January 1866 and policing of the borough was transferred to the county force.County town
The primary function of counties until the 19th century was the administration of justice. Cornwall's senior courts, the assizes, were generally held at Launceston until 1838. A new courthouse, Shire Hall, opened in Bodmin in 1838 for hosting the assizes and other courts. Bodmin was thereafter described as the county town rather than Launceston.When county councils were established in 1889, Cornwall County Council chose to base itself in Truro rather than Bodmin. Truro therefore became the seat of local government for the county, but the county's assizes continued to be held at Shire Hall in Bodmin until assizes were abolished in 1972. Shire Hall continued to serve as a courthouse until 1988, when a new courthouse opened in Truro. Shire Hall was subsequently bought by the town council in 1994 and now serves as a visitor centre.