Carpalla is a

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

that lies in the china clay mining area of central

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...

, near

St Austell St Austell (; kw, Sans Austel) is a town in Cornwall, England, south of Bodmin and west of the border with Devon. St Austell is one of the largest towns in Cornwall; at the 2011 census it had a population of 19,958. History St Austell wa ...

, in

South West England South West England, or the South West of England, is one of nine official regions of England. It consists of the counties of Bristol, Cornwall (including the Isles of Scilly), Dorset, Devon, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire. Cities and ...

. It is home to a disused china clay mine.

Geography

The hamlet lies to the west of

, immediately to the south (and adjacent to)

Foxhole Foxhole may refer to: * Foxhole, a type of defensive fighting position constructed in a military context * Foxholes, Hertford, an eastern suburb of Hertford * Foxholes, North Yorkshire, a village and civil parish in Northern England * Foxhole, C ...

and a short distance to the north of the village of High Street. It is in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

of St Stephen-in-Brannel. The area consisted primarily of a few disparate farms until around 1900 when flurry of house-building saw Carpalla and neighbouring Foxhole take shape, mainly taking the form of a linear settlement with very few amenities.

Industry

Carpalla's largest and most dominant feature is a disused china clay mine, around which the hamlet and the neighbouring village of

developed. Up until the mid-19th century farming had been the main industry in the area, the

1841 United Kingdom census The United Kingdom Census of 1841 recorded the occupants of every United Kingdom household on the night of Sunday 6 June 1841. The enactment of the Population Act 1840 meant a new procedure was adopted for taking the 1841 census. It was described a ...

showed that the vast majority of residents were engaged in agricultural work, however by the time the

1851 census The United Kingdom Census of 1851 recorded the people residing in every household on the night of Sunday 30 March 1851, and was the second of the UK censuses to include details of household members. However, this census added considerably to the f ...

was carried out the clay industry had slightly overtaken farming as the biggest employer. Carpalla engine house - geograph

There was also a long history of tin mining in the area, but this had come to an end by the 1850s. Towards the end of the 19th century many of the local smallholdings had merged to form larger farms, with the result that even fewer of the local households were engaged in agricultural work and clay mining had now become the dominant form of employment in the area. The area was one of the first areas of Cownwall to be exploited for its China clay deposits, but all mining activities came to an end in 2008. The mine itself is now flooded but the engine house, unusually with its roof still intact, is still standing. The Harvey & Co. 40-inch pumping engine that it housed dated from 1863, but was only used on this site between 1913 until 1944, having been moved here from St Agnes shortly before the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. The

Science Museum A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in mu ...

purchased the engine in 1952, removed it from the site, and put it into storage where as of 2020 it still remains.

References

{{Cornwall, state=collapsed Hamlets in Cornwall