Railway through the China Clay Works - geograph

Nanpean (from kw, Nanspian, meaning "little valley") is a village 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 ...

St Stephen-in-Brannel St Stephen-in-Brannel (known locally as ''St Stephen's'' or ''St Stephen'') ( kw, Eglosstefan yn Branel) is a civil parish and village in mid Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. St Stephen village is four miles (6.5 km) west of St Austell ...

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 ...

, United Kingdom.
GENUKI website; St Stephen-in-Brannel; retrieved April 2010 The B roads in Zone 3 of the Great Britain numbering scheme, B3279 road runs through the village which is approximately north-west of

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 the heart of 'clay country', the

china clay Kaolinite ( ) is a clay mineral, with the chemical composition Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4. It is an important industrial mineral. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedral sheet of silica () linked through oxygen atoms to one octahedral ...

mining area of mid-Cornwall. There are plans to build 150–300 homes as part of the St Austell and Clay Country Eco-town. The plan was given outline approval in July 2009.

History

Nanpean church was built in 1879 dedicated to St George the Martyr. The building has an

apsidal In architecture, an apse (plural apses; from Latin 'arch, vault' from Ancient Greek 'arch'; sometimes written apsis, plural apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an ''exedra''. In ...

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ove ...

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

and south aisle, and a small bell turret. Nanpean also had a Wesleyan Methodist chapel. The village has a school, Nanpean Community Primary School The original village school was built in 1898. It was refurbished and extended in 2002 and a further extension was added in 2004. In the 1930s, Nanpean had a range of businesses, including a cobbler's shop, which also served as a place for local men to discuss important issues of the day. There is a much smaller range of businesses based in Nanpean today. Nanpean is believed to be the origin of the name of the

Nepean River Nepean River (Darug: Yandhai), is a major perennial river, located in the south-west and west of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The Nepean River and its associated mouth, the Hawkesbury River, almost encircles the metropolitan region of ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, via the colonial administrator

Evan Nepean Sir Evan Nepean, 1st Baronet, PC FRS (9 July 1752 – 2 October 1822)Sparrow (n.d.) was a British politician and colonial administrator. He was the first of the Nepean Baronets. Family Nepean was born at St. Stephens near Saltash, Cornwall, ...

China clay

Nanpean was one of the most important centres in the clay country for administration, management, processing, research, transport and supply, and the village reflects that economic function. It was a centre supplying the social, religious, Education, educational and commercial needs of an area remote from older settlement centres.

Imerys Imerys S.A. is a French multinational company which specialises in the production and processing of industrial minerals. It is headquartered in Paris and is a constituent of the CAC Mid 60 index. Imerys has operations in over 40 countries and ...

is a very prominent company in district and it owns most of the china clay pits. It also has a

refinery A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value. Types of refineries Different types of refineries ...

(known as Goverseth) on the outskirts of the village and has its mineral selling facilities in Nanpean.

Transport

The

Newquay and Cornwall Junction Railway The Newquay and Cornwall Junction Railway was a broad gauge railway intended to link the Cornwall Railway with the horse-worked Newquay Railway. It opened a short section to Nanpean in 1869, the remainder being built by the Cornwall Minerals ...

(a branch from the

Cornish Main Line The Cornish Main Line ( kw, Penn-hyns-horn Kernow) is a railway line in Cornwall and Devon in the United Kingdom. It runs from Penzance to Plymouth, crossing from Cornwall into Devon over the famous Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash. It directly ...

at ) opened as far as Nanpean in 1869 and was extended in 1874 to connect with the Par to Newquay branch at St Dennis Junction. The railway only carried goods traffic so there was never a passenger station at Nanpean; the southern section remains open for china clay trains.

Sport

Nanpean Rovers is an

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

team formed in 1901. Since 1936 it has played in a

reclaimed Land reclamation, usually known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new Terrestrial ecoregion, land from oceans, list of seas, seas, Stream bed, riverbeds or lak ...

china clay pit now known as the Victoria Bottoms Playing Field. The club played in the East Cornwall Premier League from 1973 through to 2017 and were champions in 1994–95 and 1996–97 seasons. The team finished in the bottom two for their final nine seasons in the league and withdrew at the beginning of the 2017–18 season. Nanpean also reached the final of the

Cornwall Senior Cup The Cornwall County Football Association Senior Cup, commonly known as the Cornwall Senior Cup, is a knockout cup competition in English football for clubs based in Cornwall, run by and named after the Cornwall County Football Association. It i ...

in 1960 and 1997 losing to St Blazey and

Falmouth Town Falmouth Town Association Football Club is a football club based in Falmouth, Cornwall, United Kingdom. They are currently members of the and play at Bickland Park. The club were the first Cornish team to reach the first round proper of the F ...

respectively.

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Cornwall