Perranarworthal

Perranarworthal is a village and civil parish in central Cornwall, roughly 4 miles north-west of Falmouth and 5 miles south-west of Truro. The Cornish name - Peran ar Wodhel - links the parish to the Celtic saint Piran. The parish also includes the settlements of Perranwell and Perranwell Station, and had a population of around 1,500 at the last census.

The village has a significant industrial past. In 1791 the Perran Iron Foundry was established here by the Fox family of Falmouth and other Quaker business families. The foundry became an innovative engineering works, supplying equipment to Cornwall’s mining industry. When the mining slump hit in the 1870s, the foundry closed in March 1879 with the loss of 400 jobs, causing severe hardship across the parish. Traces of the foundry site remain along Restronguet Creek.

Perranarworthal was also home to the Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, who lived in the parish until his death in 1993. Today the village is a residential community with good transport links - Perranwell Station sits on the branch line between Truro and Falmouth, and the A39 passes through the parish. Falmouth’s beaches and harbour are within easy reach, as are the wooded creeks of the Carrick Roads estuary. The Bissoe Trail, a traffic-free cycling and walking path built on an old railway line, passes nearby and connects the coast-to-coast trail between Devoran and Portreath.