Zelah

Zelah is a small village on the A30 between Truro and Newquay, and the largest settlement in the civil parish of St Allen. It developed as a crossroads settlement where the road to Perranporth branches off the main route, following an old ridgeway that ran from Carland Cross to Chiverton and is lined with Bronze Age barrows. The Hawkins Arms pub serves as the focal point of the village.

That pub, a former coaching inn, is the village’s only remaining local - an 1883 trade directory lists a second inn, the Half Moon, standing nearby, though it has long since closed. The A30 itself was diverted in 1992, when a bypass south of the village took the trunk road off what had been its High Road, leaving Zelah’s older lanes quieter than the traffic on the modern dual carriageway suggests.

The village’s position on the A30 makes it convenient for reaching both the north coast (Perranporth is about 5 miles north-west) and Truro (about 6 miles south-east). Newquay and its beaches are about 10 miles north-east. St Allen parish covers about 3,506 acres and recorded a population of 495 at the 2011 census; the land around Zelah is largely agricultural, with open views across rolling farmland.