St Euny

Nearby copper and tin mines provided vast employment. In 1865 Wheal Uny mine employed 350, Carn Brea 900, West Basset 550, Wheal Basset 365, and there were many more mines and works that supported the industry. In 2006 select mining landscapes, including St Euny, were made a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

St Euny churchyard has been in continuous use since the first church was built, perhaps for 1400 years, but most of the grave markers are from the 19th and 20th centuries. St Euny’s memorials and gravestones reveal how mining changed the fortunes of Redruth people.

Memorials in the church and churchyard also reveal how mining took Cornish people all over the world. Graves refer to North and South America, South Africa, Australia, and regions of Britain and Ireland.

With the sudden growth in mining there was over crowding and mine workers often worked in dangerous conditions.

The stone coffin rest in St Euny’s lych gate is unusually long to accommodate two or even three coffins at a time after a mine accident or during a cholera epidemic. Redruth doctors became world leaders in treating mine injuries at a time when medicine and surgery were beginning a transformation into more scientific professions.

William Pryce was a Redruth surgeon who lived from 1735 to 1790, buried at St Euny. Pryce was famous for a gruesome but effective way of treating compressed fractures of the skull. Trepanning or trephination involves drilling a hole in the skull to relieve pressure after an injury or in certain diseases. William Pryce would operate after an injury, and without any anaesthetic, on miners who would otherwise have died slow lingering deaths. Redruth surgeons had a remarkable success rate.