Penryn (Cornwall) OPC site

Penryn Warmingtons'

 

The Penryn Warmingtons’ are an offshoot of the Warmingtons’ from St Columb Minor. Other researchers, such as the late Rodney Warmington, have carried out very extensive research where this branch of the family is concerned.

 

    The first reference to a Warmington being in Penryn was the marriage of Richard Warmington to Dinah Hicks at St Gluvias Parish Church on the 4th July 1807. Richard was the third born child of Richard Warmington, yeoman, and Mary Brewer of St Columb Major. They were married in 1784. Richard was born in 1787. An older brother born a couple of years previously had been given the same forename, but had died in infancy.

 

    An indenture for Richard Warmington (see separate page), innkeeper of Penryn, drawn up on the 5th of July 1809, establishes the link between Richard and the St Columb Warmingtons. Which Inn he was ‘keeper’ of remains a mystery as his occupation was always given as a ‘labourer’, such as on his death certificate in 1846!

 

    Richard and Dinah (or Diana) had seven children: Jonathan Hicks (1808-1869) who worked on the docks; William (b.1810), presumably died in infancy; Richard (1814-1884), a green-grocer who married Sarah Grimaldi, assumed to be a distant relative to Joey the Clown; Robert (1816-78), my GGGrandfather; Maria (b.1819) who married Edward Williams; Charles (b.1823), who settled at Budock and Elizabeth (1827-1844), who died young.

 

Amongst Jonathan’s descendants was his grandson, John James Warmington, who for several years before his death in 1911 owned a tobacconist shop on Fore Street, St Austell. In February 1840, Robert married Grace Dunstan at St Gluvias Parish Church. They had six children, the second of which was John Edward Warmington, who although was a stonemason by trade, went into the retail business, opening a grcoer’s shop on West Street. Edward was also the leading lay leader of the Bible Christian Chapel, also in West Street before his death in 1899.

 

    He married Elizabeth King-Nicholls in 1865 and together they had twelve children, ten of whom survived childhood. Most of the sons were involved in the granite industry as stonemasons, and emigrated to the States [principally the Quincy area of Massachusetts] finding employment in the granite quarrying industry on the other side of ‘the pond’. Their seventh child, Ernest, (my grandfather) remained in Penryn being employed at the local quarries until his untimely death as a result of an industrial accident in 1934. He and his wife Minnie (Mary Louise Francis; married at the Bible Christian Chapel just a month before Edward’s death in 1899) had four children: Edward (Ernie’s father); Elsie (who married farmer Kerslake of Pencoose Farm); William (who died in infancy) and Verdun (my father), who was born in 1916 just after the Battle of Verdun.

 

    Although Ernie Warmington is a frequent visitor to Penryn, and my first cousin, Tony Kerslake, still lives within the town boundary; as far as I am aware there are now no Penryn Warmingtons (with Warmington as their surname) who still live in the Borough. 

 

(see family tree on a separate page)

 

 

These Warmington pages are dedicated to the memory of:

   ELIZABETH ELSIE KERSLAKE (nee WARMINGTON) 1911-1988

     farmer, housewife, "WHOT" player and confidante.

 

"Every little boy growing up needs a Granny/Auntie Elsie"

 

                ...and her three brothers:

 

        Cecil Verdun Francis (1916-1968),

            John Edward (1900-1971)

        and her baby brother who died when just a month old: William Charles (1913)