Ecclesiastical parishes in Cornwall sometimes have a parish church situated in a churchtown or church town. Originally the churchtown may have been no more than a farm, or an inn alongside the parish church. The ecclesiastical parishAncient or ancient ecclesiastical parishes encompassed groups of villages and hamlets and their adjacent lands, over which a clergyman had jurisdiction. was named after the churchtown, and could cover several thousand acres, encompassing several other scattered villages and hamletsRural settlement smaller than a village.. Some churchtowns grew into villages or market towns, but sometimes the main settlement grew some distance away, leaving the church isolated in the small churchtown.[1]
Examples of settlements with churchtowns include PerranarworthalMostly rural parish in West Cornwall. and GwennapHamlet and civil parish in West Cornwall..