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 hamlets. 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..