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Advent, Cornwall

Bodmin MoorCivil parishes in CornwallUse British English from June 2025
Advent Church by Chris Heaton
Advent Church by Chris Heaton

Advent (Cornish: Sen Adhwynn) is a civil parish on the north-western edge of Bodmin Moor in north Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The English name St Adwenna derives from the Cornish Adhwynn and lies in the Registration District of Camelford. Advent is a sparsely populated rural parish. Much of the area is moorland and at the 2001 census the population was just 153. This increased to 189 at the 2011 census. It includes the hamlets of Tresinney, Pencarrow, Highertown and Watergate but there is no village called Advent. The parish also encompasses several small farmstead hamlets, numerous scattered farms and Pencarrow House. (Note, the Pencarrow House that is a minor stately home and open to the public, is not in the hamlet of Pencarrow in Advent Parish, it is some miles away near Bodmin.) Tresinney hamlet lies above the River Camel, 1 mile (1.6 km) south from Camelford, and Advent parish church is north of the hamlet. Three recreational footpaths – the Watermill Walk, Camelford Way and the Moorland Walk – run through Tresinney. In a field on the west side of the parish church stands a tall and elegant Cornish cross. The parish is bordered to the north and the east by Davidstow parish; to the south by St Breward parish; and to the north-west by the River Camel and Camelford parish.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Advent, Cornwall (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Advent, Cornwall
B3266,

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Wikipedia: Advent, CornwallContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 50.603 ° E -4.679 °
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B3266
PL30 3PF , Advent
England, United Kingdom
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Advent Church by Chris Heaton
Advent Church by Chris Heaton
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Camelford water pollution incident

The Camelford water pollution incident involved the accidental contamination of the drinking water supply to the town of Camelford, Cornwall, in July 1988. Twenty tonnes of aluminium sulphate was inadvertently added to the water supply, raising the concentration to 3,000 times the admissible level. As the aluminium sulphate broke down it produced several tonnes of sulphuric acid which "stripped a cocktail of chemicals from the pipe networks as well as lead and copper piping in people's homes." Many people who came into contact with the contaminated water experienced a range of short-term health effects, and many victims suffered long-term effects whose implications remained unclear as of 2012. There has been no rigorous examination or monitoring of the health of the victims since the incident, which is Britain's worst mass poisoning event. Inquests on people who died many years later found very high levels of aluminium in the brain. Dame Barbara Clayton led a Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution enquiry into the incident.Immediately after the contamination the authorities said that the water was safe to drink, possibly with juice to cover the unpleasant taste. In an inquest in 2012 into the death of one of the victims, the coroner stated that South West Water Authority had been "gambling with as many as 20,000 lives" when they failed to inform the public about the poisoning for 16 days, a delay he called unacceptable. In the aftermath of the contamination the public were reassured that there was no risk to health. There were allegations of a cover-up and West Somerset Coroner Michael Rose stated: "I found there was a deliberate policy to not advise the public of the true nature until some 16 days after the occurrence of the incident." Following an investigation by the government's Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment, Michael Meacher, the former Environment Minister, claimed that "various associated bodies tried to bury the inquiry from the start." Meacher told one newspaper: "This has become a tug of war between the truth and an attempt to silence the truth."An April 2013 report by the Lowermoor subgroup of the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment concluded that exposure to the chemicals was unlikely to cause "delayed or persistent harm" and was also unlikely to cause future ill health. In September 2013 the government admitted that there had been a "manifest failure to give prompt appropriate advice and information to affected consumers" and offered an unreserved apology.