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St Columb Major

St Columb Major
Arms of St Columb Major.jpg
The crest of St. Columb with town motto
St Columb Major is located in Cornwall
St Columb Major
St Columb Major
St Columb Major shown within Cornwall
Population 4,587 (2011 Census)
OS grid reference SW912633
Civil parish
  • St Columb
Unitary authority
Ceremonial county
Region
Country England
Sovereign state United Kingdom
Post town ST. COLUMB
Postcode district TR9
Dialling code 01637
Police Devon and Cornwall
Fire Cornwall
Ambulance South Western
EU Parliament South West England
UK Parliament
  • St Austell and Newquay
List of places
UK
England
CornwallCoordinates: 50°25′55″N 4°56′24″W / 50.432°N 4.940°W / 50.432; -4.940

St Columb Major (Cornish: S. Colom Veur) is a civil parish and town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. Often referred to locally as St Columb, it is situated approximately seven miles (11 km) southwest of Wadebridge and six miles (10 km) east of Newquay The designation Major distinguishes it from the nearby settlement and parish of St Columb Minor on the coast. An electoral ward simply named St Columb exists with a population at the 2011 census of 5,050.

Twice a year the town plays host to "hurling", a medieval game once common throughout Cornwall but now only played in St Columb and St Ives. It is played on Shrove Tuesday and then again on the Saturday eleven days later. The game involves two teams of several hundred people (the 'townsmen' and the 'countrymen') who endeavour to carry a silver ball made of apple wood to goals set two miles (3 km) apart, making the parish, around 25 square miles in area, the de facto largest sports ground in the world.

Monuments that date from this period include: Castle an Dinas, an Iron Age hillfort.; the Nine Maidens stone row, the largest row of standing stones in Cornwall; the Devil's Quoit (sometimes recorded as King Arthur's Quoit) in the hamlet of Quoit; and King Arthur's Stone (this long lost stone is said to be not far from the Devil's Quoit near St. Columb, on the edge of the Goss moor). It was a large stone with four deeply impressed horseshoe marks. Legend has it that the marks were made by the horse upon which Arthur rode when he resided at Castle An Dinas and hunted on the moors.


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