A person who may have been an ancestor of mine is recorded as having been
"
found drowned at Water Gate in returning from Truro" in Jan 1798.
http://www.cornwall-opc-database.org/search-database/more-info/?t=burials&id=960399- edit - So I shouldn't say "Water Gate, Lamorran" -- it was somewhere between Truro and Lamorran, presumably.
Whatever /wherever Water Gate was, it doesn't seem to exist now. I found this reference to it:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=021-qs_6&cid=1-2-17#1-2-17Sessions held at Bodmin QS/1/12/453-473 6th January 1835
"Application concerning order made at special sessions held in Town Hall, Truro on 4 Dec. last for a highway in St. Michael Penkivel, 1,245 yds. long, from a point near the church to
a point near Water Gate in Lamorran, to be diverted through land of Rt. Hon. Edward, Earl of Falmouth. [Description of diversion]: order enrolled. QS/1/12/462"
On the map, St Michael Penkivel seems to be about a mile west of Lamorran (1,245 yards seems about right), and east of Kea. Lamorran doesn't really seem to be an actual place, i.e. with streets and houses, just a point on the map.
Other than that, and a web page belonging to someone who seems to descend from the drowned person's husband and his second wife, which refers to the drowning, nada on the net.
In censuses, Water Gate is given as an address in Kea.
Presumably she was travelling by foot from Truro to Lamorran, about 5 miles from what I can tell, but it would seem to have been well out of the way to go via Kea. She would have had to cross some sort of waterway to get to Truro, but I would have thought it would be done northwest of St Michael Penkivel, like around where Queenie Wood is marked on the modern map, as the crow flies -- but I have no idea what kind of waterway these are and how one crossed them.
On Google maps / street view for Lamorran, I found the Keeper's Cottage (aka Manor Cottage, depending on magnification level) at the bend in the very pretty leafy road, and very near it a church (St Moran's Church?). Google always seems to show me dry sandy stream beds where I assume there once was or sometimes is water, which is the case for the location of the Keeper's Cottage now. Does "Keeper" indicate there was a lock? or was it a gamekeeper ... Aha, the 1841 census has a Jeremiah Wright, game keeper, at Tregenna, Lamorran, so likely that.
Would anyone know what or where Water Gate might have been, that someone would have drowned there?
(The verdict was accidental death, but given what her husband seems to have been like, from two bastardy bonds immediately before their marriage probably referring to him and the possibly related fact that his second wife had a child just over a year after the drowning, some 4 years before he married her ... I would wonder about suicide.)
