Roche

Roche is a civil parish and village in mid-Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The village gets its name from a granite outcrop east of the village. Roche is the Norman-French word for Rock. On the southern flank of the village is the 20m high Roche Rock, a large granite outcrop. The parish population at the 2011 census including Belowda, Bilberry, Carbis, Coldvreath and Criggan is 3,381, and the ward population at the same census was 3,867.Nearby are the towns of Bodmin and St Austell, as well as the Eden Project. The civil servant Charles Knight was born in Roche and Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament Matthew Taylor retired there.Roche RockRoche Rock stands out as a rocky outcrop some 20m high on the northern flank of the St Austell granite with an approximate area of 600m x 300m.) The rock is of interest to geologists as it is a fine example of quartz shorl; a fully tourmalinised granite, with black tourmaline crystals. The Rock itself lies approximately 500m north of the northern margin of the St Austell granite, which is the smallest of the five main apophyses of the Hercynian batholith of Southwest England. The presence of numerous pegmatites occurring as sheets and containing abundant miarolitic cavities carrying quartz, tourmaline, zinnwaldite, topaz. and a wide range of other phases, is why it is considered to have been close to the roof of the intrusion The site is considered to be of prime importance for future research and notification by English Nature as a geological SSSI occurred in 1991.