Gilbert Hunter Doble, however, favoured an identification with one of the male Welsh missionaries, Gudwall or Gurwall who are honoured in Brittany, eponym of Locoal-Mendon.

During the Iron Age there was a lot of activity in the area, and a few miles from Gulval, beyond the hamlet of Badgers Cross, are the remains of the Chysauster settlement.

The site shows the remnants of nine courtyard houses, of a type only found on the Land's End peninsula and Isles of Scilly, and was inhabited from the first century BC for the following four hundred years.

The first is a memorial for "Quenatucus, son of Dinvus", and has been dated as carved sometime between fifth and eighth centuries; it stands near one end of a footbridge in Balowena Bottom.

[8] The second is a cross-shaft lacking base or cross-head with a now illegible inscription; it was found in a wall of the church in 1885, and now stands in the churchyard.

A Latinised version of this, Landicle, is mentioned in the Domesday Book: There is a war memorial located in Gulval Church's cemetery, with 18 soldiers from WWI and 10 from WWII.

Most notable of these are the tower, built in 1440 and containing eight bells, and a large stone lych-gate that was added in 1897 to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

[13] The wooden roof of the north gateway was presented by the architect Piers St Aubyn of Devonport in July, 1885.

[19] Within the bounds of the parish lies the disused Ding Dong mine, reputedly one of the oldest in Cornwall.

Popular local legend claims that Joseph of Arimathea, a tin trader, visited the mine and brought a young Jesus to address the miners, although there is no evidence to support this.

The Old Inn – a pub in Gulval Churchtown – was given to the Coldstream Guards Association in memory of Capt Michael Lempriere Bolitho and renamed "The Coldstreamer" (Capt Bolitho was killed on HMS Walney, a Royal Navy ship; her task was to crash through the boom at the entrance to Oran Harbour in Operation Torch on 8 November 1942).