BOSSINEY, a village in Tintagel parish, Cornwall, in a bleak tract, 4½ miles NNW of Camelford. Pop., 87. It was once a market-town; and it sent two members to parliament from the time of Henry III. till disfranchised by the act of 1832. It consists of mean cottages; and stands round a large barrow, on which the writ of election used to be read. Sir Francis Drake, Sir Francis Cottington, and other distinguished men represented it in parliament. A singular cove, small, and murky, called Bossiney Hole, is under the cliffs on the adjacent coast.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))