Have patience. Just one to go. The penultimate in my series of very short summaries of academic work on Cornwall linked to somewhat longer reviews. Mike Tripp recounts the nineteenth century rise and fall of Cornish wrestling, brought down mainly by emigration, depopulation and the practice of 'faggoting', or match-fixing. Ella Westland argues that in … Continue reading Wrestling, life-struggle Cornwall and Daphne du Maurier
Category: art and literature
The steam engine, more on Gothic Cornwall and the Cornish dialect
The fourth in my series of one sentence (sometimes two) summaries of recent academic work on Cornwall ... Mary O'Sullivan follows the money and tells us why the miners who were demonstrating in 1787 had a better grasp of economics than some mines adventurers of the time. Joan Passey is attracted by the 'Cornish Gothic' … Continue reading The steam engine, more on Gothic Cornwall and the Cornish dialect
Gothic Cornwall, daffodil pickers and mining heritage
Impress your friends with your wide knowledge of recent academic work on Cornwall ... Tanya Krzywinska and Ruth Heholt claim that Cornwall has inspired Gothic novelists and explain the composition of 'Gothic Cornwall', simultaneously exciting and disturbing, attractive yet terrifying. Constantine Manolchev presents the narrative of a daffodil picker from Bulgaria working on a Cornish … Continue reading Gothic Cornwall, daffodil pickers and mining heritage
St Stephen in Brannel: a million-selling author
In earlier times, inland parishes such as St Stephen in Brannel in mid-Cornwall were places where the fiercely independent tinner-farmers of Cornwall flourished. This class had energetically enclosed the downs, carved out their smallholdings and built their cottages. However, from the early nineteenth century their way of life was being progressively undermined by the expansion … Continue reading St Stephen in Brannel: a million-selling author
Miner’s cottage, manor house and famous neighbours
As the examples in the previous blog showed, some of the children in our Victorian Lives database did not move far beyond the confines of the district in which they grew up. Others, for a variety of reasons, broke away and by the time they were 40 their childhood landscapes were just fond memories (or … Continue reading Miner’s cottage, manor house and famous neighbours
More views of Cornwall 100 years ago
Here's the second and final installment of the etchings of west Cornwall drawn by Donald Shaw MacLaughlan in 1919. The first is the most difficult to pin down. Those look like engine houses on the distant horizon. Or is it the monument on Carn Brea? Cornish road The next etching was made near Gwinear. Gwinear … Continue reading More views of Cornwall 100 years ago
Views of Cornwall in 1919
Donald Shaw MacLaughlan (1876-1938) was an American artist (although born in Prince Edward Island, Canada). As a young man he followed the trail of many other artists from North America and travelled to Europe, basing himself thereafter mainly in France but travelling widely. Among his journeys he visited Cornwall, where he spent some time around … Continue reading Views of Cornwall in 1919
St Neot church windows
In the last years of the Catholic church’s primacy in England there was a boom in church building and restoration. Cornwall too had its share of church re-building beginning in the 1400s. Bodmin, the largest church, was rebuilt between 1469 and 1491. St Mary Magdalene at Launceston is another major example, rebuilt between 1511 and … Continue reading St Neot church windows
Who was the real John Tregeagle?
On a particularly stormy night, when the wind howls down the chimney and the rain crashes against the windows, you might hear the spirit of John Tregeagle, wailing and raging as he roams the moors and cliffs or tries to complete various hopeless tasks. Folk tales about Tregeagle agree that he was summoned from the … Continue reading Who was the real John Tregeagle?
Peter Lanyon’s insider modernism
The St Ives school of modern art was dominated numerically by temporary residents. However, one of its central and most talented figures was locally born Peter Lanyon (1918-64). According to Andrew Causey’s biography of Lanyon, his method was ‘one of sublimation, where the figure disappears into landscape’. For Lanyon, the landscape was not the object … Continue reading Peter Lanyon’s insider modernism
Cornish studies resources 