Category: farming

St Keyne: farm labouring, shoemaking and gender relations

St Keyne is a small, easily overlooked parish in the south east Cornish countryside. In the 1800s its economy was almost entirely dominated by its farms. Farmers, their sons and farm labourers made up fully 92 per cent of the working male population in 1861. St Keyne Well, made famous by Robert Southey's poem of … Continue reading St Keyne: farm labouring, shoemaking and gender relations →

St Clether: cattle and cottages

Farmers in the parish of St Clether, north of Bodmin Moor, must have struggled at times. Living in an upland area with some of the highest rainfall in Cornwall and dealing with the heavy, acidic clay and loam soils of the district was not the easiest task. However, because the soils of St Clether did … Continue reading St Clether: cattle and cottages →

South Petherwin: fleeing the farm

The farms, hamlets and cottages scattered across the rolling countryside of South Petherwin just south of Launceston hid a growing crisis in the 1870s. Those farmers that had previously thrived on their earnings from growing cereal crops began to see the price of wheat tumble dramatically. Railways and steamships were combining to bring cheap grain … Continue reading South Petherwin: fleeing the farm →

Sancreed: dairy farming and baby farming

The villages and hamlets dotted around the moors and valleys of Sancreed parish in the heart of West Penwith in the mid-1800s housed a population of miners (around half of the labour force), farmers and labourers. In this part of Cornwall, the boundaries between these occupational groups were quite porous. The majority of farmers only … Continue reading Sancreed: dairy farming and baby farming →

Poundstock: the mysterious case of the missing parish

A multitude of apologies to the thousands of readers of this blog from north Cornwall. Somehow this piece on the coastal parish of Poundstock south of Bude went missing. But rest assured; it’s not been lost and here it is only two days late. Domesday Book in 1080 recorded five families who were working land … Continue reading Poundstock: the mysterious case of the missing parish →

Some people of Poughill (that’s Poffill)

Poughill is located in north Cornwall. Nowadays, it’s often overlooked, merely a part of Bude-Stratton civil parish and waiting with trepidation for the inevitable time it will be overwhelmed by the housing sprawl oozing out from the precocious resort town of Bude. But in the 1800s it was a proudly independent ecclesiastical parish of its … Continue reading Some people of Poughill (that’s Poffill) →

Hard times at Advent

The name Advent has nothing to do with the period before Christmas. This north Cornish parish was named after St Adweny. By the 1500s it was known as Adwen or Adven and then Advent. One of Cornwall’s smaller parishes in terms of population, although not extent, Advent was a place of scattered farms and cottages … Continue reading Hard times at Advent →