After a run of coastal parishes, we’re back in mining country. Germoe is a small parish in terms of area, almost entirely surrounded by its big brother Breage and consequently often ignored. However, the struggle of Germoe folk after the 1860s is indicative of the adaptations that Cornish people had to undertake when mining began … Continue reading Germoe: coping with crisis
Category: mining
‘Away in America’
In the early nineteenth century Crowan was a booming mining parish. Its population rose from just under 2,600 in 1801 to peak at over 4,600 in the mid-1840s. Well over half of the households with a male head were working in or on the mines in 1851. While the slumps of the later 1860s and … Continue reading ‘Away in America’
A lonely life on the mining frontier
Peter Carlyon was born in Liskeard, the son of John and Mary Carlyon of Breage. John and Mary had left Breage between 1846 and 1848, looking to escape the slump in the western tin mining parishes in the later 1840s. They arrived at the booming mining district of east Cornwall, finding accommodation in the crowded … Continue reading A lonely life on the mining frontier
Camborne’s overseas connections
At least one child in six in Camborne on our database spent some time overseas. This is likely to be an under-estimate. In nineteenth century Cornish mining parishes, at least a quarter of men, possibly as many as a third, would have spent some time overseas. For women that proportion might be around 15 per … Continue reading Camborne’s overseas connections
The rise and fall of Wheal Vor
Breage is the first major mining parish on our list. Although its glory days had passed, 60 per cent of the 54 children in the Victorian Lives database living in the parish in 1861 had been born into mining families. In the 1850s Wheal Vor was the major mine in the parish, employing over 1,000 … Continue reading The rise and fall of Wheal Vor
Fuse works and the perils of powder
The introduction of gunpowder for blasting – the first example supposedly in Gwinear in the 1670s – greatly speeded up the excavation of shafts and levels in the Cornish mines. Powder was used in a series of controlled explosions that advanced the rock face. Or often uncontrolled. The main problem was in providing a fuse … Continue reading Fuse works and the perils of powder
The hollow jarring of the distant steam engines
From page 6 of my The Real World of Poldark: Cornwall 1783-1820 ... On television, we saw Ross Poldark galloping along the cliff tops, crystal clear in the sparkling sunlight. Back in 1795, an anonymous visitor was more concerned with the smoke that enveloped the mining district. Redruth was ‘in a cloud of smoke ... … Continue reading The hollow jarring of the distant steam engines
Cornwall’s granite backbone
Cornwall’s central spine is made up of four granite outcrops, from Bodmin Moor in the east through Hensbarrow and Carnmenellis to West Penwith at the Land’s End. It is said that every Cornish person also has a granite core. Easy-going on the surface, we can be obstinate and unmoveable if pushed too far. Cornishmen combined … Continue reading Cornwall’s granite backbone
‘The dialect of the people grew more provincial’: the east Cornish mining boom of the 1840s
The 1840s was the first decade for over a century in which population growth in Cornwall, fuelled by the growth of mining, abruptly slowed down. In the 1840s mass emigration began from Cornwall to places overseas. But that overseas movement, stimulated by the economic difficulties of the later 1840s, has masked a parallel contemporary migration … Continue reading ‘The dialect of the people grew more provincial’: the east Cornish mining boom of the 1840s
Cornish mining in the 1790s: truly world-beating
We hear a lot these days in the UK about ‘world-beating’ this or that, usually based on precious little evidence. If we want to find historical examples of genuinely world-beating enterprise, then look no further than late eighteenth-century Cornwall. It’s sometimes easy to forget how far one small district in Cornwall dominated eighteenth-century copper mining. … Continue reading Cornish mining in the 1790s: truly world-beating
Cornish studies resources 