Lanivet: from farming to the office

Lanivet is a parish strategically placed in the heart of Cornwall just west of Bodmin. In 1861 mining, mostly for tin but sometimes for iron, occupied some of the men, as did tin streaming. But the 37 men (just over 10 per cent of the parish’s workforce) engaged in mining were well outnumbered by the … Continue reading Lanivet: from farming to the office →

Lanhydrock: a closed parish

Lanhydrock, along with Boconnoc, St Michael Penkevil and a handful of others, was one of Cornwall’s select number of closed parishes. Closed parishes were more common in parts of southern England, places where a single landowner owned all of the land and dominated local society. Or at least, that’s the theory. Account of the fire … Continue reading Lanhydrock: a closed parish →

Laneast: escaping a life of farm labouring

John Couch Adams Laneast is one of those small agricultural parishes to the west of Launceston. However, even small parishes could often take pride in some claim to fame. Laneast was the birthplace of John Couch Adams (1819-1892), a Cambridge professor who predicted the existence of the planet Neptune. Most residents of the parish in … Continue reading Laneast: escaping a life of farm labouring →

Landulph: hired assassins and (more) Victorian coppers

Cornwall’s connections with the eastern Mediterranean via Tintagel in the fifth and sixth centuries are familiar. Less well-known is that Landulph, now a sleepy backwater beside the River Tamar, also had a somewhat unexpected association with Byzantium. In the church is an inscription recording the burial of Theodore Palaeologus in 1636. Palaeologus claimed that he … Continue reading Landulph: hired assassins and (more) Victorian coppers →

Landrake: contrasting personal geographies

Landrake is a parish in south-east Cornwall straddling the main road from Saltash to Liskeard. Now part of Plymouth’s commuter belt, in the nineteenth century it was predominantly farming country. Nonetheless, the village housed the usual quota of shopkeepers and craftsmen. The life courses of two children from non-farming backgrounds provide a contrasting tale of … Continue reading Landrake: contrasting personal geographies →

Landewednack: one life and three teenage deaths

The good news is that the missing Victorian Lives database cases have now been re-researched and restored and we can return to the 12 missing parishes. (For anyone who has no clue what I’m on about see here.) The bad news is that I now have to think of more ways to inject an element … Continue reading Landewednack: one life and three teenage deaths →

Mabe: the granite parish

They used to say that Cornish people had a core of granite. Amenable on the surface, they could be as hard as that rock, resistant and stubborn, standing their ground when pushed too far. If Cornishness entails the possession of a heart of granite, then Mabe could be said to be the quintessentially Cornish parish. … Continue reading Mabe: the granite parish →

Luxulyan: the death of a way of life

Streaming from an illustration of 1556 In the mid-Victorian era the parish of Luxulyan contained one of the two districts (the other being Carnmenellis in the west) where a considerable number of men were given the older occupational term  ‘tinner’ rather than miner, 'tinner' being an alternative term for a tin streamer. Moreover, tinners in … Continue reading Luxulyan: the death of a way of life →

A life of service: ageing servants from Ludgvan

Domestic service, as we have seen, was an occupation with a young age profile. The vast majority of such servants were young women and most spent only a few years in service before exchanging the authority of their employer for that of their husband. It was a similar story for surface workers at the mine, … Continue reading A life of service: ageing servants from Ludgvan →

Ludgvan: globetrotters and stay at homes

Luidgvan, one of Cornwall’s larger parishes, situated to the east of Penzance, survived the difficult times following the late 1860s rather better than many other rural parishes. This was despite the fact that over half of the men in the parish worked as miners in the 1850s. Its population declined by a third between the … Continue reading Ludgvan: globetrotters and stay at homes →