Just over one in 20 men and women in the Cornwall of the 1860s was recorded in the census as a shopkeeper, merchant or trader of some sort. These ranged from the humble itinerant hawkers peddling their trinkets from parish to parish, through innkeepers, grocers, drapers and other shopkeepers to merchants buying and selling a … Continue reading The butcher and the baker but not the candlestick maker
Tag: Falmouth
Clothing the people: female manufacturers
Whereas 18 per cent of men in the Cornwall of the 1860s worked in manufacturing, this classification encompassing a broad range of activities, around 13 per cent of unmarried women were found in the same sector, but largely concentrated in just one branch – the production of clothing. However, that 13 per cent is probably … Continue reading Clothing the people: female manufacturers
Cornish craftsmen in the 1860s
Nowadays fewer than one in five of the labour force are engaged in actually making things, in the sense of taking some raw materials and turning them into something else. The rest of us, if we are what economists call ‘active’, are instead selling stuff to each other, meeting demand for healthcare, education or hedonism, … Continue reading Cornish craftsmen in the 1860s
Falmouth: port and people
Falmouth was, and is, different, often cited as the atypical Cornish town. More than any other place in Cornwall, Falmouth’s horizons seem to look outwards rather than inwards. It emerged late, a new town of the seventeenth century nestling on the sheltered western side of the Fal estuary and quickly elbowing aside its older medieval … Continue reading Falmouth: port and people
Welcome to Harriet’s house
He stepped ashore on Falmouth’s Town Quay one murky afternoon in January just as the light was beginning to fade. After six months or more at sea the solid ground was a stranger. Learning to walk like a landsman again, he and his mates headed for a drink. The seaport had a good choice of … Continue reading Welcome to Harriet’s house
Shipwrights
Given its maritime connections, it’s not surprising that, in the 1800s Falmouth and its neighbouring villages was a shipbuilding location. Yet before the 1850s, in the days of sail, most shipbuilding operations in the Fal estuary were relatively small scale. In Falmouth itself they were located mainly in the area between the present-day Maritime Museum … Continue reading Shipwrights
Budock: town and country
These days, to the consternation of some of its residents, Budock is being inexorably joined to Falmouth by the remorseless sprawl of new housing. However, the urbanisation of Budock is not new. In the mid-nineteenth century the former boundaries of the parish extended as far as the estuary of the Fal to the north of … Continue reading Budock: town and country
The Falmouth ‘Mutiny’ of 1810
‘serious spirit of insubordination’ On October 24, 1810, customs officers boarded the two Falmouth packets Prince Adolphus and Duke of Marlborough, which were about to leave port for the Mediterranean and Lisbon. They broke open the chests of the seamen, confiscating any ‘private ventures’ that they discovered. Enraged, the two crews refused to put to … Continue reading The Falmouth ‘Mutiny’ of 1810
Central or southern? Cornwall’s contested railway route
These days we tend to take the route of the current railway mainline in Cornwall from Penzance to Plymouth for granted. But from 1844 to 1846 a heated debate raged about which direction the railway in Cornwall should take. There were already two passenger railways in Cornwall. A short line from Bodmin to Wadebridge had … Continue reading Central or southern? Cornwall’s contested railway route
Joseph Emidy
In this week in 1835 the man who was possibly one of the most talented Cornwall-based classical music composers of all time passed away and was buried in Kenwyn churchyard, to be forgotten about for many years. But Joseph Antonio Emidy was no native to Cornwall. Instead, he had been born in Guinea in west … Continue reading Joseph Emidy
Cornish studies resources 