Despite up to 500 daily visitors (a few days even more) no-one noticed the deliberate (ahem) mistakes in my list of the 20 most common surnames in Victorian Cornwall. Where were the Jameses? In fact, they should have been found at number 11 in the list. And what about the Nicholls? Why hadn’t they appeared … Continue reading Apologies to the Jameses and Nicholls
Tag: Nicholls
St Tudy: shoemakers and carpenters
St Tudy is another of those typical Cornish farming parishes found in the rolling countryside of north Cornwall between Bodmin Moor and the Camel estuary. And yet three of the four children from the parish who appear in our database had a connection with craftsmen over the course of their lives. Even in farming parishes … Continue reading St Tudy: shoemakers and carpenters
St Gluvias: return migration at Penryn
As we saw in the previous blog in the case of Eliza Bennett, short stays overseas were by no means unknown in Victorian Cornwall. Temporary sojourns in North America seem to have been particularly prevalent in the Penryn district. Often these involved stonemasons and quarrymen, presumably taking advantage of higher wages in American quarries when … Continue reading St Gluvias: return migration at Penryn
Merchants of Lostwithiel
Lostwithiel was a town planned in the 1100s by the Cardinham family who controlled Restormel Castle overlooking the River Fowey upstream of Lostwithiel. In the later 1200s the town became the de-facto administrative capital of Cornwall when the Earl of Cornwall and then the Duchy made it their headquarters, later constructing the Duchy Palace near … Continue reading Merchants of Lostwithiel
Patronyms and the Cornish language
Does the presence of patronymic surnames (surnames derived from first names) tell us anything about the last days of the traditional Cornish language? I have argued elsewhere that the distribution of the most common surnames in nineteenth century Cornwall – Williams, Thomas and Richards – offers a good indication of the geography of the language … Continue reading Patronyms and the Cornish language
Cornish studies resources 