Cornwall: history, surnames and society, from Bernard Deacon
There was no question about Cornwall’s leading economic sector in the mid-1800s. In terms of income, productivity and employment it was metal mining. The early 1860s marked the peak of Cornish mining. Deep copper mining had broken out of its eighteenth-century heartland west of Truro in the 1810s, first to mid-Cornwall in the 1810s and … Continue reading Victorian Cornwall’s leading sector: metal mining
Anyone who has spent hours ploughing through nineteenth century census records cannot fail to notice the arrival of a greater range of first names in the latter decades of the century. While there is a voluminous academic literature on surnames, their origins and their distribution, there is much less on first names. Yet the names … Continue reading St Agnes: let’s not forget first names
The generation born around 1850 in St Agnes could have had little inkling of the economic disaster that lay in store for them. In 1851 71 per cent of the adult men of the parish worked on and in the tin and copper mines of the parish, one of the most intensive concentrations of miners … Continue reading St Agnes: travels and travails
In the nineteenth century the new year in Cornwall was as quiet as it was this year. Our forebears did little, if anything, to celebrate the new year, which was a working day like every other. The Royal Cornwall Gazette’s brief reports of the new year period in 1860/61 indicate little out of the ordinary. … Continue reading New Year – all quiet
Cornish studies resources 