The runner up in our top 20 Cornish surnames list is Thomas. Another name from the New Testament, as one of Christ’s disciples Thomas was always going to be a favoured choice for a boys’ first name. This was boosted by the cult of St Thomas, popular among the Normans and the life (and death … Continue reading 2. Thomas
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Towednack: all gone
Towednack was an unambiguously mining parish in the middle of the 1800s. Three quarters of the men in the cottages scattered over the downs of this parish south and west of St Ives were employed in the local tin mines. However, when Cornish mining began to catch a cold Towednack suffered a severe bout of … Continue reading Towednack: all gone
Clay labouring families at Roche
Roche in mid-Cornwall is on the northern edge of the clay country. At the time the children in our database were born in 1850/51 the extraction of clay was only just beginning to scar the landscape. The creation of the white mountains of the clay country and the sterilisation of many square miles of countryside … Continue reading Clay labouring families at Roche
Perranuthnoe: what to do when the bal is scat
A rural parish to the east of Penzance and Marazion, Perranuthnoe is now merely a place to ‘escape the hustle and bustle of everyday life … [an] ideal destination for a coastal retreat’, its heritage forgotten, its history unlamented. That’s a far cry from Victorian days when the parish was better known for its mines … Continue reading Perranuthnoe: what to do when the bal is scat
The Thomases go to town
Cury is a small, rural parish on the Lizard peninsula, four to five miles south of the market town of Helston. We might expect some of those growing up in Cury to be attracted to their nearby town. And so they were. Ann Thomas for example grew up in a farm labourer’s family in Cury. … Continue reading The Thomases go to town
Contrasting Budock biographies
Edward Tresidder had been born in rural Budock. His father Robert was a farm labourer who died in the 1850s, leaving his wife Grace to cope with the five children. In 1881 Grace was making a living from selling groceries in the village but her two eldest sons, including 11 year old Edward, had to … Continue reading Contrasting Budock biographies
Denying destiny: The Baptist from Breage
Our final foray into the lives of Breage Victorians introduces an example of social mobility. The vast majority of our forebears married partners from a similar social background. Children of labourers married labourers, the offspring of miners got hitched to miners, sons and daughters of farmers tended to end up with other farmers’ sons and … Continue reading Denying destiny: The Baptist from Breage
Absent husbands
As we saw in the previous blog, some people in the Victorian Lives project left while others stayed. It’s gradually becoming clear that sons and daughters of farmers were less likely to leave Cornwall than the offspring of the poor or those from mining families. But there were exceptions. Here is the tale of two … Continue reading Absent husbands
The boys from Braddock
Braddock is another small, rural parish in east Cornwall, best known as the site of a battle in 1642. This began the heroic story of the Cornish army that met its nemesis on the walls of Bristol within a year. By the early 1800s the sounds of battle were long gone, the clash of pikes … Continue reading The boys from Braddock
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 