Cornwall's Hidden History Blog
This is a rather unusual article for me to write, for a start off it is about somewhere I have never actually been and, in addition to that, it is somewhere you can’t visit either! But the Roman Villa at Magor Farm is so rarely written about that when I discovered that my grandmother had […]
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Cornwall’s landscape is littered with stories, some are famous, some much more obscure, but all of them help to embellish the intricate tapestry that is the history of this little nation. I have always tried to find and record the near-forgotten tales to make sure they are passed on and this is one such stories. […]
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Pendeen Vau Fogou is one of the best preserved and most impressive of all of Cornwall’s fogous. These unusual Cornish monuments were constructed in the Iron Age, some 2000 years ago, for a purpose that no one has entirely unravelled yet. What is clear, beyond the debates about their usage, is that these subterranean tunnels […]
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For many years I have peered from the cliffs at Land’s End to the pale finger of Longships Lighthouse in the distance. There is always something so romantic about that seemingly so close and yet so far tower, perched on its granite island surrounded by a swirling sea. But recently I was very fortunate to […]
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Between Gorran Haven and Dodman Point there is a deep, sweeping curve of beach. For me it has always been a beach strewn with ‘treasures’ – the tides bring in sea and sand scoured driftwood, bleached white as bone. There are shells of course and the remains of crabs, sharp orange, a sign of some […]
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If you love finding art in the wild or enjoy wandering around an old graveyard, as I do, reading the headstones and admiring the craftsmanship, then there is one monument that you should definitely seek out. Tucked away behind St Andrew’s Church in Stratton you can discover a striking sculpture that looks like it belongs […]
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When the artist J. M. W. Turner was walking between the villages of Mousehole and Paul in the summer of 1811 he paused for just long enough to make a rough pencil sketch of a granite monument that had caught his eye beside the road. The monument had been placed there some eighteen years earlier […]
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If you had happened to walk out on to St Catherine’s Point from the town of Fowey in the winter of 1866 a strange scene would have greeted you. Above the sound of the waves breaking on the rocks below you would have heard a chink of metal on stone and the quiet hum of […]
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A few months ago, back in the spring of 2025, I was honoured to be asked to be involved in an incredible project that aimed to bring the work of a little known local artist to print and hopefully to the attention of a wider audience. As soon as I saw the amazing images that […]
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How important is public art to community and society? What is it worth and can we really put a price on it? Should we be measuring the value of art in pounds or is its worth something unquantifiable? These seem to have been the sort of questions that were being asked back in 1965 when […]
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