Cornwall's Hidden History Blog
It would of course be unfair to blame just one man for the death of King Charles I but the Cornishman Hugh Peter may well have played a significant role in the monarch’s downfall. He was certainly guilty of stirring up malicious, regicidal feelings towards the king, encouraging Parliament to inflict the ultimate punishment on […]
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It’s a familiar story . . . an isolated and ancient country house where a ghostly figure is said to haunt the corridors and glide through the moonlit gardens. This particular version takes place at Godolphin, one of Cornwall’s best-known manor houses and involves the Godolphin family who once lived there and were amongst the […]
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Today the small fishing port of St Ives is best known for its beaches, its vibrant art scene and its ice cream but in the 18th and 19th centuries it was something of a smuggler’s paradise. And as was so often the case in Cornwall it seems the whole community was in on the enterprise […]
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On 19th July 1545 the Mary Rose, the pride and joy of King Henry VIII and the flagship of the Royal Navy, sank during the Battle of the Solent. Of the roughly 500 crew on board only 34 would survive. It was a national disaster and a serious embrassment for the Crown. It is said […]
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In the late 16th century a stonemason called Peter Crocker was living in the area around Looe. His work was so fine, so elegant and intricate that the gentry of Elizabethan Cornwall commissioned him again and again to carve their likenesses into their slate tombs. Almost nothing is known about Crocker but because of him […]
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In Polperro at the end of the 18th century, as in so many of Cornwall’s coastal villages, fishing and farming were the mainstays. However, while both industries could be reasonably profitable or at the very least support a family, they were also unreliable and seasonal. Many men chose to supplement their income with a little […]
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Over the centuries there have been many men in Cornwall who have become famous for their feats of physical strength, men who were known as the real Cornish giants, such as Anthony Payne, Bob Fitzsimmons or Charles Chilcott. Some of our strongmen are much less well known however, their names and achievements have been all […]
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Richard ‘Dick’ Williams was born in Penryn on 16th April 1911, the son of Arthur and Leana Williams who lived in a cottage close to Tremough. Arthur’s work as the assistant station master at Penryn Railway Station, though a responsible one, wasn’t particularly physically demanding, so it isn’t clear where Dick’s enthusiasm for performing incredible […]
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When Francis Basset, Baron de Dunstanville, died in Knightsbridge in London in 1835 he was one of the wealthiest landowners in Cornwall and the head of one of its most ancient families. There had been Bassets in Cornwall for nearly 900 years and his death came as a shock to his friends and family and […]
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On 4th July 1569 St Francis Drake married his young sweetheart Mary Newman in St Budeaux Church on the Tamar estuary. While Drake was to become a household name and the greatest seaman of the Elizabethan Age his Cornish wife remains an obscure figure. Something I hope to rectify that a little here. Mary Newman […]
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