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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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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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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In the dark depths of the winter of 1870 the tiny Cornish fishing village of Cadgwith made the national newspapers when it became unwittingly embroiled in the ongoing Franco-Prussian war. The strange story of the lost balloon post brings to life a forgotten period of history, a time when the postal service (and a speedy […]
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Ann Boswell, better known as Granny Boswell, is one of Cornwall’s best known characters and an important figure for many in the gypsy community but who was the real woman who has inspired so much affection, so many stories and has even been depicted in one of the biggest TV shows of the past decade?! […]
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In September 1937 workmen digging the foundations of Truro’s new Telephone Exchange unearthed human bones. This macabre discovery in the heart of the city surprised everyone and would lead to rumours of a forgotten burial ground, while a curious carved head found nearby would give rise to tales of an ancient curse. Why those bodies […]
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A year or so ago an old Porthlevener asked me if I knew about the Moonstone. (I think that he might even have called it an asteroid at the time.) When I said I hadn’t he told me I couldn’t miss it, this rock that had supposedly fallen from space, if I went to cliffs […]
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