Cornwall's Hidden History Blog
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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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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The story of the Ring and Thimble Stones is a striking reminder that small, seemingly insignificant objects can be important signposts in the landscape that can point us towards much bigger stories. These little stones, beside a road just outside Newlyn, illustrate how fact and folklore can merge and transform over the centuries, how meaning […]
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“Max Barrett started life as the wild boy of Penzance and ended as the wild man of sculpting.” – Annie Gurton, The Independent, June 1997 If there is one thing I love it is discovering something hidden in plain sight! The people, places and objects that have been forgotten or overlooked. That is not to […]
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In the 1920s Cornwall adopted Frederick Albert Mitchell-Hedges as one of their own and he in turn returned here again and again to relax, to write and to give lectures to rapt audiences. Always a controversial figure, Mitchell-Hedges was a traveller, an adventurer, a hunter of sea-monsters and is believed by many to have been […]
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This Bronze Age standing stone can be found in a field about two miles west of the Merry Maidens Stone Circle and a mile south of St Buryan Church. Standing about 6ft (2m) high it has a wonderful irregular shape that means that it looks slightly different from whichever angle you view it from. For […]
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There was a time when people whole-heartedly believed in miracles. A time when they thought that visiting a religious relic, saying prayers in a certain church or drinking from a sacred well would bring them what they so desperately needed, whether that was good health, fertility or salvation. St Michael’s Mount was one of those […]
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George Symons is not a name that many of us will be familiar with but one hundred years ago he was something of a Cornish celebrity. And for those passionate about motorsports in the south west today he should be a legend. George Symons raced in the first ever Manx Grand Prix in 1923, competed […]
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Porthcurno beach is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful in Cornwall and it’s not hard to see why. On a sunny day it has something of the feel of the Caribbean about it, a tropical paradise, a Robinson Crusoe beach – secluded, idyllic, with white sand and clear, emerald green waters. […]
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