Cornwall's Hidden History Blog
There is nothing quite like a steam train! And there is no steam train quite like the Tornado! So when I had the chance to climb abroad I didn’t need to be asked twice. The Tornado is the first steam train to be built in the UK since the 1960s, it was completed in 2009 […]
Read More
Of course the traditional colours of Cornwall are black and gold (or black and white like the St Pirans flag) but there is another colour that I know resonates through our landscape. Blue. As I was falling to sleep last night I was thinking back over my day. It had been a glorious May day, more like the height of […]
Read More
Winter, 1811 A gull’s wing tip topped the wave and just for a moment the air currents caught hold of its white feathers and the bird swung in the air, weightless as thistle-down. The sea twisted, turned and undulated but the stark unmoving line of the horizon didn’t alter. It was empty, a deep […]
Read More
December is the time of the year when our days are at their shortest and darkest. When it seems that our little world is more night than day. But the Winter Solstice, 21st December, marks the turning of the year. The return of the sun! Celebrations marking this returning of light and warmth have been part of our […]
Read More
Despite it’s size, Truro is actually a city and the capital of Cornwall. But you would hardly call it a pulsating metropolis especially on one particular day every December. on that day the city’s main square is filled with all the sights, sounds and smells of your average farmyard. When I arrived at the annual Cornwall’s Primestock show […]
Read MoreStanding with his arms flung wide, as if about to launch himself from his plinth, the statue of the miner looks down the steep hill of Redruth’s main street. In one hand he clasps a pole pick and in his other hand, palm turned skyward, he grasps a shiny ingot of tin. But there is […]
Read More
If you google ‘how to find a new planet’ an article published in The Guardian in May pops up. In recent months, it reports, NASA has discovered 1200 new planets orbiting distant stars in far off solar systems. In just the last couple of weeks a possible “earth-like” planet has also been discovered. How far we have come […]
Read More
I have always loved the mystery that a ruined place creates. They are on one hand like a blank page on which I can jot down any story that my imagination likes and then on the other they of course already have a real history to discover. Real characters and real events. The past halted in time […]
Read More
John Knill loved St Ives. And more than 2oo years after his death St Ives is still remembering him. This rather eccentric philanthropist (sometimes smuggler) wanted to provide for the people he had grown so fond of. And to also guarantee that his name would be remembered for all time in the town that he made […]
Read More
Roughly around 20 years ago I bought an old camera, second hand at a flea-market, it was a Minolta SR-7. I don’t remember what I paid for it but I wasn’t earning much at the time so it can’t have been expensive. I had fun with it for a few years and then the speed and light-weight […]
Read More