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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Tangier Island is a wild, marshy landmass in Chesapeake Bay, Virginia on the east coast of America. The tiny population of around 500 people survives mainly on fishing, harvesting crabs and oysters and, in recent years, tourism. It is a remote, isolated community, cut off from the mainland for centuries. The islanders have developed their […]
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The English Civil War was a conflict that divided a nation, tore families and communities apart and resulted in the death of an estimated 200,000 people making it the bloodiest war ever fought on British soil. On the 16th May 1643 about half a mile from the town of Stratton one of the most important […]
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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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The hamlet of Golden near Probus consists of little more than a farm and a Tudor manor house. Tucked away down a narrow dead-end road at first glance there seems little reason to visit. In fact, I was only drawn there by chance having seen a medieval ‘chapel’ marked on the OS map. Stepping out […]
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I first spoke to Sam Davison two years ago, back in 2020, when he contacted me to tell me that he was on a mission to visit and photograph every ancient standing stone in Cornwall! I remember thinking at the time that it was a pretty ambitious project (that’s an understatement!) but the images he […]
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The St Austell region of Cornwall, the Clay Country as it’s known, is full of mountains – the giant white spoil heaps left behind by the industry of the area crowd the horizon and tower over the grey villages. In the centre of it all is Hensbarrow Beacon, a natural summit that was once the […]
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The Keigwin Arms, once known as Keigwin Manor, stands in the heart of Mousehole and is reputedly the oldest building in this historic fishing village. It is much photographed because of its age and elegant façade but this particular house also has many interesting tales to tell. It has seen a great deal over the […]
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“Cornwall, summer 1976: eleven year old Sally Martins and her new friends – Tracy Pender, Victor Jordan and Kerenza Nankervis – are in retreat from the adult world, spending days and nights at an abandoned house on the subtropical landslip known as the Fall. When they discover the body of a young girl, for various […]
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