Bernard Deacon's Blog, page 42

New Year – all quiet

In the nineteenth century the new year in Cornwall was as quiet as it was this year. Our forebears did little, if anything, to celebrate the new year, which was a working day like every other. The Royal Cornwall Gazette’s brief reports of the new year period in 1860/61 indicate little out of the ordinary. … Continue reading New Year – all quiet →

New year greetings

I’m using this last blog of 2020 to thank all those who have visited this site this year and contributed so many interesting comments – apologies if I haven’t responded to every request for information on a particular surname. You may be interested to learn which blogs were the most read in 2020. Here they … Continue reading New year greetings →

The Cornish declaration of independence

Browsing through A.L.Rowse’s The Little Land of Cornwall the other day, I revisited his account of Samuel Johnson’s skit of the late 1770s when Johnson was arguing the case against American independence. Dr Johnson was attempting to show up the absurdity of the American claims by supposing the rage for independence had spread to Cornwall … Continue reading The Cornish declaration of independence →

Cornish surnames in the 17th century

For some obscure reason the most visited page on this website has consistently been 18th century surnames by parish. To accompany this I’ve spent the Christmas period compiling a list of surnames for each parish in the mid-17th century and this can now be consulted here. In 1642 across Cornwall over half of men (57%) …

Christmas in west Cornwall in 1920

What was Christmas like a hundred years ago? Let’s look at the Cornishman newspaper in 1920 for a few clues. Overall, it was generally quiet. At Penzance it was reported as ‘celebrated somewhat quietly’ while over and at Helston it also ‘passed off very quietly’. We might have expected that people would have been celebrating … Continue reading Christmas in west Cornwall in 1920 →

David Penhaligon

On the morning of December 22nd, 1986, Cornwall’s best-known politician of the late twentieth century, David Penhaligon, was killed in a car crash. The death of Penhaligon, 42 years old and Liberal MP for Truro since 1974, came as a huge shock. Penhaligon was the son of a caravan park owner in Truro. Educated at … Continue reading David Penhaligon →

Cornish names before the conquest

Before hereditary surnames there were second names that changed from one generation to the next. Before that, people just had one name. This was the case for most in Cornwall before the mid-1300s. Go back another 200 years to before the arrival of the Normans and we meet the names chosen by Cornish-speaking natives. Into …

What was a Cornish engine?

The Cornish engine was so named because it was a type of steam engine developed by Cornish engineers and enginemen and mainly used in Cornwall. From 1810 the efficiency of beam engines was steadily improved. These were used to pump the water out of mines. They also, somewhat later, raised ore and lowered materials (whim … Continue reading What was a Cornish engine? →

Surnames from first names

Many surnames originally stemmed form first names. In Cornwall Bennet or Benet was a frequent male name in the medieval period. It came orginally from the saint’s name Benedict, shortened to Benoit by the French and introduced to the British Isles by the Normans. The name was widely found as a surname in Cornwall by …

Mary Bryant’s story

In the later 1700s, if you were convicted of a serious, or even not very serious, crime, you could face transportation to a British colony, that is if you managed to avoid the death sentence. Before 1777 convicts were taken to North America. After that point this option became unavailable. But there was an alternative Continue reading Mary Bryants story →