Category: History

Top Place Names in Cornwall

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We probably all have our favourite Cornish place names, but I think the number one place name, is one we can all agree on.  Before we get to that one though let’s have a look at some of the other peculiar place names in Cornwall.

Let’s start with Pennycomequick. As bizarre as this name is there’s two of them.  Pennys running all over the place. One is across the water in Plymouth and the other is near Falmouth. I like the idea of some poor girl running back and forth between the two.  She could have done with a speedboat.

Other great place names that appear to be instructions are;

Come-to-Good, Stepaside, Pityme, Washaway or Stoptide. And we all know that last one will never work.

Then we have the issue of how to pronounce them. Given the Cornwall used to have its own distinct language, similar to Welsh, lots of place names have some weird and wonderful spellings as well as pronunciations.  Just look at

Fowey. That’s Fowey as in Boy not Bowie or Bowie.  Whichever way you pronounce David Bowie’s surname, neither should rhyme with Fowey.

And how would you pronounce Doublebois, Praze-an-Beeble, Cow-y-Jack or Polkanoggo? Or how about Lellizzick, we have more than our fair share of Zs down here Lizard, Halzephron, Zennor. And there might not be any Zs in Mousehole but you’d better be using them when you pronounce it!

Some names are great, like Brill or concerning like Greensplatt or Botusfleming,  charming places.  Nothing like a head cold. Some make us laugh or groan like, Notter Bridge. Every single time we drive past the turning for Notter Bridge I have to listen to Steve joke, “Well, what is it then?”  Every single time. Other’s make you wonder if you should be there, like No Man’s Land or feel like you never want to leave, such as Golden which is every bit as lovely as it sounds.

Some places make you feel like you aren’t even in Cornwall, it can be a bit disconcerting driving past signs for Barcelona or Bethlehem, Mexico Towans or even Mount Ararat.

And talking of mountains we come to our very silliest place name in Cornwall, Brown Willy.

The most gloriously snigger worthy name.  There was a campaign to rename Cornwall’s highest point with a Cornish name.  The proposal gained no ground.  Looks like we all prefer a bit of a giggle, here’s a few more silly names.

Bottom, Cheesering, Flushing, Green Bottom, Jolly’s Bottom, Looe, and  Shag Rock.

 

Lost Lands – warnings from the past.

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There is something very exciting about lost lands and histories. As a maritime nation, we have an uneasy relationship with the sea. It has protected us from invaders (sometimes), it has enabled us to travel and explore the world, it provided food and industry as well as pleasure and inspiration.  It has also, from time to time made us pay for its bounty.  Its tithes are often small and sporadic; lost sailors, sunken boats but occasionally the tithe is mighty and awful and whole areas of land are lost, villages fall into the sea, waves tear down and drown whole towns.  I grew up on the East coast of England and the first story I heard of these losses was the lost town of Dunwich. A mediaeval coastal town that was destroyed during a mighty storm. We would stand on the beach on a windy day hoping to hear the tolling church bells and sometimes I even thought I did.  East Anglia was again the site of another great treasure lost, but this time it was an actual treasure. In 1216 King John was travelling around the Wash a vast area of mud flats and swamp lands.  He was travelling, as was common those days, with the Royal Treasury, chests and chests of great wealth, when the guides had misjudged the tide. As the party rushed to escape the encroaching waters the treasury was lost along with the lives of many men and horses. They returned the following day to retrieve the treasure but all was lost to the shifting sands and tides.  Again, trips to the seaside were accompanied with hopeful buckets and spades. Would today by the day that my little plastic spade would scrape across a jewel-encrusted pommel?

Years later an ancient land mass called Doggerland was found beneath the North Sea, lost to rising tides. Even in modern history the east coast battles against the North Sea.  In 1953, 2,551 people lost their lives in a massive storm surge that flooded in across the fields of eastern Britain and the Netherlands. And still today, the eastern coast of Norfolk is being gradually eroded. Happisburgh is a coastal village that bit by bit, is falling into the sea.

Moving west, I thought I had left lost lands behind, only to discover that the west had just as many sunken cities.  There are the islands of Lyonnese situated between Cornwall and the Scilly Isles and much mythology has arisen around them, much of it Arthurian. There are more shipwrecks off the Cornish coast than you can shake a stick at, and countless mermaids ready to carry the lost mariners away.

Out walking I was delighted to find an entire church that had been swallowed by sand dunes. St Piran’s Oratory has now been excavated and sits dwarfed by the sand dunes the surround it.  These massive sand dunes are part of Cornwall’s largest sand dune complex and it’s fascinating to see how they have grown over the centuries. Even more intriguing is the tale of a nearby town called Langarrow that was also swallowed by the sand.  The story goes that this large trading town with no less than five churches was a place of great wickedness and sin.  And like the fate of Soddom and Gomorrah God sent a great punishment in the shape of an enormous storm that raged for three nights and three days. At the end of the storm the sea had washed much away and what was left was buried in the sand.  Again, the legend suggests that if you listen carefully on stormy days you can still hear the bells ringing from under the sand.  Personally, I think there’s more chance of hearing the bells of Dunwich.

The following passage comes from Robert Hunt’s Popular Romances of the West of England, 1864.

WE cannot say how many years since, but once there stood on the northern shores of Cornwall, extending over all that country between the Ganrell and Perranporth, a large city called Langarrow or Langona. The sand-hills which now extend over this part of the coast cover that great city, and the memory of the sad and sudden catastrophe still lingers among the peasantry. So settled is tradition, that no other time than 900 years since is ever mentioned as the period at which Langarrow was buried. This city in its prime is said to have been the largest in England, and to have had seven churches, which were alike remarkable for their beauty and their size. The inhabitants were wealthy, and according to received accounts, they drew their wealth from a large tract of level land, thickly wooded in some parts, and highly cultivated in others–from the sea, which was overflowing with fish of all kinds–and from mines, which yielded them abundance of tin and lead.

To this remote city, in those days, criminals were transported from other parts of Britain. They were made to work in the mines on the coast, in constructing a new harbour in the Gannell, and clearing it of sand, so that ships of large burden could in those days sail far inland. Numerous curious excavations in the rocks, on either side of this estuary, are still pointed out as being evidences of the works of the convicts. This portion of the population of Langarrow were not allowed to dwell within the city. The convicts and their families had to construct huts or dig caves on the wild moors of this unsheltered northern shore, and to this day evidences of their existence are found under the sand, in heaps of wood-ashes, amidst which are discovered considerable quantities of mussel and cockle shells, which we may suppose was their principal food. As far as I know, these are the first indications of anything resembling the Kjokkenmöddings, or refuse-heaps of Denmark, which have been discovered in this country.

For a long period this city flourished in its prime, and its inhabitants were in the enjoyment of every luxury which industry could obtain or wealth could purchase. Sin, in many of its worst forms, was however present amongst the people. The convicts sent to Langarrow were of the vilest. They were long kept widely separated; but use breeds familiarity, and gradually the more designing of the convicts persuaded their masters to employ them within the city. The result of’ this was, after a few years, an amalgamation of the two classes of the population. The daughters of Langarrow were married to the criminals, and thus crime became the familiar spirit of the place. The progress of this may have been slow–the result was, however, sure; and eventually, when vice was dominant, and the whole population sunk in sensual pleasures, the anger of the Lord fell upon them. A storm of unusual violence arose, and continued blowing, without intermitting its violence for one moment, for three days and nights. In that period the hills of blown sand, extending, with few intervals, from Crantock to Perran were formed, burying the city, its churches, and its inhabitants in a common grave. To the present time those sand-hills stand a monument of God’s wrath; and in several places we certainly find considerable quantities of bleached human bones, which are to many strong evidence of the correctness of tradition.

Crantock was, according to tradition, once a trading town, and it then had a religious house, with a dean and nine prebends. The Gannell filling up ruined the town. This must have happened when Langarrow was destroyed.

On Gwithian Sands the remains of what is supposed to have been a church has been discovered, and according to Hals and Gilbert, a similar tradition exists here of a buried town. Gilbert writes thus:–

“There has always existed a traditional account of the inundation of sand in this parish, corroborated by the ecclesiastical valuations, which are far too high for the actual extent of the land, and also said to be confirmed by documents preserved in the Arundel family, carrying back the commencement of the evil nearly to the period of their acquiring the property.

“With respect to more recent inundations, Mr Hockin states to Mr Lysons, that the Barton of Upton, one of the principal farms, was suddenly overwhelmed; that his great-grandfather remembered the occupier residing in the farmhouse, which was nearly buried in one night, the family being obliged to make their escape through the chamber windows; and that in consequence of the wind producing a shifting of the sand, in the winter of 1808-9, the house, after having disappeared for more than a century, came again to view.

“The rector further stated that he himself remembered two fields being lost at Gwithian, and that they are now covered with sand to the depth of ten or twelve feet, and that the church-town would have been also lost, if the parish officers had not promptly resorted to the expedient of planting rushes. These stop the complete progress of sand, and greatly facilitate the growth of other vegetation on the surface, so as to create a thin turf, The hillocks of sand exhibit a model in miniature of the Alps.”–Gilbert, vol. ii, p. 149.

[a] ‘”The vicarage church of Crantock is commonly called Languna or Langona,–that is to say, the hay temple or church,–and is suitable to its name, situate in a large hay meadow of rich land, containing about three acres, where, by ancient custom, the vicar’s, cattle all pasture over the dead bodies interred thereinto.”–Hals, as given by Gilbert. See Appendix Q.

 

The History of China Clay in Cornwall

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In the late seventeenth century, traders from the far east began to bring home beautiful cups and plates made out of exquisite porcelain. To a continent that was used to pottery and stone wear, these pieces were treasures to be desired. The items were as thin and light as bones, they rang when you struck them and the light shone through them. And yet they were strong enough the eat and drink from.

The British couldn’t get enough of these expensive imports and acquiring them was the ultimate display of wealth and privilege. William Cookworthy was aware that if he could only find kaolin in the UK he would be sitting on a goldmine. He searched the country and in 1746 he finally found a deposit of a similar standard to the Chinese kaolin, here in Cornwall. Earning it the nickname of china clay.

The deposit required work to extract it from the degraded granite.  Using water he would separate the decomposing granite and the soft talc like material. Once refined, this material could be worked as kaolin and was quickly taken up and used in the British manufacturing processes. If the Chinese product was finer, this was disregarded, and the Cornish market exploded.  A deposit north of St Austell was revealed to be the largest in the world and a global industry began to rapidly develop.

The material didn’t require deep mining like tin or copper, and was retrieved using open cast mining.  It was then blasted with water cannons, to separate the soft clay from the decomposing granite. The water turned white and ran off into the rivers, and as they ran down into St Austell Bay, the whole sea would turn white. Even in the 1970s, locals remember swimming in milky white water.  For each tonne of clay extracted, there was five tonnes of mica waste. When the two materials were separated, the slag was taken and dumped back on the land, in long hills or in large conical structures. These large white hills were soon referred to as the Cornish Alps or Pyramids and rapidly changed the local skyline.  Finally the good wet clay was recovered and laid out in massive long low buildings, known as dries.  With a chimney at each end, heat was run along the base and the clay above would slowly dried out. Women, known as bal maidens, would shape and turn the mixture until it resembled dry blocks, that could be cut and easily transported up country and overseas to the waiting mills. This industry far out performed fishing or farming and there wasn’t a single family that wasn’t in some way impacted by the new industry.

Leats (small canals) were laid out across the land to provide water directly to the source, and water wheels were built to power the engineering processes. The entire land in this area was covered in dries, villages grew up, simply to extract the clay.   Initially these dries were built right near the extraction points, but gradually as the railways were built, the wet sludge was transported to the docks at Charlestown, Pentewan and eventually the industry was consolidated at the large docks at Par. The expansion of the industrial industries in mid-Cornwall was all to further the china clay industry and over the centuries, vast fortunes were made. Over 250 years, 170 million tonnes of china clay was produced. 70% of this production was exported overseas, making Cornwall the pre-eminent global source of china clay.

China clay was in great demand and not just because of its use in the porcelain industry but because of its other properties.   Any pill you have ever swallowed is coated in china clay to help it go down better, every glossy magazine or brochure is coated in it, to give it that smooth finish.  It is used in toothpaste, make up, light bulbs, in the rubber process,  in medicine, in the paper industry, not to mention the porcelain industry, and many more uses besides. The chances are, that every single day, you come into contact with china clay in one shape or another.

Looking about you today every strange hill you see, will be a slag heap. The largest pyramid towering over St Austell is now only vaguely white but it must have been an incredible sight before nature began to reclaim it. Some of the heaps have been flattened and terraformed providing excellent walks and bike rides, and if you look at the floor you will see, that rather than soil, the ground is made up of a gritty mica residue. Strange building are hidden under trees and ivy, overs can be explored in safety. Some areas of the terraformed lands still seem reminiscent of a foreign planet, others are more established, and the flora and fauna has established itself and smoothed over the harsh scars on the landscape. The world famous Eden Project is built in a clay pit, showing the ingenuity of mankind to reclaim the land. Across the countryside are large lakes where the miners dug down to extract the raw material. As well as the lakes are large shallow pans of water, full of strange glowing green water, each pan a slightly different shade, covering many acres.

Nowhere in mid-Cornwall is untouched.  Although the industry is still active here, it has declined with the discovery of a massive deposit in Brazil. The industry has moved to a fresher source, that is easier to extract with cheaper labour costs.  It is hard to look around at some of the towns and villages today and appreciate that these were once the white hot hubs of industry at the top of a global market. A time when Cornwall led the world.