Cornish Story - Autumn 2011

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Cornish Story Autumn 2011

The Real Cornish Magazine

Now

availab le

in print

& wtehoben

Exploring the Landscape and Wildlife of the Clay Trails Philip Payton: Cornwall’s Great Emigration Opening of St Austell’s First Museum Chef Sanjay Kumar’s ‘Summer in a Crab Shell’: Cornish Salmagundi

Fresh Tastes and Sustainable Produce - Celebrating National Organic Month in Cornwall

Cornwall’s Clay Country in Film · Uncovering Wheal Trenwith’s Hidden Tunnels

Welcome to the Autumn edition of Cornish Story, for this issue we focus on Cornwall’s Clay Country.

Cornwall features some of the world’s largest china clay deposits, with a distinctive landscape moulded by the dominance of an industry that dates back to the mid-eighteenth century.

The distinctive culture associated with that industry is outlined, with Robert Keys exploring its visual representation in early film, and Mac Waters sharing his memories of local tea treat celebrations. As always we are privileged to be able to share some of the unique memories and stories from some of Cornwall’s many voices, in conjunction with CAVA. Front cover Clay trails Photograph by Anna Tonkin

This year was the Eden Project’s 10th anniversary-the horticultural wonder, born out of Bodelva Pit, a clay mine which had worked for over half a century and which reached the end of its commercial life…surely the perfect example of how Cornwall reclaimed and recycled one aspect of its heritage, transforming it into something entirely different?

With harvest approaching, we will also be focusing on Cornwall’s produce, with a celebration of National Organic Month.

As usual we bring you a dash of art, literature and food and Professor Philip Payton introduces the start of our continuing links with the Cornish far and wide.

Check out our what’s on guide for ideas of festivals and activities, but whatever you choose to do, we hope you continue to enjoy reading Cornish story, and enjoy making the most of what’s best in Cornwall.

Anna Tonkin - Editor

For more information or full source details, please contact us: magazine@cornishstory.com www.cornishstory.com

Contributers Design and Layout- Greg Musser WritersChloe Philips, Garry Tregidga, Philip Payton, Ellie May, Dean Evans, Elizabeth Abnett, Janet Legard, Valerie Jacob, George Care, Ruth Collins, Lee Rotbart, Kim Cooper, Sanjay Kumar, Robert Keys, Wendy Brewein, Derek Giles, Mac Waters

Thanks to both Kate Ruberry and Megan Westley for their contribution to this edition and to the project as a whole.

Thanks to Heloise Trott for her many photographic contributions.

With special thanks to Imerys and Ivor Bowditch.

Notes: The views of contributors do not necessarily reflect those of Cornish Story.

Contents 7 Wheal Martyn Museum and the China Clay History Society 8 Clay Industry: A Cornish Story 16 Artist in Focus: Jan Legard, by Jan Legard 18 Discovering Aviation in Cornwall at the Cornish Studies Library, by Kim Cooper 20 In a nutshell: Charlestown 23 Georgina Bignell-David, by Ellie May 24 Creative Spaces, by Wendy Brewin 26 From London to Cornwall, by Lee Rotbart 28 The great emigration and Cornwall’s transnational identity, by Philip Payton 30 Valerie Jacob, by Elizabeth Abnett 33 Images from the Archives: Filming the Cornish Clay Country, 1900-60, by Robert Keys 38 Cornish Salmagundi, by Sanjay Kumar 40 Unveiling St Austell’s town museum, by Valerie Jacobs 41 Remembering the Clay Strike of 1913, by Garry Tregidga 45 Celebrating National Organic Month 47 Porthleven Food and Music Festival 52 Cornwall Record Office Open Day Success. by Chloe Phillips 53 The Passmore Edwards Centennial, by Dean Evans 56 Lloyd Ellery interview, by Ruth Collins 58 Memories of Rescorla Chapel, by Eric Johns 64 Tony Hooper, by Elizabeth Abnett 66 What’s On 68 ‘Years a-gone’: Tea Treats and Chapel Anniversaries in the St Austell area 71 Exploring the Clay Trails 74 Viv Caust interview, by Ruth Collins 76 Uranium Mining at St. Ives, by George Care 80 Crowning the Sand Castle champions of St Ives

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The words of Jack Clemo, ‘Clay Fairy’ -

“...If this fog lifted we should see The clay-dunes towering massively Beyond the pit- a score at least Ridging the upland to the east...”

Kidniav Autumn 2011

Wheal Martyn Museum and the China Clay History Society

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Interested in finding out more about the history of china clay?

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Derek Giles, Chairman of China Clay History Society and a member of the St Austell China Clay Museums Advisory Group welcomes your interest…

Photograph courtesy of Heloise Trott

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An integral part of the Museum is the China Clay History Society, which was formed in 2001 with the object of collecting material relating to china clay and encouraging research into all parts of the history and heritage of the industry. The Society’s collection includes some 400 boxes of documents, 100,000 photographs, 2000 maps, films, and many hundreds of technical drawings. These may be viewed by appointment. The Society arranges excursions, lectures and film shows, and produces a Newsletter three times a year.

Further particulars of the Society can be found on it’s website - www.chinaclayhistory.org.uk The Society welcomes new members, and anyone interested should apply to the Membership Secretary, China Clay History Society, Wheal Martyn, Carthew, St. Austell PL26 8XG - Tel. 01726 850362

The China Clay Museum at Wheal Martyn, near St. Austell, is the only museum in Europe which relates to the history of china clay, a mineral which has been produced in Cornwall and Devon for 250 years , which has a multitude of uses, and which is exported all over the world. The industry reached its peak in the late 1980s when production reached some three million tonnes per annum.

The China Clay Museum is on the site of a former clay works, and incorporates an array of buildings and structures - most of which are scheduled ancient monuments, including a 35 foot working water wheel and also enables visitors to view a working china clay pit. The Museum is situated two miles north of St. Austell, near the village of Carthew.

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Clay Industry: A Cornish Story Central to Cornish clay mining, an industry with an average annual production of 550000 tons, is China Clay (Kaolin). It is an industrial mineral formed of decomposed granite, so- called because of its earliest uses being in China over ten thousand years ago. And because of its uses in the production of porcelain, cosmetics, toiletries, paper and pharmaceuticals, its production is of major importance to mid-Cornwall today, with clay-bearing ground covering around 25 square miles.

In 1746 chemist William Cookworthy discovered china clay in Cornwall at Tregonning Hill in Germoe, where it was known as ‘moorstone’ and later ‘Growan Clay’. The clay which he found was at a much finer quality than the rest of Europe, however it contained dark mica specks. Just two years later, Cookworthy then found even larger deposits of better quality clay in the St Austell area, the ‘Hensbarrow Granite district.’ Around 120 million tons of clay have been produced since.

By the mid- nineteenth century the china clay industry had expanded considerably, and rail and tram transportation links had been established within the industry. Throughout the early 20th century, there were around 80 different clay companies operating in Cornwall and Devon, including clay workings of West Cornwall – in particular around the St Just area and the area between St Ives and Penzance. In 1919, however, the three largest producers of china clay joined together to form English China Clays Limited, taking on about 50% of the industry.

Kidniav Autumn 2011 Cornwall is immense, with an input to the Cornish economy of over £120 million .

Pit to Port: Touring the Clay Country Thanks to Imerys, the Cornish Story team were able to take a ‘pit to port’ tour of the main production sites, and see first-hand the impressive processes which go into the production of china clay today, in its contributions to the paper, ceramics and paint, rubber and pharmaceuticals market. We were guided by Ivor Bowditch, Imerys consultant, who is not only incredibly knowledgeable in the area, but

We quickly learn that the mining of china clay is a complicated process and one that includes several procedures. Different grades of clay are used for different products, for example in the production of clay for the paper industry, “the paper market want the particles as thin as possible and we make the Cornish Story Magazine

During the ‘wet’/hydraulic mining process, a highpressure water hose is aimed at the quarry face to remove the clay and other minerals. The hoses used are capable of discharging up to 3000 gallons a minute, at Little Johns for example, “the throughput in gallonage can be anywhere between eight to ten thousand gallons a minute.” This removal produces a clay ‘slurry’ which after its initial treatment, then gets pumped to the top of the quarry area and

Later in 1999, French company Imetal (now Imerys) bought the company. Whilst there are two independent producers- Goonvean in Cornwall, and Sibelco (previously Watts Blake Bearne) of Devon, Imerys is still very much the leader in china clay production.

Now employing around a thousand local people (at one stage six times this) and many others working in allied businesses such as sand and aggregate (predominantly Bardon Aggregates) their value to

who has had 45 years direct experience working in several areas within the industry. Starting in October 1966 as a trainee pit captain at Kernick Mica Dam, he has played an important role within the company, but he is also doing a great amount of work to share knowledge and history of the clay area in Cornwall.

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analogy that if you look microscopically at the clay particles very often they would appear to look rather like a deck of playing cards.”

eventually transported via a pipeline to a refinery. In total, Imerys now operate a staggering approximate of 150 miles of underground pipelining.

“Typically from here [Little Johns] the main landings are either to Trebal at Trethurgy or to Goverseth at Nanpean and we would be on average seeing around seven hundred gallons a minute going down the pipeline, which would equate to in dry tonnage terms about seventy tons an hour-so its ten tons for every gallon of movement on an hourly basis.”

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Kidniav Autumn 2011 In the ‘dry’ mining process, the whole ‘matrix’ is mined by customary methods in the quarry and is transported by trucks to the slurry plant, (the material goes through screening processes in between) resulting in a significant reduction of energy in comparison to the wet mining methods.

Imerys, like many global companies, have become very aware of environmental factors of the mining process. Whilst for such a high-producing company the high intensity work goes relatively unknown, what is hard to ignore is the landscape of the clay country.

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Unearthing the Landscape

We have retained the wet mining system so that if we had a major requirement to stop the dry mining we wouldn’t lose total production.

Ivor explains the reason behind operating both dry and wet mining: “We have retained the wet mining system so that if we had a major requirement to stop the dry mining we wouldn’t lose total production.

Because of the extra pumping stages and the extra water used, this dry mining is giving us this cost advantage of almost sixty percent on energy.”

The landscape is ever-changing and Imerys along with associates have made real efforts to create a sustainable landscape and environment, planting and encouraging the growth of trees, and (re) introducing areas of heathland. From day one Imerys have tried to minimize any landscaping issues and continue to do so.

They are now considering the reshaping process whilst working and extracting: “It started in the 1970s: initially we just had sort of a hydro-seeding - a camouflaging of tips which weren’t at that time being reshaped. But here you can see the difference. We’re looking right ahead of us here as we go down through the hamlet of Old Pound, completely reshaping the contour of the tip, taking the steep angle from 35 degrees down to a more natural angle of between five and twelve degrees, also adding some topsoil and quickly getting the vegetation of grass under way which will be followed later by the heathland.”

Currently, Imerys directly employ around ten people in the environmental sector and sub-contract on a regular basis.

Early examples of Imerys’ success in restoration would be Carloggas Downs, and the Tregargus Valley where the last china stone mills worked in the early 1960s, “which has now its own trust and a willing band of volunteers who are continuing to bring the valley’s history back to life.”

Over the last ten years, Imerys have planted about

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Kidniav Autumn 2011 1500 acres of broad leaf woodland, the one millionth tree planted ceremoniously on the Gillies Dam four years ago

by Lady Mary Holborow. The Gillies Dam (what was previously a Mica Dam, taking its name from a farm called ‘The Gillies’) is also the location of almost a hundred acres of heathland created by Imerys along the Goss Moor. Ivor explains that with the landscape restoration process, most of the initial reclamation will be first of all to ‘pasture,’ “normally later followed by a conversion to heathland, and over a fifteen year period we’ve also in fact created about 1500 acres of heathland.”

Ivor adds that Imerys have more big plans underway, “we’re about to, within the next twelve months, complete a new footpath and bridleway.” This, he explains, will be an extension of the clay trails and will go through Nanpean and Old Pound, up to the back of Blackpool Pit and down to Lanjeth, “so it will be possible to walk or ride from Lanjeth virtually out to Roche.”

Alongside this venture, one of the largest ongoing restoration projects is within a year of finishing, and that is the complete reshaping “of what was the Hensbarrow spoil tip.” Just four years previous, the tip sloped at an angle of 35 degrees, but when complete, it will be as high as Brown Willy (currently Cornwall’s highest point) and opened up for the pleasure of the general public.

Parkandillack Beam Engine: A Clay Relic Whilst we were able to access the contemporary workings, we were also able to see one of the few remaining intact beam engines, which had worked up until 1953 on the site it still stands at Parkandillack. “It initially had worked at Wheal Kitty mine in St Agnes, on the old sump shaft pumping. It came here in 1912, and pumped the clay from the neighbouring Parkandillack pit.”

The only other existing engine which remains in its original site is Levant, “they’re the two Cornish engines that pull the winding engine and the big 80 inch pumping engine,” this would have been of considerable size as an engine within the china clay district. “Most of the engines were between sort of twenty and forty inch cylinder dials and the engines are normally described by their cylinder dials.”

Through research, Ivor and colleagues have estimated that there would have been around 160 working engines, though many of these were smaller, horizontal engines for winding.

The result of the pumping procedure, along with several related processes, is that clay is eventually fed into tanks behind. In the case of Parkandillack, Cornish Story Magazine

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When started up, it made a tremendous noise. The engine is massive, and it is hard to imagine that it was carried by horse and wagon all the way from St Agnes in 1912 to here-geographically, about as near to the centre of Cornwall as possible, just a quarter of a mile away from the hamlet of Trerice,

neering company, in the 1930s the relatively new English China Clays began manufacturing their own machinery specifically for clay-working. This resulted in them buying Charlestown Foundry in 1935, “for the grand price of 900 pounds…I hasten to say that didn’t include the freehold but we bought the whole business.” Charlestown foundry then continued under ECC’s ownership up until around 1990 and developed what Ivor describes as “probably one of the best range of heavy duty pumps used in world-wide mining, still today.”

and alive.”

As technology modernized, so did methods of production. It would seem that there was a direct correlation between Cornwall’s newly developed trans-

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...some of the technology and the development that went on in Cornwall is still living and alive.”

or Egypt as it is also known as. The running engine is something of a spectacle, and a unique display of Cornwall’s clay heritage. Understandably, Ivor is keen for it to be made more accessible to the public to be enjoyed.

Whilst Imerys doesn’t consider itself to be an engi12

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The business, he said, “eventually ended up with an international player, engineering a company called Metso Minerals who produce(d) mining and quarrying equipment for the worlds mining and quarrying industries. So some of the technology and the development that went on in Cornwall is still living

actually evaporating water in the clay. We didn’t start to see a major increase in the building of coal fired driers until coinciding with when the railway arrived in 1874. It’s my belief from research I’ve done that between 1880 and 1925,

port links and the way in which clay was produced: “The whole clay industry was benefitted greatly by the development of Cornwall Minerals Railway in the later part of the nineteenth century.

And by 1874 the Cornwall Minerals Railway had given a link back to the main Great Western Railway line running from St Austell to Truro.

And as the Cornwall Minerals Railway reached places like Nanpean and Bugle and the Fal valley, so did china clay driers, and we saw a first reference to coal fired kilns in 1845 and prior to that all of the drying would have been in sun pans and air driers-a very laborious way of

“

Ivor tells us it would have done around six strokes a minute, which was 750 gallons a minute. The boiler, we are told, is a Lancashire boiler because of its two flues, the Cornish boiler having just the one.

probably 80 percent of the coal fired kilns ever operated were built during that period.”

There is still a lot to be revealed within the history of the clay industry. Through Ivor’s personal research and work with The China Clay History Society he has discovered a great deal. For example, in one clay village there was uncertainty over the function of a particular building: “There was a cooperage and people remembered a building and had no idea what it did – but I was looking at some writing from a woman Cornish Story Magazine

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Kidniav Autumn 2011 in 1900 and she talked about looking out at the factory where they were -as she put it- working the wood for the barrels. The cooperage - and the house that she was describing her view from would have looked directly onto this and if you look at the early ordnance map you’ll see a leat coming off the river which went straight through the factory and worked the water wheel which worked the saw bench.”

a powder. The main market for these powder clays are the paint, rubber and plastic industries.”

Whilst half will remain operational, there are big changes for the rest of the port. On this side, tanks, the clay store and associated drying plants will be demolished: “The idea here is this is one of the five sites to be developed by Eco-Bos where there will be low carbon footprint housing and a hotel is certainly in the offering for here. The whole idea is to turn the non-operational port of Par into a marina.”

And elsewhere?

“People will see disused clay works and wander what they will be doing in the future […]we certainly have in a longterm plan so that we could bring New Halwyn back into production.” Ivor explains that similar disused clay works are also very useful water reserves, making them valuable sources of water.

In terms of New Halwyn (last worked in 1958), Imerys are already drawing off water into tankers to minimize dust levels on the quarry hall roads.

Whilst there is a lot to be uncovered and shared historically, we were curious what immediate plans Imerys have proposed.

Asides from Imerys’ continuing environmental restoration programmes, the company has plans to implement many changes. In the immediate future, this includes a total transformation of Par Docks: “Looking at Par on the eastern side of the harbour, everything that lies geographically to the east of the harbour will remain operational, which includes a china clay drier producing around 4000 tons a week, and three mini plants- these are plants where we take clay dry to ten per cent moisture and we pulmarise it with an additional heat source to produce 14

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Kidniav Autumn 2011 size, height, brightness, low viscosity clays) from Brazil- not because labour is cheaper or energy is cheaper; geologically the clays in Brazil are a secondary, they have very little residue with them. Whereas we have nine tons of waste here in Cornwall, in Brazil they have about two and a half tons of waste.”

This, he explains, gives them “a huge advantage,” unfortunately becoming “a huge disadvantage to Cornwall.” In 2006 there was an announcement that a probable figure of 800 (luckily it wasn’t as bad as that, it came back to about 600 people) lost their jobs. This sadly resulted in a number of closures.”

With hindsight, Ivor adds: “We couldn’t halt the growth in the sale of carbonates as an alternative mineral used in the manufacturing paper, they had certain characteristics which made them attractive- probably one of the most important being that carbonates are cheaper and they’re easier to produce than clay.”

concentrating on the paper industry, which for so many years was the cash cow –those have gone due to globalization and competition. And therefore we look particularly at niche markets.

There is an important market for us still with paper filling grades which we can produce reasonably priced into the European market. There’s a big market for ceramics and specialties –all of which the clays in Cornwall are particularly well catered for because the wide range of physical and chemical properties which we have here, means that we produce a much greater number of grades based on those physical and chemical properties. So its niche markets, lower tonnages but hopefully higher added value.”

However, Ivor is optimistic about Cornwall’s prominent role within the global market.

Apart from being a major economic player, the china clay industry has been (and continues to be) an important part of Cornwall’s heritage. Villages such as Carthew are born out of the industry. Many are proud of their involvement in such a communitydriven work environment and of the strong memories which it has provided; all part of the unique experience of Cornwall.

“I see the future hopefully at the sort of tonnages I’ve described- so about a million maybe just over for Imerys and maybe another 300,000 tons split between the two smaller competitors. I think all of us recognize that the days of

With Imerys continuing to employ sustainable methods and further enhancing the landscape, Cornwall it seems can continue to benefit from the clay industry, enjoy its changing landscape and relish the heritage of one of its historic mother-industries.

So what does the future hold for Cornwall and its role within the ever-changing industry?

Despite its many successes, as the industry has changed the company has faced many problems. In 2006, what Ivor describes as the “sheer globalization of the industrial minerals business” meant set-backs to the company and unfortunately the loss of many jobs. Unfortunately, this occurred at a time when the market became unpredictable, leading to uncertainty and underestimation.

“No one predicted, the impact that the huge reserves of clay found in the Amazon base in Brazil would have.” Today, he says, “Imerys source a larger proportion of their coating clays( the fine partical

This article was written using an interview with Ivor Bowditch which is held in the Cornish Audio Visual Archive.

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Artist in Focus: Jan Legard Cornwall and my inspiration

BY JAN LEGARD

I cannot think of anywhere I would prefer to live than right here in Cornwall. When the sun shines and the sky is cloud-free, Cornwall comes alive with colour and history. On the bleaker days it is transformed once again into another place, it becomes a place of rugged Tors and moorland and moody raging seas. Even after all these years of living in Cornwall, near the sea and surrounded by the villages and countryside, I find myself exploring new places filled with colourful cottages and quaint nooks and alleyways. How can that not inspire the imagination?

I started painting in 2010. I have always had a creative streak and love cooking and quilting, but painting is where my real passion lies. I most enjoy painting with acrylics, they are a vibrant medium which

lends itself well to capturing our seaside towns and villages and our rural surroundings. They bring all the Cornish charm and history to life.

I live in a small village where I look out onto the farming life all around me, where I first got my idea to paint Friesian cows. There are plenty around to model for me and if you look closely they all have their own characters. This has led me to paint the pictures that I fondly refer to as ‘my girls’. Some of them may seem to be familiar when scrutinised.

People always say “oh that looks like...”- and it’s usually a friend or acquaintance of theirs! The originals look fantastic lined upon my kitchen wall in their little herd.

Kidniav Autumn 2011 My first ‘girl’ was The Milkmaid, which has since become my logo. I love her red lips, her earrings and her jaunty attitude. When I told my husband I was going to paint a cow he thought that it was going to be ‘just another old cow portrait’. Then he came around my easel to see why I was smiling and burst into laughter too. Now pictures just materialise as my imagination runs wild. It has become a joke among friends. They come up with new ideas for me to paint using a play on words. My husband also does a lot of walking and has taken to photographing interesting cows along the way, ready for my next picture.

I do have a connection to Cornwall through my ancestors. On looking into my family history I have discovered that my grandfather three times removed lived in Bucklers Lane, St Austell, only a few miles from where I live now. The family were also buried in St Austell church yard. How strange that I should return here as a teenager and unknowingly have spent time walking the same paths my ancestors did all those years ago. I may not be Cornish by birth but I feel an affinity with this land and the people here. It is without doubt a place that continues to inspire the creative side of many artists not just me.

Thank you Cornwall for your beauty and your inspiration.

Jan’s website can be found at www.thecornishmaid.co.uk 16

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Discovering Aviation in Cornwall at the Cornish Studies Library

BY KIM COOPER

Cornwall should not be forgotten in the early history of aviation, and the Cornish Studies Library at the Cornwall Centre in Redruth is hosting an exhibition this summer to celebrate Cornwall’s contribution to flying. The exhibition will highlight the first flights in Cornwall, from pioneers to airships, and from stuntflying to Lancaster Bombers.

Flight in Cornwall began in the years immediately preceding the First World War, with the visits of three pioneering airmen, Claude Grahame-White, Gustav Hamel and Henri Salmet. Their exhibition flights drew huge crowds and enormous curiosity.

Grahame-White’s visit in 1910 was particularly

The exhibition at the Cornwall Centre, Alma Place, Redruth will run from Tuesday 23rd August to Saturday 3rd September and is open Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm and Saturdays 10am to 4pm.

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For further information, please contact the Cornish Studies Library at 01209 216760 or cornishstudies.library@cornwall.gov.uk.

By the 1920s, many people in Cornwall had seen an aeroplane, but few had ever taken to the skies themselves. That was to change, largely through the initiative of one man, Captain Percival Philips of St Austell, a former captain in the RAF. In 1924, Philips founded the Cornwall Aviation Company, which was to become one of the best-known names in the early joy-riding and stunt-flying industry. His troop of red Avros toured the county – and later the country – offering flights for spectators, the most daring of whom could pay extra for a spin or a loop!

The Cornish Studies Library’s exhibition will highlight again many of the images displayed in the CAVA

enthralling: in a display of great skill and daring he swooped over the Imperial Fleet in Mounts Bay in a bid to demonstrate to the Admiralty the potential of aircraft in war.

Grahame-White’s point was clearly taken, because Cornwall hosted several airship stations during WWI. Huge, slow and cumbersome, the airships were introduced to combat the growing menace of the German U-boats and acted as scouts, scouring the seas for tell-tale oil leaks and debris and escorting threatened shipping safely to port. The most important of these stations was at Mullion, which even saw the development of its own unique airship design, nicknamed the Mullion Twin, in 1918.

exhibition ‘Cornwall in Flight’ in 2009, but will also feature additional images from Mr Ted Chapman’s collection of aviation images. Mr Chapman, the author of ‘The Cornwall Aviation Company,’ sadly died last year, but his photograph collection and research notes on aviation in Cornwall were kindly donated to the Cornish Studies Library. The Library is very pleased to be able to exhibit images from the collection and would like to thank Mr Chapman’s family.

We would also like to thank Daniel Grigg for his work in preparing the exhibition and compiling the historical information in this item. Daniel is a regular volunteer at the Library and his support with projects is very appreciated.

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the fully functioning port.

Prior to Charles Rashleigh, the village was formerly known as West Polmear. After the decline of the copper mines in St Austell, china clay became the prevailing trade. Pilchard curing increased as a business within the port, more so after the harbour was built. It helped Charlestown to achieve recognition as a leading fish station along the coastline.

The harbour was built primarily to allow the sailing ships in, but prior to this, the small beach alongside was used to load and unload cargo. The boom in trade meant the population of the small village increased from a mere nine in the late 1700s to over 3,000 by the early 1900s. The harbour’s unique shape consisting of an inner and an outer arm was used to shelter the fleets used to transport the clay.

In a nutshell: Charlestown

Time has changed very little in Charlestown but as the hustle and bustle dissolved along with the industrial dominance of the port, the idyllic scenery still achieves an admirable amount of amazement from its visitors.

Elizabeth Abnett explores the charms of Charles Rashleigh’s unspoilt “new town.”

Charming and well preserved as if time has frozen, Charlestown is a place of beauty, heritage and historical importance. The Georgian port, built between 1791 and 1801 was largely used for the exportation of china clay and copper. Its unreserved tranquillity and unambiguous attraction to the Cornish coast is mesmerizing, as if uncovering a Cornish hidden gem.

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The port, named after china clay entrepreneur Charles Rashleigh peaked in the nineteenth century thriving in businesses such as boat building, rope making, and pilchard curing. The harbour saw fishing fleets and sailing ships hauling clay extracted from the clay pits back and forth from the tiny port – St Austell’s clay pits were responsible for the birth of

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Georgina Bignell-David

Ellie May explores the work and inspiration of a Cornish Ceramicist

BY ELLIE MAY

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Based in Cornwall, Ceramicist Georgina Bignell-David graduated from Falmouth College of Arts in 2008 with a degree in Contemporary Crafts. It was during her degree she developed a love affair with ceramics, combining this with her passion for Cornwall and nature, Georgina has gone on to develop some beautiful and truly inspiring pieces of work, including hand-built and press-moulded pieces as well as kiln formed and fused glass.

Over the years Cornwall has provided much inspiration for a variety of creative practitioners, Georgina too has fallen under its spell. When looking at her creations it is easy to see that not only does she hold natural talent in her hands but she also holds a real love of Cornwall and nature in her heart.

Nets are strewn across the harbour and the odd fishing boat still bobs serenely beyond the lock gates.

Upon entering Charlestown you feel like you are entering a bygone era, the village conserves memories of what was once a fundamental cog in Cornish trade industry.

Fisherman cottages, splashed with bright blue and yellow painted porches surround the harbour. It’s modest yet stunning backdrop attracts many filmmakers including, most recently Tim Burton for selected shots in his remake of Alice in Wonderland in 2010.

The port is still home to a few square-rigged ships, nestled safely within the lock gates. They provide the port with even more nourishment of historic culture, 22

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offering an enchanting atmosphere and accommodating the village with its ancient roots.

“I like to take note of my surroundings and try to recreate that emotion I feel, that love of nature within

Who would have thought it was possible to find beauty in bacteria, well Georgina has succeeded.

“

Ellie May explores the work and inspiration of Cornish Ceramicist Georgina Bignell-David.

my work; I feel it helps to be living in such a beautiful county.”

Where many artists who are inspired by nature draw inspiration from landscape and seascapes, Georgina has taken this nature-based inspiration to another level. Her favourite pieces of work to date are her Kingdom of Wry collection which, on the surface, is a strikingly beautiful set of highly glazed colourfully assorted orbs. When asked what the inspiration for these orbs is, Georgina, with a wry smile says: “bacteria.”

Who would have thought it was possible to find beauty in bacteria, well Georgina has succeeded.

Today, Charlestown remains one of Cornwall’s oldest – and working – ports, attracting thousands of tourists every year. The Shipwreck and Heritage Centre is the villages fascinating and unusual attraction, which houses artefacts from shipwrecks and long-gone era including the famous necklace from the 1997 blockbuster, Titanic.

Georgina has a talent of producing pieces which seem to hold a certain vibrant energy and just begs attention and admiration.

She acknowledges the fact that over the years her work has grown, an admitted obsession with colour and spherical shape and form has, over time been replaced with a search for organic and more functional pieces of work.

With inviting cafés, pubs and an endearing pasty shack, Charlestown is crammed full with things to see and do. The port offers visitors the opportunity to get engrossed in Cornish heritage and enjoy discovering a truly enchanting place.

“I am conscious not to lose the depth of meaning and concept in my work but at the same time I want people to want my pieces for their practicality, so they can be useable as well as desirable.”

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Kidniav Autumn 2011

Creative spaces

Enhancing gardens through the memories of people with dementia

BY WENDY BREWIN Creative Spaces is a three year Big Lottery funded project. A partnership between the Sensory Trust and Cornwall Care, the project’s overall aim is to reconnect older people with dementia with the local community and is based mainly at Trevarna nursing home in St. Austell. The project demonstrates how care homes can help bring the community together through more active use of their outdoor spaces.

The main beneficiaries of the project are older people with dementia, however care staff, relatives, young people and community members are all benefiting from their involvement in the project.

The redevelopment of some garden areas at Trevarna to make them more usable for residents, carers and visitors forms part of the project, along with residents’ participation in creative activities and visits to stimulating outdoor environments with care staff, relatives and young people from the community.

This project is also about learning and sharing skills, and beneficiaries have been receiving both formal and informal training sessions in new techniques for improving the quality of life for older people with dementia.

Kidniav Autumn 2011 CAVA, the Cornish Audio Visual Archive, has been involved in providing formal training to the young people involved in the project. Pupils at Penrice Community College recently attended a session facilitated by Garry Tregidga from CAVA where they learnt the approaches to conducting a successful interview. Two members of staff from Cornwall Care also attended and were able to talk about ways of conducting a successful interview with someone with dementia.

in interviewing techniques it won’t be long before they begin interviewing residents and staff at Trevarna as part of the project’s evaluation and monitoring process. They won’t be concentrating solely on memories but will be looking to discover what activities and community events people would like to participate in once the garden is completed this year.

Some residents have already shared memories through conversations with the young people involved in the project. For example during a group visit last year to the Eden Project, one of the residents spoke of how the smell of lavender reminded him of Sicily. A conversation between him and one of the young people involved revealed that he had been in the army during the Second World War and the lavender brought back the memory of stepping off a landing craft on to a beach in Sicily.

Now that the young people have had some training

Images courtesy of the Sensory Trust 24

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Kidniav Autumn 2011

From London to Cornwall

Adventures continue for Danny and Lee

BY LEE ROTBART

We opened on 8th April and it was rather touch and go.

Three days prior to opening day all our belongings from London were still piled in the middle of the ‘breakfast room’ which didn’t have any tables in it, the bunk beds were still in all their flat-packed glory,

light and Arial companies were the victim of panic phone calls when we realised (the day before) that switching all the TVs on at once rendered all of them completely useless.

Two months in, #7 on Trip Advisor and with our four AA stars, all the panic of those last few days seems

Kidniav Autumn 2011 to loud and buzzy as we move from preparation through to service, through to stress-free banter once everyone is fed. Danny and I are a well-oiled machine and our egg-breaking average is definitely on the way down.

What a privilege to look out over St Ives every day while the world comes to our door.

Chinese, Slovakian, New Zealanders, Aussies, Sri Lankans, Germans, and even people from the Cotswolds. Every single one of our guests brings a different story into our house and they leave with the memory of St Ives and Cornwall.

We think that’s a pretty good swap.

We are also getting to know people and the local community. We’ve been to private views at the Tate and restaurant openings on the Harbour. We’re busier now than we ever were in London: We are feeling our way in St Ives and finding that there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye.

Everyone loves living here… and they’ve come from all over the country to do so. We’ve met designers, artists, writers, digital dudes, watch makers and high-flying corporate types. Everyone seems to be

the doors sat patiently waiting to be transformed from their muddy cream colour to a bright white, and the walls were disappointingly bare.

Hammering nails above guests’ heads as they walk through the door was not an ideal scenario- so Danny and I adopted a ‘why sleep now when we haven’t for a week’ attitude and set to it. Bunk beds were erected at 2am, doors were painted by torch26

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just kicking aside their stilettoes, flinging off their ties and settling into a friendly life where a walk on the beach is both a dream and reality.

I’m glad that we love it so much, not only because we’ve left all our friends and family to live here, but when people come into our home – and we love it when they do – we get to share that with them.

Bring on the Cornwall revolution.

like a romantic memory to be remembered light heartedly over breakfast with our guests. A breakfast which is now a lot more relaxed than when we first started.

Originally Danny and I were high-fiving each other with every successful plate out the door, now we are more laid back and the morning is by far our favourite time of day. It ranges from still and quiet, Cornish Story Magazine

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Kidniav Autumn 2011

Cornish Story would like to take the opportunity to say a big welcome to our overseas readers. In future editions we will be featuring news, updates and interviews with representatives and participants of some of the many Cornish groups overseas, keeping Cornwall connected far and wide.

Professor Philip Payton, Director of the Institute of Cornish Studies and leading scholar of the Cornish Diaspora introduces...

The Great Emigration

and Cornwall’s transnational identity

BY PHILIP PAYTON

Historians acknowledge that Cornwall is one of the great emigration regions of Europe, comparable to Ireland, for example, or to southern Italy. However, while the emigration from many European regions was relatively short-lived – brief paroxysms of mass departure over a comparatively brief period of time – Cornwall’s ‘Great Emigration’ was a century long, from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 until the eve of the Great War in 1914. Between these dates, something like a quarter of a million people left Cornwall for destinations overseas, with perhaps a similar number departing for other parts of the British Isles, at a time when the population of Cornwall itself never reached half a million. Of course, there had been emigration from Cornwall before 1815 – the Cornish had been numbered among the early settlers of North America and then Australia, constructing lasting conduits of connection which would facilitate further movement from the Old World to the New – and Cornish emigrants continued to depart in the 1920s and beyond. But the main thrust of the ‘Great Emigration’ was from 1815-1914.

During these years an ‘emigration culture’ was firmly established in Cornwall, in which emigration was seen by Cornish Methodists and others as a legitimate means of self-improvement and self-help, and where potential emigrants acquired a surprisingly sophisticated knowledge of the various options that lay before them. This was complemented by an equally pervasive ‘emigration trade’, where a complex array of public and private agencies worked together – or at least alongside one another – to manage this sustained departure. Emigration agents, 28

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employed to recruit emigrants for British colonies such as South Australia, Cape Colony, Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) and New Zealand, held public meetings up and down the length of Cornwall, and distributed handbills as well as placing advertisements in newspapers. Mine captains acted as agents for overseas mining companies, hiring miners, mining engineers and other tradesmen for the copper mines of Cuba and Chile or the silver workings of Mexico and the gold of Brazil. But not all emigrants were miners, and in the two or three decades after 1815 the agricultural districts of both North Cornwall and the Lizard became the focus for what the local press called a ‘Rage for Emigration’, as farmers and agricultural labourers and their families left in droves for the newly-available land overseas in places such as Wisconsin, Ontario and Prince Edward Island. Shipbuilders and shipowners were part of this busy ‘emigration trade’, emigrants departing in Cornish-owned and Cornish-built vessels from major ports such as Padstow, Fowey and Hayle, but also from countless smaller quays such as Malpas or Gweek.

In the years after 1815, Latin American countries strove one by one to eject their European colonial masters – the Spanish and the Portuguese – and in this way were opened up for penetration by British capital. British investment paved the way for mining development in each of these countries, and the expertise of Cornish mine workers was eagerly sought.

Wages were high (they had to be to draw miners to places where fever was prevalent and mortality was high) and often men went alone, leaving their families in Cornwall, planning to come home sometime in the future. In the meantime, they sent ‘homepay’ – part of their earnings – to keep their families going.

In time, many did return home, and many developed peripatetic careers in which they spent their working lives roaming within and between continents, with occasional visits ‘home’ to Cornwall. During their 1840s, when times were hard in Cornwall, there were spectacular copper discoveries in Michigan – hot on the heels of the silver-lead finds that had already drawn Cornish miners to Wisconsin – and in South Australia. Likewise, the Cornish flocked to become ‘Forty-niners’ in the Californian goldrush of 1849, and were enticed to the goldfields of New South Wales and Victoria and in 1850 and 1851.

As the expansion of the international mining frontier continued apace, so did emigration from Cornwall – especially after 1866 when the bottom fell out of the

Cornish copper-mining industry. Cornish emigrants – Cousin Jacks and Cousin Jennys – found themselves in Nevada, Colorado, Montana, Western Australia, Queensland and a host of other places across the globe. By the end of the nineteenth century, the gold and diamond fields of South Africa had also been added to the Cornish map of the world. Places such as Grass Valley in California and Moonta in South Australia became centres in what was now a Cornish ‘transnational’ identity. Cornish customs were transplanted in mining camps across the world, and the Cornish deployed their ‘myth of Cousin Jack’ – the self-belief that insisted that they were the world’s best hard-rock miners – to secure mining jobs in the face of competition from other ethnic groups.

In time, Cornish Associations sprang up across the world, to celebrate Cornish achievement and to protect Cornish interests, the forerunners of the numerous Cornish groups that thrive in many different countries in the early twenty-first century. Asserting the importance of diversity in a globalized world, people of Cornish descent have come together to refashion the Cornish transnational identity anew.

From the biennial gatherings of the Cornish American Heritage Society to the ‘Kernewek Lowender’ Cornish festival in South Australia, today’s Cornish groups keep alive memories of the ‘Great Emigration’ while busy ‘re-inventing’ global Cornishness.

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Kidniav Autumn 2011

Valerie Jacob

Valerie Jacob (nee Mugford), a local historian, bard of Gorseth Kernow and a former secondary school teacher from Penrice, shares her memories of the Clay Country and what makes the district so unique to her.

By Elizabeth Abnett Valerie’s connections to St Austell and the clay pits are linked to her father’s career in the industry. He worked at Pentruff China Clay Pit in the parish of Treverbyn alongside three of his six brothers until he joined the army in the First World War. Based in Egypt during the war he served as a driver of armoured cars. After returning to Cornwall at the age of 25 he became a mechanic for Taylor and Lowe Brothers, a local haulage company which transported the clay from the pits. Valerie recalls, “He could always tell you good accounts and he knew Tregrehan and Trethurgy [and] a lot of the clay works … and the horses and carts [that] came for the clay and took them down to Charlestown or down to Par before the era of the lorries”.

St Austell’s China Clay mountains, one of the few artificial constructions to be visible from space, are icons of Cornwall’s great clay industry. Valerie highlights that these mountains are a strong image of St Austell. “We [Valerie and her husband Brian] remember the tips being levelled, shall we say, into these long expanses of the tips of sand … and being landscaped over with grass … I still like to see the conical ones, the very old ones, and if you drive up out of St Austell there’s still some very old [ones] covered in old rhododendrons’.

When asked about her favourite place in the Clay 30

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Country, Valerie recalls, “I do like to go up on …

Hensbarrow Downs, which was the highest point of St Austell, other than these towering clay [tips] … I do like to go up there when the heather is out and look over to Roche and the back part of St Austell down through to Trenance”.

Valerie believes that St Austell’s community and home life is a unique aspect. “The hardiness of the men and the women … looking after the cooking.

Some of my friends came from the Clay Country to the grammar school and I remember thinking that they were different. … They were aware of being a little more remote. St Austell to them was a big exciting place to visit”.

St Austell’s economy has been suffering in recent decades due to increased unemployment following the deterioration of the clay industry. It has strived remarkably to continue since the decline of tin mining in the late nineteenth century, but it is now feared to be heading the same way. “You hate to use the word decline but I think because of the [global economy] people are a lot more connected via communications. If they’re aware that china clay is found and can be produced … cheaper [elsewhere] … this is the way its going to go. I think poor old Cornwall might be struggling in fifty years time to produce clay. I don’t know enough people now who work in it but I think the workers just go on hoping that maybe it’ll last until their retirement age”.

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Images from the Archives:

Filming the Cornish Clay Country, 1900-60 ROBERT KEYS The unique ‘lunar’ landscape of the Clay Country has fascinated a number of twentieth century artists and photographers. Film representations have been rarer, mostly focusing on the industry rather than the communities that re-shaped the land. The rise and decline of the industry suggesting perhaps ‘t’other Cornwall’; too local, too proletarian and too close for comfort. The cost of clay was not an obvious topic to entertain an audience. Most of the earliest films featuring Cornwall were in essence ‘travelogues’, which focused on the landscape and the picturesque qualities of the coasts and valleys; an early example would be a film such as Scenes on the Cornish Riviera of 1904; a Great Western Railways promotion.

These were followed somewhat later by glimpses of the quaint but equally picturesque rituals of the ‘locals’ that were reflected in film representations of folk customs, a recurrent topic in later newsreels featuring Cornwall. Early attempts by film cameramen and directors to capture the individual charac-

ter of a landscape reveal a tension between a more pictorial tradition in depicting the countryside and an opposing tendency towards the ‘realism’ of photographic practices. This was reflected in the established popularity of postcards featuring historic sites and beauty spots. One early film genre attempted to capture and record in commercial ‘shorts’. The use of moving images in this way was a natural development from the public interest in popular postcards.

These often illustrated themes such as ‘Romantic Cornwall’ or ‘Glorious Devon’ for the tourist market.

Individual postcards and sets were to be found on sale in tobacconists and gift shops at most of the developing holiday resorts in Cornwall and Devon in the Edwardian period, which were often the work of more enterprising local photographic businesses.

Moreover, this established a familiarity for the public with one kind of visual record, which unlike ‘fine art’ landscape traditions in many respects cut across the divisions of social class. This was also the case with the range and differing styles of posters produced, Cornish Story Magazine

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for example by Great Western Railways, to advertise the Cornish Coast as an idyllic holiday destination.

It was therefore no accident that one of the pioneering companies in the early film industry was the Hepworth Manufacturing Company. This had begun operating in 1908 and produced popular commercial short films until it ceased business in 1924. Cecil Hepworth had a background in high quality photog-

worth between 1908 and 1924. These included Lovely Devon in 1911 and after the Great War in 1920 two films with Cornish locations. Firstly The Cornish Coast, which was in the tradition of the film travelogue, and a second film entitled China Clay.

The footage for the latter was edited by Quiribet to become, as far as I am aware, the first commercial ‘short’ to depict the working of the china clay industry in Cornwall. While Stereo-scenics of beauty

Kidniav Autumn 2011 pleasures expected by an audience to which Hollywood was already catering.

Quiribet’s solution to representing the clay industry was to film key elements of the industrial process and then ‘cut’ together the segments to provide a simple visual narrative. The edited film sequences represented the cameraman’s view of the most significant elements in the process of recovering and processing the raw material of china clay. The film starts with a shot of Messrs Loverings’ Mines of St Austell and follows the process of Filming industry was nevertheless a challenging recovering the fine clay through problem for cameramen, there hosing out, pumping, settling being no clear or established in evaporation tanks at ‘Port conventions for depicting the Quiribet’s solution to repCharles’. The dry clay is filmed industrial landscape. Quiribet for resenting the clay industry being collected and loaded on example had to solve the probwas to film key elements to horse-drawn wagons and lem of how to represent in an of the industrial process taken to the docks. After the intelligible way on some 600 feet and then ‘cut’ together dockside sequence Quiribet of film an industrial process with finishes with some additional the segments to provide a which most of his audience would footage that alludes visually to have been unfamiliar. Avant garde simple visual narrative. the manufacturing processes film makers in Europe, particufor which china clay is the raw larly in Germany and the Soviet material; paper from the paper mills, vases from the Union had already gone some way in developing ‘cinematic devices’ that represented the ‘symphony’ of the modern city, machine culture and the modern industrial worker. They were developing theories of intellectual and emotional montage in film editing which placed the director/editor of the film at the centre of the cinematic process. These developments would lead to the evolution of the new genres of newsreel and the later documentary film, movements where the ideological focus was more often on popular enlightenment and education than on gratifying the simpler cinematic

“

raphy of the kind used to produce postcards and stereoscopic prints, which when mounted on card and viewed in pairs through ‘spectacle lenses’ created a ‘3-D’ effect. These were already sold in holiday resorts alongside postcards depicting famous beauty spots and tourist attractions. Hepworth produced a series of film shorts called Stereo-scenics, a direct allusion to the stereoscopic genre, which were mostly directed and filmed by Gaston Quiribet, a pioneering young cameraman, aged only twenty, who arrived in Britain from France some time in 1907-08.

Quiribet produced a whole series of films for Hep34

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spots, historic castles and other tourist attractions were clearly aimed by the Hepworth company at the emerging mass audience for film associated with escape from the hum drum business of ‘everyday life’, the representation of industrial life might not seem to have quite the same attractiveness for the spectator. This, however, would be to underestimate the sheer excitement that cinema attractions could still generate in the 1920s and the ‘natural’ curiosity of the public about topical events and unusual industries and landscapes, to which newsreel was also beginning to cater.

“

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Kidniav Autumn 2011 potteries and finally a fashionable lady drinking from a ‘china’ tea cup and powdering her nose. The linear drive of the visual narrative is supported at crucial points by titles and inter-titles to help explain the images to the audience. In many respects this early silent footage might be said to serve as the visual paradigm for most of the later film treatments of the same topic, particularly in newsreels of the 1930s and 1940s. Quiribet’s short film set a pattern, which can be traced with variations (and despite the later technological advances of first sound tracks, then colour film stock) in the later treatments of the industry. From this point onwards there were a series of newsreel shorts featuring the Clay Country: Pyramids of Cornwall- A West Carclaze Study (c. 1930); Cornish Pyramids (1937); China Clay (1948) and China Clay (1964).

A different and more original film on one aspect of the clay industry is the recently re-discovered Farewell Topsails by Humphrey Jennings. This ‘nine -minute short’ produced in 1937, was one of Jennings’ earliest films and is an interesting piece of cinema history in that it was filmed in colour using the experimental Dufaycolour process. It records one of the last voyages of a topsail schooner, the ‘Mary Barrow’, from Charlestown to the paper mills of the Thames with a cargo of china clay blocks. In stylistic terms this simple visual narrative might appear to be ‘Jennings before Jennings’, with little hint of the famous and still memorable war time documentaries that were to come in the 1940s; Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started or A Diary for Timothy, nor of the

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poet and painter’s engagement with surrealism.vii Nevertheless the film does have at its heart a central theme of Jennings: the conflict between a more ancient and ‘natural’ technology that is disappearing before the emergence of a more modern and scientific industrial process. One does not expect nostalgia from a surrealist but the editing of the film and Jennings exploration of the colour limitations of the medium is imbued with a certain romantic view of the sea, the sailing ship and the heroic male worker, as Simon Brown has pointed out:

seeking to explore traditions rather than demand a dramatic or revolutionary discontinuity. There was a tension between alienation and the position of the modern intellectual on the one hand and the observation of ordinary people at work and in their leisure pursuits, secure in a sense of ‘belonging’. In this early film there are indications of some of the pre-occupations to be found in the Mass Observation studies during war time and the examining of collective identity which became a central concern in the later more famous documentaries.

‘The image of the heroic worker contrasts with the inactivity of the shore, the men in brown, leaning against brown fences or posts in the medium close-up, the backgrounds devoid of colour – the working class as victim. The blue colouring conveys both the working class heroic male and the romanticism of the ocean and of sailing (or the poetry of the sea as the commentary calls it).

The question of identity is also central to the Duchy of Cornwall documentary from 1938. In this case, however, the concern is specifically with Cornish identity in Britain. Although the title is reminiscent of Quiller-Couch’s ‘Delectable Duchy’, the historical advisor for the film was A.K. Hamilton-Jenkin and the cameraman was Jo Jago, another local making his way in the documentary film movement. Duchy of Cornwall was produced by Stuart Legg, an important figure in the documentary movement and one of John Grierson’s ‘disciples’. It was directed by William Pollard for the Strand Film Company. The film is a fifteen minute documentary short in black and white but with sound and musical accompaniment by Esther Rofe. It opens with a rapid survey of the early history of Cornwall; the ancient landscape, the legend of King Arthur, language and local architecture, including shots of St Michael’s Mount, There is a short but significant sequence on china clay, placing it alongside hard rock mining, farming and the fishing industry as a central element in the

This contrasts with those who ‘watch with regretful eye‘ the passing of an era, ‘those for whom there are no ships’, as the commentary observes. The sound track includes the rather jaunty music of a sailor’s accordion, which again acts at times as a counterpoint to the melancholy ‘feel’ of the commentary and the darker background hues. Jennings the poet, painter and surrealist, the enthusiast for Mass Observation acts here both as reporter and romantic observer.

Unlike many surrealists Jennings was fascinated by continuity with the past and with popular culture,

Cornish economy and the Cornish character. One final crucial marker of identity is given in a sequence on Cornish wrestling. The film ends with a series of location shots featuring Looe, Newquay, St Ives and Mousehole, where happy holiday-makers paddle, ride donkeys on the beach or doze in deckchairs in a sunlit landscape.

The interweaving of the different themes that go into the ‘making’ of Cornwall and the Cornish is pretty clearly established in this visual narrative on the eve of the Second World War. On the one hand a unique local history and culture, a unique landscape, whether ancient or modern and industrial; but on the other hand the co-existence of this with the ‘happy otherworld’ an idyllic place of escape from the real world of work. But this is a narrative which also conceals the unresolved contradiction between nostalgia for a disappearing world and the unsettling effects of the new industry; the mass leisure industry of the future. For the visual idealization of continuity with a remembered past and a landscape is part of the construction of a structure of feeling and the basis for an experience of a specific kind of nostalgia for a sense of place. The Celts too had their ‘happy otherworld’ in the far west, but waking from the dream often proved calamitous for those who spent too long there. In the blink of an eye, or a camera shutter, the unique industrial character of the Clay Country created and populated by local working communities could in the twenty-first century soon become a new empty ‘ancient and timeless’ but post industrial landscape.

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Kidniav Autumn 2011

Cornish Salmagundi Summer in a Crab shell

BY SANJAY KUMAR

Summer in Cornwall brings the best out of the land, the sea and the air that is touched by it. Little is known, and even more little is said about the cuisine and variety of food that was rustled up on sun kissed summer days embarking upon or having embellished a pirate’s job. A recipe that often surfaces out of these dare devil acts of courage under fire, is a Cornish Salmagundy.

Ingredients: A handful of Handpicked Cornish Crab meat A few Anchovies Some washed lettuce leaves Roughly diced bacon and chicken pieces A tomato cut into quarters Few Crawfish tails Spoonful of good mayonnaise or salad dressing A Tea Smoked Cornish red mullet Bread Croutons

Food cultures around the world have a unique version each of a cold salad dish that is so simple to put together, yet so appetisingly stomach filling. Be it the American Cobb Salad, Indian Jhal Muri, or Jamaican Solomon Gundy end result is rather colourfully satisfying. Here is my Slow version of a Cornish Pirate’s Salomon Grundy, using the best of Cornish Summer ingredients. What’s your Salmagundi?

Kidniav Autumn 2011 Making your Salmagundi 1. In a cold salad bowl, place some washed salad leaves.

2. Place some crab meat in the centre of the bowl.

3. Arrange the anchovies, chicken, bacon, crayfish tails and croutons, top with a slice of smoked red mullet.

Place the salad leaves and Anchovies in a cold bowl plate

4. Serve cold with a generous helping of salad dressing or chive mayonnaise.

Enjoy Cornish Salmagundi with a chilled cheeky glass of Cornish Cyder.

Who said fast food has got to be fried, grilled or baked all the time?

Keep topping layers of Crab meat, crayfish tails, tomato quarters, and bread croutons

Serves 2 hungry Cornish Pirates Preparation time: As quick as you want it to be

Good Cornish food in a crab shell!

Serve with a generous helping of Chive mayonnaise, or salad dressing

A majestically simple Cornish Salmagundi, served in a Crab shell

Selection of handpicked cornish larder ingredients (chicken and bacon, tomato, anchovies, white crab meat, crawfishtails, red mullet and lettuce) 38

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Cornish Salmagundi, as simple as it says on the tin!

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Kidniav Autumn 2011

Unveiling St Austell Town’s Museum

Remembering the Clay Strike

BY VALERIE JACOBS

BY GARRY TREGIDGA

The opening of a new Cornish museum

ing cells were built under the Town Hall area in 1844 when the Market House was built.

A massive clearance programme took place: metal staging removed, two old boilers dismantled, walls cleaned and painted. Even the ceiling was removed to bring more height and light into the stairwell. Lighting was re-positioned, the iron gates and railings painted, closely adhering to the original colour, and with the gift of two display cabinets from Bodmin Town Museum, things began to take shape.

June 16th was an exciting day for Cornwall’s biggest town, as St Austell Mayor Sandra Heyward officially opened the new town museum, founded by the St Austell Old Cornwall Society. Valerie Jacob, President of St Austell Old Cornwall Society explains…

Over the past four or five years the St Austell Old Cornwall Society has been in negotiations with the Market House Commissioners to establish a town museum for St Austell. In March 2011 the ‘Market House Challenge’ was launched to revitalize this iconic Grade II listed building as the number of traders within the premises was dwindling fast. The directors of the Market House were concerned for its future and a business plan was investigated by Helen Nicholson, Community Network Manager and her colleagues. St Austell Old Cornwall Society sent representatives to these meetings and thanks to the Trustees were given the chance to convert a former ground floor storeroom into a museum with extra glass wall cabinets upstairs in the Market House itself for further display.

On May 3rd 2011 a team of Society members volunteered their services and began work on this room with its two lock-up cells behind. These police hold40

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of 1913

The years leading up to the First World War witnessed growing trade union militancy in the industrial regions of Britain. Demands for higher pay and better conditions led to bitter conflicts at places like the Rhondda in 1910 and Derbyshire in 1912. Cornwall was not immune to these developments with the China Clay strike of 1913 emerging as arguably the most famous dispute in Cornish labour history.

The strike took place in the summer of that year following the refusal of the majority of employers to accept the basic demands of the workers for a mini-

industrial disputes in the previous year. In the eastern area, however, opinion was divided, which led to violent confrontation between the so-called flying pickets and those local workers who refused to go on strike. The Cornish police appeared incapable of controlling a situation where, according to a recent interview with Ivor Bowditch by Cornish Story, possibly up to 3,500 men were out on strike. This resulted in the deployment of police units from outside the region, notably detachments from Bristol and South Wales with a reputation for dealing aggressively

mum wage of 25s a week and trade union recognition. Production in the industry had been steadily rising in the first decade of the twentieth century and many workers in the St Austell area were increasingly resentful of the profits being accumulated by the families that controlled the industry. The result was a major strike in the western Clay Country parishes that appears to have developed from

with strikers. One particularly brutal confrontation took place in the eastern clay village of Bugle. Significantly, the Welsh police defeated the strikers and this symbolic event passed into local folklore as the Battle of Bugle. By the autumn of 1913 the demoralised strikers had been forced back to work without securing any of their principal demands.

One of the cells was converted to resemble a Cornish kitchen of the 1900s – the gift of a black lead stove a great asset. The other cell had an inmate painted on a standing board with another figure of a policeman on guard outside. Dr Joanna Mattingley, a Museum Development Officer, helped Brian Jacob achieve results here.

Main display areas show some of over 200 posters hand painted in the town, some from before the First World War, reflecting the social history of St Austell. Some artefacts were loaned by Wheal Martyn Museum, and the St Austell Brewery Museum, whilst other items were released from Mevagissey Museum, loaned to them since 1967 from the St Austell Old Cornwall Society.

June 16th was a Red Letter Day for the Society as their efforts had produced the first ever museum in the town.

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Kidniav Autumn 2011 However, the Clay strike in mid-Cornwall was more complex than a simple dispute between the forces of capital and labour. Local hostility towards the deployment of police units from outside the region, combined with traditional differences between the clay villages themselves, ensured that there was a strong spatial dimension to the conflict. Oral history interviews in 2000 revealed that there were even local rumours that German policemen were sent into the area to keep order, perhaps reflecting the spy stories circulating in Britain in the years leading up to the First World War. There are also differing interpretations over the ethnic flavour of the strike.

One view expressed in the oral history interviews in 2000 was that the strike ‘organisers came down from England’ with the intention of undermining peaceful relations between the classes. In contrast, poems written in support of the strikers, entitled The Cornish Clay Strike: the White Country Dispute and A Souvenir of the China Clay Strike, highlighted Cornish unity when confronted by external opposition:

In the china clay area the motors are near flying, To starve out the men the employers are trying; But the Cornish are solid and determined to fight To get the twenty-five shillings which they think is their right.

Memories of 1913 continued to be kept alive at the community level with Kenneth Hudson in his book The History of English China Clays: Fifty Years of Pioneering and Growth concluding that the bitterness caused by the strike was ‘still well remembered more than half a century later’ (David and Charles, c. 1964, p. 41). By the 1960s, however, those generations with a personal experience of the event were gradually dying out. This coincided with a more public form of remembrance through radio and television that effectively recreated the events of the past for the benefit of younger age groups. Interestingly, the first public portrayal was based closely on the oral testimonies of some of the surviving eyewitnesses of 42

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the time. Hudson’s pioneering oral history work led to a BBC Western Region radio documentary in 1964 in which he explored the relationship between the strikers and the Welsh police. Along with extracts of former workers talking about their everyday life before the First World War and their personal difficulties in joining the Workers Union, the documentary included interviews with ex-policemen on their memories of coming to Cornwall and the tensions that developed following the Bugle incident.

A visual representation of events was created in 1972 as a result of Tom Clarke’s BBC film drama entitled Stocker’s Copper. The story focused on the fictional relationship between one of the strikers (Manuel Stocker) and a Welsh policeman (Herbert Griffith) who is billeted with the clay worker and his family. Stocker and Griffith come from similar working-class backgrounds and share a love of singing derived from the chapel cultures of Cornwall and Wales. However, their growing friendship is undermined by a violent confrontation between the pickets and the police, which is apparently based on the real-life events that took place in association with the Battle of Bugle. Stocker’s Copper appears to draw heavily on Hudson’s earlier radio documentary, thereby creating a powerful synergy between visual imagery and oral testimonies. This includes the script

Kidniav Autumn 2011

lines of the characters, particularly those of Griffith, which are very reminiscent of the oral testimonies of the ex-policemen in the 1964 broadcast.

From the beginning the visual imagery of the film plays on the idea of Cornwall as a distinctive and exotic land with palm trees and white mountains. It clearly echoes Hudson’s own evocative language in his 1964 radio documentary when he spoke of ‘that strange, churned over, surface of the moon part of Cornwall around St Austell’. In Stocker’s Copper this sense of ‘otherness’ emerges as a central theme with the police entering the town as an army of occupation and shots of a poster extolling the Duchy’s tourist image being juxtaposed with the socioeconomic realities of industrial poverty. This sense of a distinctive identity is reinforced by Stocker who plays a symbolic role as the voice of Cornish ethnicity. At the beginning of the film he is in a confident mood declaring ‘One and All. That’s the motto of we Cornishmen round these parts’. Towards the end, however, he starts to lament the traditional deference of the Cornish working class in contrast to their Welsh cousins and considers the idea of migrating overseas to escape from the poverty of his homeland. The film proved to be very popular in Cornwall, particularly since there was a strong musical flavour involving St Dennis Brass Band and Treviscoe

Male Voice Choir.

Nearly forty years after Stocker’s Copper there are now plans to mark the centenary of the strike in 2013. The Rescorla Centre will be extending its annual festival in the summer of that year to include heritage walks around key sites of memory in the Clay Country, talks on the history and long-term significance of the strike and a series of literary and musical performances in St Austell and the clay villages. There will also be an educational programme leading up to the event with research opportunities for volunteers, oral history interviews with the descendants of individuals associated with the strike and resource packs for local schools. The aim is to create a multi-generational commemoration of an event that symbolises the culture and history of this distinctive part of Cornwall. For further details on the 2013 project please contact the Cornish Story team on 01326 371 888 or cava@exeter.ac.uk

For further details on the 2013 project please contact the Cornish Story team on 01326 371 888 or cava@exeter.ac.uk Cornish Story Magazine

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Kidniav Autumn 2011

Kidniav Autumn 2011

Celebrating National Organic Month

The words of Jack Clemo, ‘Clay Fairy’ -

This September is National Organic month, an annual celebration of organic produce. In its sixth year, the Soil Association is encouraging people to ‘discover reasons to love organic,’ and reap the many benefits of a healthier, more earth- friendly lifestyle.

As we become more aware of the links between good food and good health, (for us, animals and the environment) people are increasingly shopping around for their best options, to feel confident about the food we love. Cornwall is no exception to this and producers are proudly becoming more and more organic-friendly, there are now so many affordable options available from local producers.

Why organic?

Grim landscape stretched, one huge graveyard.

The sand-dumps all like headstones loomed; The pits my rotted youth entombed...”

Photograph courtesy of Heloise Trott

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“

Buying locally and eating seasonally strengthens the support of Cornish farmers and producers. Half the food has travelled farther to reach the plate than its consumer’s lifetime of travels.

“

“...As far as eye could reach the scarred

There are many reasons to go organic. Food standards are set to ensure that you’re getting the best out of food and know exactly what’s in what you eat.

Banning additives and hydrogenated fats cuts out the unnecessary and risky ingredients and means that food contains more highly concentrated values of important nutrition-like vitamins and minerals. Genetically-modified crops which are potentially harmful to human and animal health are also banned under standards.

Organic standards emphasize the welfare of animals from birth to plate. Regulations ensure that animals are kept in the fairest and healthiest environments, reducing stress and disease. Reared in the most natural way possible, with a banning of growthpromoting hormones and similar substances, standards mean a fairer life for the animals and a more satisfying meat/dairy product. The farms are also particularly wildlife-friendly- in fact plant, insect and bird-life are reportedly up to 50 per cent greater on organic farms.

Environmentally, the methods release less green house gases than non-organic approaches to farming.

Look out for the soil association logo to be sure that products have been made to highest animal and environmental standards.

Whilst shopping to standards in bigger supermarkets helps, think local. Cornwall is renowned for some of its fantastic produce. Buying locally- particularly fruit and veg from your local farmshop or trader, means you’re not only reducing food miles but guaranteeing fresher and usually better value food. Cornish farmers and growers produce fantastic healthy and tasty foods and deserve local custom and support.

Why not ‘Eat the seasons’?

Eating seasonal food means eating to the local climate. This may seem silly, when shipping in foods from other countries allows us access to almost all foods on demand, in season or not. However, seasonal food is not only usually fresher and tastier, but it supports the environment and local economy and saves you money, not having to pay more for food that has travelled a long way. Buying locally and eating seasonally strengthens the support of Cornish Cornish Story Magazine

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Kidniav Autumn 2011 farmers and producers. Half the food has travelled farther to reach the plate than its consumer’s lifetime of travels. Living in Cornwall, we’re privileged to be surrounded by working farms and smallholdingsmany farmshops, honesty-boxes and home-grown ventures. And, of course, we are never too far away from the local sea catch.

Check out Bigbarn.co.uk for a searchable database of local producers.

And don’t forget organic produce doesn’t extend to just food - textiles, bodycare and many other daily items are directly affected. Making a few changes here and there could make a big difference.

Porthleven Food and Music Festival

This September, why not make a small change? Swap your shop - think seasonally, check out what’s in season. Enjoy a fresher dish - from raspberries to runner beans, from monkfish to whitebait.

An appetite for quality local produce

Some quick recipes Garlic shrimp Ingredients 1ib shrimp (cleaned, shelled, deveined) 1-2 tablespoons of dried parsley teaspoon salt ¼ cup of olive oil Steps 1. Mix all ingredients in bowl together with shrimp 2. Put in a covered bowl or container (can use bag) 3. Chill in fridge for at least half an hour 4. Place shrimp on baking tray 5. Bake for 7-10 minutes in an oven of moderate to high heat Leftover bread-garlic croutons 3/4 tablespoons of butter 1 clove of ground garlic 3 slices of crusty bread cut into cubes 46

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Steps 1. Preheat oven to 175�c 2. In pan melt butter, add garlic, and stir 3. Leave for 1 minute and add bread to coat 4. Put on baking tray and cook until crisp Enjoy!

Visit Lansallos Barton Farm in Looe - a Soil Association demonstration farm open to the public. Open Easter and June to September.

Also, check out www.organic-cornwall.co.uk for a comprehensive guide to organic living in Cornwall, and www.eattheseasons.co.uk for more info.

Some more useful sites: www.sustainweb.org/sustainablefood/ www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/recipes www.icornwall.co.uk/local/farm-shops-andpick-your-own-produce/

This year Porthleven celebrated its third annual food and music festival. As ever, the jostling fishing town came alive to the sound of local singers and musicians, artists, and entertainers, over 12,000 came out in force to join in on the activities.

The festival which was opened as usual, by patron Antony Worrall Thompson, was themed on ‘ food resourcefulness and re-skilling children and adults in the kitchen.’ And suitably so. In an age where we are starting to pay the consequences for our hunger for plenty, the festival was a reminder of the importance of sustainable food.

The harbourside was packed out with festival-goers, eager to taste and buy some of the local food and drink. More than 80 stalls offered Cornish-only produce, highlighting some of the Duchy’s culinary gems. Seafood lovers flocked to the barbeque on the quayside to taste some of the barbequed fish which was caught from sea-friendly methods, the costs went towards quay facilities and maintaining the small fishing fleet.

Despite the amount on offer, you’d be mistaken to think that any of the food went to waste. Sunday in the main marquee was the “leftover lunch,” whereby people were encouraged to bring along a plate of

food and enjoy what food was left along the long table, for a massive picnic.

Resident of Porthleven and Fishmonger of the year John Strike demonstrated his skills in the ‘Young Persons Big Top,’ filleting and preparing line-caught fish, and the ‘Lets Get Cooking’ project featured at many of the local schools.

Other chefs demonstrated throughout the day (in the main marquee), but not just their fantastic cooking skills, but the essence of producing a high quality meal from less, using sustainable products and the most economical cuts of meat.

Whether a foodie or forager, the festival was a fantastic taster of the best of Cornwall, preparations for the 2012 festival are underway. Whilst the theme is yet to be announced, the scheduled date is Saturday April 21st.

For latest news and information, visit http://www.porthlevenfoodfestival.co.uk/ Images: Kota Restaurant, Portheleven T. 01326 562407 Rick Stein’s The Seafood Restaurant, Falmouth T. 01841532700

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HALSGROVE TITLE INFORMATION

HALSGROVE DISCOVER SERIES

CORNWALL’S CHINA CLAY COUNTRY EXPLORING THE LAND OF THE WHITE PYRAMID

Roger Fogg & Adrian Brown The granite uplands around St Austell in Cornwall have been at the centre of the china clay industry for more than two hundred years yet they remain almost unknown to outsiders.Visitors speeding down the Goss Moor on their way to the beaches and holiday resorts further to the west of the county may be aware of the strange silhouettes and hills of the area yet their thoughts are on the sands and the seaside delights that await them. Retirees may pause on their coastal walks to gaze inland; holidaymakers flying into Newquay may wonder briefly what the strangely coloured lakes below might be.Tourists on their way to the Eden Project in coaches may get a commentary on the strange landscape but rarely do they stop and investigate further. Even those who live in other parts of Cornwall have only a vague idea of what goes on in the mines and refineries, the dryers and the ports.

Cornwall’s China Clay Country seeks to inspire readers to explore the St Austell china clay area and to help visitors to interpret what they see, and locals to remember how things were.Through a series of walks and drives around the district the authors invite their readers to explore the history of the area following the routes of Clay Trails that have been established for walkers and cyclists. Period photographs illustrate bygone methods of winning the clay, the buildings that were once so typical of the industry and the people that did the work, while superb colour photographs reinforce impressions of a modern landscape that is quite unique to this part of Cornwall.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Roger Fogg has grown up in china clay country and comes from a family with close connections to the clay industry. He is an award-winning author of several books and has contributed to many magazines, particularly on the subject of vintage motorcycles. He has worked in special education for over 40 years and lives near St Austell.

Adrian Brown left the Royal Marines and studied photography at Manchester University, working for 20 years as a London-based advertising photographer with Virgin, HSBC and Porsche GB among his clients. He has had his work short-listed for the AOP 2008 Awards and the Landscape Photographer of the Year Awards. He now lives in Cornwall, lecturing part time at University College Falmouth.

HALSGROVE CATALOGUE The full Halsgrove catalogue is available free or visit www.halsgrove.com for regional and category listings of available titles.

Halsgrove Publishing Halsgrove House, Ryelands Business Park, Bagley Road,Wellington, Somerset TA21 9PZ Tel: 01823 653777 Fax: 01823 216796 www.halsgrove.com e-mail: sales@halsgrove.com

The Halsgrove Group includes DAA Halsgrove Ltd., Halsgrove Ltd. & Halstar Ltd. Registered in England & Wales Nos. 4136732, 6029724 & 6472636 at Halsgrove House,Wellington TA21 9PZ. Imprints: Halsgrove, Ryelands, Halstar, PiXZ Books & Halswood Journals. Halsgrove® is a registered trademark. Copyright© 2011

Format:

Hardback, 144 pages, 214x230mm including over 120 colour and historic photographs Price: £16.99 ISBN: 978 0 85704 103 6 Imprint: Halsgrove Published: August 2011

Great Books from your Local Bookseller

COR N WA L L’S CH I NA CLAY COUNTRY

The wagon tip at Fowey no 8 jetty in 1910. CCHS

Above: A long-since demolished 46 ½” rotative beam engine at Blackpool. CCHS

Below: Example of a double-page spread.

Mica particles in suspension refract the light causing the startling colours in the pool at Blackpool Pit. Adrian Brown

Left: The high-pressure hose known as the monitor washing clay away from the stent or unwanted rock.

The manually controlled old-fashioned versions were hard work, in winter the spray would freeze and it was not uncommon for the hoseman to be completely covered in an icy coating. Now they are remotely operated from a heated cabin some distance away from the actual jet of water. CCHS

Spoil being removed (Fal Valley) St Dennis and Parrandillick in the distance. Adrian Brown

Kidniav Autumn 2011

Cornwall Record Office Open Day Success

By Chloe Phillips

Cornwall Record Office, based in Truro and home to more than half a million documents related to Cornwall’s history, opened the doors to its secure strongrooms on Saturday September 10th as part of the Heritage Open Day scheme.

Centennial Passmore Edwards

On his death, in April 1911, The Times recorded that John Passmore Edwards had done more good in his time than almost any other of his contemporaries.

Eight years previous Lord Asquith, later to become Liberal Prime Minister, said that Edwards had done more than any other single Englishman to educate and equip his fellow man for civic and moral duty.

During 2011, one hundred years after his death, it is appropriate that we acknowledge the contribution that Passmore Edwards made to society and the lasting legacy of his good works.

Cornwall Record Office is open for research visits as well as requests for anyone researching anything to do with Cornwall’s past: from family history to where to re-home the chough, the Office has dealt with all sorts of enquiries. The Office also offers a varied learning programme, including talks, group visits and loans resources.

For more information visit www.cornwall.gov.uk/cro Cornish Story Magazine

Author of a comprehensive guide to Passmore Edwards’ life, ideas and legacy, Dean Evans introduces The

The Open Day, which saw 60 visitors enjoying tours around the strongrooms, as well as an exhibition of treasures from the collection, the opportunity to witness Penzance-based conservators, PZ Conservation, in action and also the chance to improve their quill skills, was really well received by all attending.

Visitors described the day as “Excellent, could spend a whole week here”, “Really fascinating!”, “Very interesting”, “Very enlightening”, “Great time, thank you, lots of help given for future reference”, “Very interesting visit, staff very helpful”.

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Asquith can be forgiven for claiming Edwards as English, as this Cornish born philanthropist had lived the majority of his adult life in London. It was in London that Edwards commenced his publishing business, suffered physical breakdown through over work, resulting in debtors prison and bankruptcy, but later became a wealthy newspaper owner and publisher. And although representing Salisbury in Parliament, from 1881 to 1885, it was in London that he campaigned for social and political reform and against military conflict. Yet Passmore Edwards never forgot his dear old Cornwall and it was Blackwater, the village of his birth, that he honoured with the first of more than seventy public buildings in 1889.

Responding to a request of a few books for a men’s reading room being established in the village, Edwards offered not only 500 books, but a building in

which to house them; providing only that the village could supply the land and maintain the building through a board of Trustees.

Over the next fifteen years he was to fund hospitals and convalescent homes; schools and colleges; settlements and village institutes; orphanages and children’s holiday homes; art galleries and museums; stretching from St Ives in Cornwall to Herne Bay in Kent. Each was provided in response to a demonstrated need and contributed to his long held desire - to be useful, and - to do the best for the most.

Edwards did not consider it merely a duty to help those less fortunate than himself - he considered it a privilege. For the vast majority of his fellow countrymen escape from poverty could only be achieved through education, and the majority of his bequests were to supply the means for that education. If he could fund the ladder, he said, the poor would climb.

In Cornwall there are twenty Passmore Edwards buildings. He offered to build a public library in every major town in the county, provided that the local authority adopted the free library Act and promised to maintain the library out of the rates. The result was eight libraries, of which seven remain in use. In London he funded fifteen libraries and offered one thousand books to any library that was opened in the City.

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Kidniav Autumn 2011 During 2011 the centenary of Passmore Edwards death is being marked with a programme of events at as many of the surviving Passmore Edwards buildings as possible; involving the organisations that are associated with them and the communities to which they were so freely given. More than sixty events have already been confirmed and many more are at the planning stage. The Centennial is unique in that it seeks to create a link between communities

Act and the introduction of an additional 1d rate to maintain them. Initially authorities were not empowered to raise the capital to build the library, or even to buy books, only to operate a library once opened.

It was left to people such as Passmore Edwards and Andrew Carnegie, and the Truro born Octavius Allen Ferris, to provide the money for the building. Even then many ratepayers, who were the more affluent and better educated townsfolk, could not see the

Kidniav Autumn 2011 Engraved on the trowel used by Passmore Edwards when he laid the foundation stone for the Nunhead library, Southwark, were the words - Good deeds live on when doers are no more. At a time when many of the Passmore Edwards buildings have ceased to be

Dean Evans on Passmore Edwards’ offer to St Austell.

Along with the other major towns in Cornwall, in 1895 Passmore Edwards offered to build a library in St Austell if the Council would adopt the Free Library Act and maintain it from public funds, by introducing the required one-penny rate.

The offer raised a great deal of interest in the St Austell Star; “A book lover” commenting that whilst there were a number of small private libraries in the town, these were not generally accessible to women, being housed in men’s clubs and the editorial suggesting that there wasn’t one library worthy of the description.

Dean Presenting his book to HRH Duchess of Cornwall

that are currently connected only through the chain of buildings that represent the Passmore Edwards legacy. It comes at a time when the debate over the provision of hospitals and public libraries is as relevant as more than one hundred years ago. In the latter half of the nineteenth century the early Free Library Acts required that a majority of ratepayers should vote in support of the adoption of the 54

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need for educating the working classes, and certainly not provide works of fiction at their expense, and voted against. For many, though, the public library was the only source of education. The sculptor Jacob Epstein gained his education at the Passmore Edwards, Whitechapel, library and playwright Bernard Kops, who was brought up nearby, wrote - ‘the door of the library was the door into me’.

used for their original purpose and the name above the door is no longer associated with the building’s use, the Passmore Edwards Centennial aims to ensure that this doer continues to be recognised as one of Cornwall’s most famous sons.

When it was calculated that the amount raised through a penny rate would be only £40, insufficient to operate and maintain even the smallest library, there was a proposal that the rural district could join with the town, raising between them £170 per year.

This seemed to have promise but many from “the country” areas argued that they would be paying three quarters of the cost but have to walk as much as 5 miles each way to visit “their library”.

Whilst the Urban District Council was in a position to adopt the Free Libraries Act without reference to the ratepayers the Rural District Council could only do so following a poll of all ratepayers. Concerned ratepayers organised several separate unofficial meetings in areas of the district and, with feelings running high, there was, according to the Star, ‘much misleading

and malicious misinformation spread’.

At the annual meeting of the RDC held on 19 April at Carlease, the proposed free library was the only item on the agenda. No one stood to support the proposal whilst one after another ratepayers stood to oppose it, stating that the Town’s folk were expecting the ‘country’ to pay for their library. The option put forward by the UDC, that there could be a main library on the edge of the town and a small branch within the most populated area of the district, was not even raised and the proposal that the rural authority did not adopt the Library Act was accepted with out dissent. Although the UDC made some representations to Edwards for possible amendments to his offer, the matter was dropped.

The Star had warned that the town would be left behind by other towns in the onward march of intellect if they did not accept the offer. St Austell was to wait more than sixty years before a public library was built.

Dean Evans’ Funding the Ladder is available at www.francisboutle.co.uk Details: ISBN 978 1 903427 66 8, Paperback, 268 pages, with over 120 black & white and colour illustrations.

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Kidniav Autumn 2011

Lloyd Ellery interview

Lloyd and Evelyn talk of his time as a clay worker

By Ruth Collins

The Chapel therefore was a chance to socialise, to meet other people and to enjoy themselves. Evelyn

Evelyn, his wife describes her life as a clay worker’s wife. She explains how she would cook pasties and yeast buns ready to pack for her husband’s lunches.

Remembering her mother-in-law’s laborious days

“

...they were saying to look at the china clay companies for inspiration… as soon as it [a clay pit] finished working, the tips and that, you know it’s grassed over, with trees and things.

spent in front of a coal fire, she says she is grateful for the arrival of oil and later electric ovens, but she was perhaps even more grateful when her husband made the switch to sandwiches.

“

Arthur Lloyd Ellery worked as a clay worker in Cornwall for 46 years. His earliest memories are of his job as a kettle boy in Dorothy clay pit. One of the most physically challenging jobs he has had, he describes how he would have to run back and forth constantly, fetching everything from tools to cigarettes from the local shop, “it’s one of the hardest jobs I’ve done, I mean physically…every bloke there made you run for something – and as soon as you’d get there someone would say, ‘Oh go and get me a packet of fags out the shop at Whitemoor. It was really hard work’”.

He describes some of the working conditions that he experienced working in the clay works, recounting how the men would have no clothes provided other than their boots. “They had one pair of boots between three shifts. So the night shift would’ve worn them all night, these sweaty boots, and he comes in, takes them off and gives them to the man who does the morning shift. Then, end of his shift, he’d come in and take them off and the bloke that worked from one ‘til nine would put them on. They wouldn’t do that today”.

the clay communities. “While it’s not quite so close knit now because the villages have grown bigger and we don’t know the people we go to the Chapel, and there’s quite a lot of the new faces at the Chapel and that’s a good way to get in touch with each other”.

tells how music played an important part in this, “in most villages, the Chapel plays a big part with the choirs - singing is still the love of Cornwall you know.

That was part of village life really, the choirs. That was a close knit community – they all start from the Chapel”.

Lloyd reminisces about how in the past a typical clay village meant visions of clay tips but notes how these things are no longer visible or obvious. No longer do these clay villages bring to mind the same images: “If you drive through I don’t know what you would see, other than the tips and things, you know. I mean, years ago you could tell easily because it would be buried in white clay from the driers and things but that’s all been cleaned up now, and you can’t even tell that now that the white has gone. The river is clean and all now, you know the white river in St Austell is all cleaned up, so there’s no white river anymore – still the name of ‘White River’ but it’s clean, it’s completely clear now I think”.

In recent years many of the tips and quarries have been landscaped by the clay industry. Lloyd likes what they have done, “I think they’ve done the landscape a real good job. I read an article in the paper last week, where they were saying to look at the china clay companies for inspiration…as soon as it [a clay pit] finished working, the tips and that, you know it’s grassed over, with trees and things”.

A good example is Lloyd and Evelyn’s home village of Whitemoor. As Evelyn said, “I do like Whitemoor, and what ECLP have done with the [area], planting all the trees. I think that’s lovely, and it has brought back wildlife because we get Jays and Woodpeckers, and squirrels that we didn’t have before”.

What both Lloyd and Evelyn remember most, however, is the strong sense of community that they experienced living in a clay village and working in the industry, but this is changing with the decline of the industry. “It was very close, and I think it still is.

I mean, everybody knows a lot of people – not as much as they did years ago. I don’t think, you know because of travel… because of the motorways you can be in London in four hours time. So people are more mixed up than in the old days, when you married the girl just down the road or in the next village, so everybody knew everyone”.

Lloyd explains how the Chapel forms a central part of getting to know others, forming an integral part of

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Kidniav Autumn 2011 child was John Stanley Bray, who was unfortunately killed in France in 1917.

Memories of Rescorla Chapel

My father and mother were married in December 1924 at Clifden Road Chapel (later a tyre depot) which I believe was the only Methodist chapel in the circuit which was licensed to perform marriages. I was christened at home by the minister of the time the Rev. Lawson. My earliest memories of the Chapel, in fact some of my earliest memories, are of sitting in pew no. 6 with my father, sucking the grained

Melita Jago, Mrs Grose, Will Solomon, Arthur Nicholls, Wilson Bray (my uncle) and my mother. There were many others but I can’t really remember who they were. One of the rituals from those days was taking the local preacher home to tea between the afternoon and evening service. This was done on a rota basis and always meant that we had a special tea at home with the best tablecloth, china and cutlery. It was special when the preacher happened to be one of the circuit ministers. I do not remember the names of any of the local preachers except one:

Eric Johns recalls his childhood associations with a village chapel on the edge of the Clay Country

By ERIC johns I think I can safely say that I was born into the life of Rescorla Chapel as my parents, Jim and Mabel, were both devout Methodists! My father came from Stithians and was originally a Wesleyan Methodist but when he came to live in the nearby hamlet of Carloggas in about 1906, he became associated with the Primitive Methodists at Rescorla. My mother’s family were already members as I believe my grandmother, Mary Frances Coombe, was born in Rescorla village. Mary lived in Bowling Green when she was first married, and then moved to Carloggas where my grandfather had built a house and where my mother was born. That house is still standing - down off the road and just on the Penwithick side of Brays Coal yard. John Bray, my grandfather, was very active in the chapel but was unfortunately killed in an accident in the clayworks in 1903. My mother was the third of four children. The eldest, Edith, was born in Bowling Green but moved away to Devon in her late teens. She was married in Devonport in 1910 and remained in that district until her death.

The second was Wilson who remained in the family home when he married until his death except for a period away during the First World War. He was a regular attender at Rescorla Chapel and a member of the choir. He had a good tenor voice but would never sing solo. Wilson and his wife Annie had two 58

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children, Stanley who was active especially in the social side of the chapel until he left mid-Cornwall at the beginning of the Second World War and Ronald who left Rescorla to join the Navy in 1946. The third child of my grandparents was my mother Mabel Annie who was, from her childhood, and later with my father very active in the life of the chapel. The fourth

Carloggas wood of the pews probably because I thought they looked like mint humbugs.

Eric Johns in 1928 Above: Band of Hope brigade

The memories of my early years merge into a blur of Sunday School in the morning, Chapel in the afternoon and evening when I was older, and Band of Hope and Anniversary Tea Treats with their Saffron and Yeast tea-treat buns. People I particularly remember from those days include Will Trust who always sat inside the door of the chapel and “took the collection” and Harry Ridge who used to play the organ and was choirmaster except for some special occasions when Mrs Simmonds from Lavrean used to play. Choir members included Maggie Vercoe,

a Mr Whitford, who was apparently a school teacher somewhere in the area. His claim to notoriety was the length of his sermons. Normally the afternoon service would last for about an hour with the sermon lasting typically fifteen minutes, but at his services the sermon could go on for at least half an hour - more of this later.

More well known characters included John Hawkey, who was one of the superintendants of the Sunday school. He was very much a “blood and thunder“ merchant. He knew the details of every battle in the Old Testament and used to tell us these stories at frequent intervals. Johnny-Boy Trebilcock, who used Cornish Story Magazine

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Kidniav Autumn 2011 band - the evening was occupied by the children playing games and later by the older ones playing “Kiss in the Ring” and followed by the “Snail Creep”.

I never imagined at that time that in the future I would be playing with that band. During the war we still had the parade but as there were not many bands around we used to be accompanied by Mr. French, a local radio dealer, with his loudspeaker van playing records.

At the Sunday School anniversary, the children’s service took place in the Sunday afternoon on a platform erected in the field behind the school, In the earlier days before the School had a permanent platform/stage installed, the school platform used to be dismantled by men from the chapel and erected in the field and after the anniversary it had to be removed and re-erected in the school. I can remember being there with my father while he helped to do this.

Rescorla, 1900

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It was about this time (1943 -1944) that I was persuaded to join Penwithick band by Roy Richards (who later formed Rescorla Band). My organ blowing did not last very long as having learnt to play the piano I was soon persuaded that I should play the piano in Sunday School and the organ in Chapel which I continued to do in conjunction with the other organists mainly Joyce Solomon and Jack Hambly until I left the locality in about 1957 and this is when I really lost contact with Rescorla Chapel.

In the Chapel another great event in the year was Harvest Festival when the chapel was decorated with flowers, fruit and vegetables and the chapel was always full and I can remember forms being brought into the aisle as there were not enough seats for the congregation. After the festival – it may have been the Monday - the fruit and vegetables would be auctioned and this was usually carried out by Arthur Nicholls.

to alternate with John Hawkey, was not so obsessed with battles as John Hawkey! Johnny-Boy’s brother Billy-Boy always looked to me as being straight out of an American Western movie. We used to see him at Tea Treat days when he would look after the boiler for making the tea from the small boiler house at the end of the Sunday School building. Other personalities include Will Ridge, and his sons Preston and Freddy who were always in Sunday school. Freddy was the secretary for many years. I particularly remember him being there on the day that war was declared as he came in with the news just after 11 o’clock.

I can well remember the Band of Hope and Anniversary tea treats, with the stalls of goodies in the road outside the Sunday school. Two of the stall-holders I can remember are Alf Beswetherick, and Mrs Udy, there were probably more but I cannot remember.

The school used to parade around the district before tea with the appropriate banners. Before the war it was accompanied by a local brass band. After the tea the band used to play in the field behind the school.

I believe it used to be usually the Penwithick Silver

charge of blowing that Mr. Whitford was the local preacher. His sermon as usual seemed interminable and after about 20 or 30 minutes, Ron turned to me and said in a loud stage whisper “Brought your tea boy?” Mr Whitford obviously heard this because he turned, gave us a withering stare and rapidly finished the service.

Eric’s Family, 1942

The organ in my early days was hand blown, there was a handle hidden behind a curtain at the right of the organ (looking from the door). Behind this curtain the “organ blower” would pump the handle while keeping an eye on the small weighted indicator showing how much “wind” was in the wind chest of the organ. It was not unknown for the “organ blower” to neglect his duty and let the pressure drop much to the distress of the organist and the choir as the organ wheezed out. This was in later years replaced by an electric pump which, mains failures aside, never let the organist down. During the later years of hand blowing, my cousin Ronald Bray and myself used to perform this duty and I must admit that as young teenagers we had quite a lot of fun but I don’t thing we lost pressure many times. It was on one of these Sundays while Ron and myself were in

John Bray, 1900 Cornish Story Magazine

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Mick Paynter

A Worm’s Folly

Poems in Cornish

Thus Es Et An Anthology of Cornish Dialect

Selected by Les Merton

Cornwall: Language, literature and landscape

As ever, Cornwall this summer was treated to a spectacular display of aerobatics from the Red Arrows team. A highlight of both Falmouth Week and Fowey Royal Regatta which took place just a week later, the unique and highly skilled displays drew in crowds well into the thousands who packed the streets and into popular vantage points, and hoarded favourite views.

Unfortunately, soon after the Cornish displays, the news of the crash and consequent death of dedicated pilot Flt Lt John Egging during Bournemouth Air Festival reached the news. The Red Arrows annual displays are something which much of Cornwall looks forward to, greatly and appreciates.

May thoughts be with the family and team involved, and may we look forward to the Red Arrows team’s appearances of 2012.

www.francisboutle.co.uk

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Kidniav Autumn 2011

Tony Hooper

has worked in the clay industry for much of his adult life. He reminisces about his career, explains changes within the industry and discusses what he believes to be the future of the Clay Country.

Although Tony was to follow in his father’s footsteps, he actually began his working life on farms in the nearby parishes of Roche and Withiel. In 1963, however, he started working for ECLP (English China Clays, Lovering & Pochin) at Gothers Concrete. As he recalls about getting his first job, “when I went to see about the job at Gothers, the manager said, ‘Let’s have a look at your hands’. There were no CVs or any recommendations or anything”.

“

...when I went to see about the job at Gothers, the manager said, ‘Let’s have a look at your hands’.

There were no CVs or any recommendations or anything

Anthony ‘Tony’ Brian Hooper was born at Penhale near Penwithick and went to Treverbyn School. He moved from Penhale to Goonbarrow and then eventually to Gracca after losing both previous homes when they were “buried under the tips”. Tony’s early memories of the Clay industry were of watching workers near his home using a wire rope to remove the burden from the clay.

His father worked in the china clay industry ‘all his 64

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life’ except when he served in the army during the Second World War. When his father, also called Anthony, worked at Penhale he and his fellow workers feared the local ‘captain’ of the clay works. As Tony pointed out, “I suppose it varied from work to work.

If the captain was a choir man and you was a good singer you had a good job. If he was a football-orientated … captain the good footballers had the good jobs. I think there was a lot of that that went on.

Eventually that all went mostly by the board I think”.

The clay industry has traditionally been the main income generator in the St Austell area. As Tony put it, “It was the biggest thing in our lifetime”. The industry may have deteriorated from what it once was but still remains today and is preserved as a strong and fundamental element of Cornish identity.

Tony talks about the future of the industry. “There will always be millions and millions of tons of useful aggregate sand. I think they will want to exploit

“

By Elizabeth Abnett

a ‘dog’s hole’ … and one day they got a locomotive facet down there which is a very small engine powered to run on the same rails as the trolleys now”.

The diverse nature of the industry meant that its products were used in a variety of ways. A good example was in concrete construction with the postwar demand for temporary housing leading to the Cornish Unit houses that came to characterise many council estates in Cornwall and elsewhere. Tony’s work in construction focused more on hospitals, multi-storey car parks and town centres throughout Cornwall and Devon or some places even further away like London. Eventually his work was absorbed into the research and development arm of the industry leading him to work with calcium carbonate products from all over the world including Europe and Asia. “We had raw matrix come even from China to be processed. You never knew what it would be on, it changed from day to day”. Tony eventually took voluntary redundancy in 1994.

Over the span of Tony’s career he saw a shift in technology, which replaced traditional means of mining.

“Even up in North Goonbarrow they started with a horse to pull the jubilee wagons back from the place to where they tipped it into where they called

that as much as ever. I expect some of these places now they’ve grassed over where there are millions of tons of good building material in ten years time if they say we’re going to take away Blackpool tip all together people will object to that”.

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Kidniav Autumn 2011

Kidniav Autumn 2011 What: Cornish Craft Fair When: Friday 23rd September Where: Above Fowey Town Hall, PL23 1AR A variety of stalls selling Cornish-only handmade crafts and produce.

Open from 10am-4pm For more information, call 01726 70483 What: Callington Honey Fair When: Wednesday 5th October Where: Callington, PL17 7BD Run by the Lions Club of Callington, this free event has become one of the largest street fairs in Cornwall. Enjoy a honey fair cream tea in the Town Hall, along with fun fair, stalls, entertainment. Honey produce showing and competitions, children’s art competitions involving local schools and town Criers competition.

Starts at 10am.

For more information contact Callington Lion David Jones on 07875075755 or visit www.callingtonlions.org What: Tre Project: Rediscovering Cornwall and Isles of Scilly through Archive Film When: Saturday 8th October - Saturday 19th November Where: Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro, TR1 2SJ An exhibition created from old cine footage, and contemporary digital work, the Tre Project explores the significance of home for people across Cornwall and the Scillies, (‘Tre’, meaning home/homestead in Cornish).

Open Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-4.45pm (closed on Bank Holidays).

There will be a free lunchtime talk on 20th October, 1-2pm. Tickets must be booked in advance.

For more information call 01872 272 205, visit www.royalcornwallmuseum.org.uk/ email enquiries@royalcornwallmuseum.org.uk 66

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What’s On

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A guide to Autumn events in Cornwall

What: Lowender Peran When: Wednesday 19th - Sunday 23rd October Where: Ponsmere Hotel, Perranporth.

Annual festival celebrating Cornwall’s Celtic connections. Music, dance, workshops, ceilidhs, storytelling, Celtic craft market.

Including a fiddle masterclass with Aidan O’Rourke, whistle masterclass with Brian Finnegan (advanced booking advisable).

For more information call 01872 553413 or visit http://www.lowenderperan.co.uk/

What: National Trust Lecture and lunch: A Lady with more Letters When: Thursday 10th November Where: Trerice As part of the lecture lunch series at Trerice, Historian Steph Haxton gives an informative talk on letter writing through history, sharing her favourite discoveries and their uses in research. Pre-lecture lunch is provided and served at 12.30pm in the barn tearoom. Entrance open at 11.30 am, last entry 12.30pm. Tickets are £16 and booking is essential.

For more information contact Beth Nicholls on 01637 875 404 or visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk

What: Falmouth Oyster Festival When: Thursday 13th - Sunday 16th October Where: Events Square Falmouth

What: Recording the Landscape: CAVA conference When: Saturday 22nd October Where: Cornish Studies Library, Redruth

A celebration of Cornish seafood. Marking the start of the traditional oyster harvesting season, various events will take place over the three days, including live music and entertainment, live cookery demonstrations, and displays of some of Cornwall’s finest sea produce.

Will be opened by guest Tim Anderson, winner of Masterchef 2011.

The 5th annual CAVA conference is being held in Redruth as part of the Cornish Studies Library’s tenth anniversary celebrations.

It explores issues of landscape and identity in Cornwall.

For further details please telephone 01326 371 888 or email cava@exeter.ac.uk

Mostly free un-ticketed event.

For more information contact 0905325434 or visit www.falmouthoysterfestival.co.uk

What: Celebrating 10 Years at the Cornwall Centre When: Tuesday 18th October-Saturday 12th November Where: Cornish Studies Library, Redruth Discover more about the Cornish Studies Library’s treasures at the anniversary exhibition of books, photographs and newspapers.

Opening hours: Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm (closed Wednesdays) and Saturdays 10am to 1pm.

What: Cornwall Film Festival When: Friday 4th-Sunday 6th November Where: Lighthouse Cinema, Newquay The tenth annual festival. A yearly celebration of film-making in Cornwall and worldwide. Various film screenings, film-making and production workshops, industry networking opportunities, live music, and entertainment. Including a surf-focused screening on the 6th at Lusty Glaze, in association with the British Surf Film Festival.

For more information call 01209 204 655, or visit www.cornwallfilmfestival.com/ Cornish Story Magazine

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Kidniav Autumn 2011

‘Years a-gone’: Tea Treats and Chapel Anniversaries in the St Austell area

Bank Holiday Tea Treat at Pentewan

Mac shares a stunning photograph collection Mac Waters is a well-known bard of Gorseth Kernow and a noted collector of old postcards and photographs relating to the Clay Country and other areas of Cornwall. Although he spent his early adult years in the Merchant Navy, he eventually worked for a total of 34 years with ECLP. His story was originally recorded as part of the Cornish Audio Visual Archive’s ‘Capturing the Clay Country’ project in 2009/10.

Recently, however, Cornish Story went back to have a look at Mac’s amazing collection of old photographs and talk with him in-depth on the subject of Tea Treats in mid-Cornwall.

Tea treats started to become popular as social events organised by Methodist Sunday Schools in the nineteenth century. They were usually a common feature of chapel anniversaries throughout Cornwall but in

some of the eastern clay villages, such as Roche and Rescorla, tea treats were also linked to specifically local customs like Snail Creep (see also www.senseof-place.co.uk/Rescorla/teatreat). The archive’s ‘Capturing the Clay Country’ project highlighted the cultural importance of food such as home-made pasties as the traditional ‘crib’ for clay workers. Similarly, there is nostalgia for the days of the famous Tea Treat bun. As Mac recalled: “You’ve heard about the tea treat bun haven’t you?

Or feast bun as they call it. I’ve got some pictures of them with their buns too. It was huge! I’d have been about 7 or 8 or 9 you know. My grandfather said to me ‘ooh can I have a piece of that?’ ‘Hmm, well no!’

We’d eat it all. But what they make now, they’re about half the size they used to be. Or whether as a child you think they’re bigger, maybe it’s looking at things through rose-tinted glasses perhaps.”

Tea treat possibly at Mount Charles

The carnival atmosphere of chapel anniversaries also used to feature stalls (or ‘stannons’ as they were known locally) where you could buy extra treats like sweets or limpets. Mac explained that a stannon was “a table with a canvas awning over it. [I remember] the stannons having toffee apples and nicies, sweets and toffee and nougat.”

Mac’s personal memories of tea treat relate to Mount Charles near St Austell. As a child he would go along to the tea treat field which would also be used for other social events that he attended such as fairs:

Mac Waters

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“The tea treat I remember going to was Mount Charles. I was born St Blazey Gate, and my grandparents lived at Ranelagh Road, Mount Charles. The tea treat field for Mount Charles was [near] the bypass.

Well there’s all houses there now [but] all that was

Leekseed Chapel Feast Tea at St Blazey

Kidniav Autumn 2011

fields all in behind there. As you’re going towards Truro down the bypass, on your right … And it used to be in there, that’s the first place I ever rode on the fairground Hobby horses. They were actually full sized horses with a barley sugar twist chrome pole down through the middle of them and used to sit on them and they used to sort of prance along.”

Pointing to some old photographs in his collection Mac explained that the three Methodist churches in the Mount Charles area would combine to form a joint procession. “They all paraded in their blocks, with their banners. And they would all go and finish up on their own and have their tea treat or whatever they had for their feast, wherever the field was.”

Right: Tea treat buns at Enniscaven Sunday School Centenary in 1944 and Procession at Mount Charles. Below: Sunday School procession at Mount Charles.

Mac’s photographs provide us with a fascinating glimpse into the social life of Cornwall in the past. Cornish Story plans to explore other topics through his unique collection in future issues of the magazine.

Kidniav Autumn 2011

Exploring the Clay Trails The Clay Trails were opened in 2005-as part of an ongoing restoration programme involving Imerys and English Nature, to allow people access to enjoy the unique landscape and to attract wildlife to the land of what the clay industry left behind.

Most of the trails are suitable for horse riding, cycling and electric mobility scooters, and provide opportunities to explore the local landscape, offering unique views of mid-Cornwall. The trails, mainly gravel, are surfaced by recycled mining materials. A community-centred concern, volunteers helped with route maintenance under a scheme set up by Central Cornwall Primary Care Trust, ‘Mobilise.’

The trails are divided into four main routes; The St Blazey trail, the Bugle to Eden trail, The Wheal Martyn trail, the Pentewan trail and the Green Corridor.

The Bugle to Eden trail: Approximately 6km in distance, it starts along Rosevear Road near the clay village of Bugle, and ends at the Eden ProjectEden itself seen as a demonstration of post-mining construction. Car parking space is available at the beginning.

The Wheal Martyn to Eden trail: starts at the Wheal Martyn Museum before moving along Bodmin Road and heading outward from St Austell, again ending at Eden. Slightly longer, approximately 8km, the trail is perhaps harder and less accessible but nonetheless a rewarding experience. Car parking at Wheal Martyn Museum is available. The trail boasts clear views of pits, pools and working clay mines and there are cob picnicking shelters throughout.

The Green Corridor: (3.5km) opened March 2006 to connect St Austell with Wheal Martyn Trails. Approximately 3.5km, it starts at Tremena Gardens St Austell and finishes at China Clay Country Park. The

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path links with the William Cookworthy Bridge. Look out for: Views of old abandoned clay driers, and work chimneys.

The St Blazey trail: This trail connects St Blazey town to Par Beach, ending then where clay has been historically shipped to many parts of the world .and is approximately 5km. This is a walking-only trail, but cycling is possible by taking a route along the parallel road. Look out for iconic clay driers and chimneys.

The Pentewan trail: Approximately 4km, this route takes you along the former railway opened in 1830 to transport clay, tin, and coal from pits to quay at Pentewan Harbour. Starting at London Apprentice, it finishes at the silted-up harbour, and along to the sea.. You can also take a detour and follow footpaths off to King’s Wood. Parking available at the start at London Apprentice and bikes can be hired from Pentewan.

The great thing about the trails is the varied landscape and terrains which they cover. Taking any one trail can lead you over heathland, through woodland, and back out to the sands of the beach.

If you want to take in some of the views and sites of the Clay Country, a good place for a short walk is along Carn Grey, a popular dog-walking spot. A walk Cornish Story Magazine

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Kidniav Autumn 2011 in this area boasts views of the bright turquoise waters of Baal pit, and close-up views of West Carclaze tip. With any walk, as the seasons change the landscape has different things to offer.

As summer now passes, you can expect to see a number of plants and flowers on show. The fantastic thing about nature is its resourcefulness and the capabilities of plants and flowers to spring up wherever suits. Perhaps surprisingly, many flowers and plants thrive on wasteland and areas of disturbed soil. On route of the trails you can expect to see some familiar, but nonetheless charming displays of this, much of which has been introduced as part of an ongoing restoration process. To me, this demonstrates the wonderful ability of nature to adapt and grow out of sparser land.

The Foxglove- ‘ Digitalis purpurea’ Flowering between June and September, Fox gloves cover the banks of many of the clay spots. To many people the fox glove appears regularly and is little out of the ordinary. However, in numbers their tubular, bell statures blanket the pathsides in a bright purple show.

Kidniav Autumn 2011 Flowering between July and September, the Rosebay willowherb often dominates waste ground. An example of a ‘pioneer species’, it is usually the first of plants to colonise a barren area with little competition. Like the foxglove, they are a striking purple colour, with a strong rhubarb coloured stem and tongue-shaped leaves.

Did you know? Due to their pioneering strengths, they were a very familiar site of the London bomb sites of the Second World War, gaining the nickname ‘bombweed.’

Honeysuckle Food for thought Native Americans often collected the early spring shoots and mixed with other greens, before the leaves mature and become bitter tasting. When prepared in the correct way they provide good sources of vitamin C and pro-vitamin A. In Alaska, the plant is used in many sweet products and jellies. Russians often used the leaves as a tea substitute. In fact, as they were exported they became known in Western Europe as Kapor and can still be drunk today, though not commonly.

Foxglove The fox glove likes acidic soils, a mixture of both partial sunlight and deep shade. A salvager, they are often found on sites where the ground has been disturbed, making these areas perfect.

Beautiful yet potentially deadly, the roots, sap, seeds and flowers and leaves are all poisonous even when dried. A single fox glove can produce over a million seeds.

However, the drug digitalis was originally sourced from it, ‘digitalis’ was extracted from the plant and used in medicine for regulating pulse, such as epilepsy.

Hemlock

Did you know? In the past, many people painted crosses on their front doors to keep evil spirits away.

Hemlock – ‘Conium Maculatum’ White, lacy, and doily-like, Hemlock appears a very inviting flower. However, all parts are very poisonous and can be deadly, though once dried, the strength is reduced. In ancient Greece, Hemlock was used to poison condemned prisoners - and in fact was the cause of death of Socrates. However, the Greeks and Persians both used it as a sedative as well as an aid to problems such as arthritis. But the line between life aid and death aid was so fine, it would very often lead to death. Hemlock prefers damper areas, look out for it near to streams and pools along the trails.

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Rosebay willowherb - Chamerion angustifolium Known as Great Willow-herb (Canada) or Fireweed (mainly North America). Now widespread in some areas, in the eighteenth century they were considered very rare. Though perhaps coincidental, sudden growth occurred during the expansion of the railway network and therefore more disturbed soil.

Honeysuckle- Lonicera periclymenum Although very attractive, Honeysuckle is perhaps most identifiable by the sweet scent, of its bell-shaped flowers, which also produce an edible nectar. These flowers are noticeably white, but become yellow when pollinated and flower from June to September.

Honeysuckle is often found in many herbal medicines, providing relief from coughs.

Bramble

Did you know? Honeysuckle is actually Shakespeare’s ‘luscious woodbine’ in a Midsummer Night’s dream.

Bramble Plant- Rubus fruticosus Brambles, also known to dominate wasteland, are common along the hedges of much of the trails. With uninviting prickly stems and hairy leaves, they are often unpopular, but as time goes on, blackberries ripen and provide a popular fruit, particularly with birds such as blackbirds.

Interestingly, bramble bushes do not flower or provide fruit until its second year of growth.

Did you know? Bramble stems have been used traditionally as binding material in basketry and other crafting.

Bell Heather- Erica Cinerea Flowers July to August. Likes dry heath ground. Used in home-made tea, flavouring ale, fire fuel, thatching material, bedding, bundled to make brooms and thatched roofs, wound to make rope materials, repair holes in roads etc. It grows up to 60 centimetres and is pollinated by bumblebees.

Bell Heather

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Viv Caust interview

By Ruth Collins Viv Caust has lived in mid-Cornwall all his life. Born in Fowey, he later married and moved to St Austell where he worked as a self-employed haulage contractor pulling clay from the dries around Par Harbour.

When asked what kind of images come to mind when thinking about the Clay Country, Viv immediately talks about the clay tips, “from the bus or the train, you’d see what we call the Cornish Alps which is nearly all gone now”.

Some of his earliest recollections of the clay industry are of the boats that he would watch coming into the harbours, “living in Fowey you’d see the boats coming into the docks to load the china clay. You’d see them going down to the big boats coming in. I think my earliest recollections must be the big boats … which were the Clan Line that would come in and load for Australia way. I remember them coming in”.

Viv remembers some of his earliest work in the clay industry, working in haulage he had his own lorry and would be responsible for picking up the byproducts from the china clay industry, “the sand and the blocks are all by-products of the clay trade and I would take that to different people. Then I got on to shipping clay”.

Viv and his wife Audrey talk about Par Harbour, which was once the busiest port in the china clay area. Viv remembers, “I think some of the first clay I shipped was from Bodmin Road which was mined up on Bodmin Moor, and taken down to Par”. They remember how the harbour at Par would always be bustling with people, as well as boats. Audrey reminisces, “I used to spend a lot of time out there on the beach as a child and we used to love to count the boats on the water – all the clay boats. There are lovely memories there. Par Harbour was buzzing then”. Since the decline of the china clay industry 74

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though, Viv describes how Par Harbour is no longer the place it used to be - “you might see a fishing boat out there, and that’s it. Another year or two, you won’t get a boat in there. It’s sad really”.

Talking about what they thought made a typical clay village, and what they thought of when they remembered growing up, Viv and Audrey agree that the Chapel played a huge role in the clay communities.

As she explains, “everybody went to the chapel, everything went on at the chapel - that was our entertainment. We went there almost every night, there was always something – the choir and prayer meetings and all such things. The feast day, they loved the feast day and we’d be very much involved in that, and they’d put on concerts in the chapel.”

Where the china clay industry once covered the midCornwall landscape, with pits and quarries that leave a constant reminder of the area’s mining past, today some of the pits with their bright blue water and lush vegetation create striking scenery and a beautiful place to visit. For Viv, Blackpool Pit is one of his favourite places to take friends and visitors to this part of the country, as well as to spend time himself, “if we’ve got friends we take them up that way and look into it - it’s a really beautiful view.”

Viv admires the landscape work by the industry in recent years stating that “I’m glad to see they are putting back some of the disused places where they tipped the burden, they spread out and they landscape. That was ECLP which done a lot of that in their landscaping department and they done a lot of work on it and especially up Singlerose, where right up the top you’ve got a beautiful view up there – I recommend anybody that comes here to drive up there and look right around. It’s really nice up there,” says Viv. Audrey adds, “we’ve even taken our fish and chips up there and looked out over at the view and watched the sheep up there, we do enjoy that”.

Photography by Heloise Trott

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Kidniav Autumn 2011

Uranium Mining at St Ives

“The streets of London may be paved with gold, but the streets of St Ives are paved with Uranium and Radium - far more precious metals”

BY GEORGE CARE So Cyril Noall wrote on 18 October 1957 when there was tremendous enthusiasm for nuclear power. This is tacitly implied in his St Ives Times and Echo article in which he explained how potentially valuable materials had been spread onto the streets heedlessly by miners.

Waste from the Trenwith Mine was used for road surfacing in St Ives in the mid 1800s. Later, by 1910 there was such enthusiasm for the beneficial effects of radium that Tregenna Castle was being rumoured as a venue for a radium spa. We still sometimes use Radox in our baths, a name which derives from radium salts; indeed x-ray machines were common in the shoe shops to test shoe fittings in the 1950s when Noall was writing. Local newspapers used to boast about the high UV index in St Ives and in other Cornish resorts. Future generations may similarly, perhaps, have reservations about our extensive use of mobile phones.

The system of tunnels of Wheal Trenwith lies buried under Trenwith Car Park above St Ives. Known to have been already at work in 1792; there are written records dating from 1825. The main shafts were Victory, Berriman’s, Old Sump, Wills, Highburrow, Millet’s, Engine, Dog and Harvey’s Shafts. The mine produced copper mainly between 1845 and 76

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1863, (some 13,080 tons of copper ore between 1825 and 1856 alone), tin in 1856–57, 1863, and 1905, as well as during the reworking of 1912–13.

Wheal Trenwith also produced some lead from plumbago and most interestingly the uranium ore, pitchblende, between 1909 and 1913 when it was worked by British Radium Co and also between 1917 and 1920.

Morton-Nance thought the name Trenwith derived from two Cornish words; ‘Tre’ (a hamlet) and ‘enwyth’ (elm-trees). There is a reference to Trenwit manor in the Doomsday book; it was said to belong to Sitric the Abbot in the time of Edward the Confessor, having previously belonged to the Earl of Cornwall and his “villeins”. The manor also called “Trenuwit” in the Exeter version of Doomsday, was given

Kidniav Autumn 2011 by the Earl to John de Beaufort, the son of John of Gaunt and stayed in the family until the attainder of Edmund Beaufort, Earl of Somerset in 1471. Attainder usually refers to the state a prisoner enters once a death sentence, usually for treason, had been issued; the state of being stripped of all civil rights.

Edmund and his younger brother had fallen in the battle of Tewkesbury and were buried at the Abbey there. With the death of Edmund and John, the House of Beaufort was extinct in the male line.

Although the manor appears to have been destroyed, the lands reserved for the Lord’s use, the barton, became the property of a family appropriately called Bailiff. The word barton derives from the Old English beretūn; run by a hind or farm manager rather than a tenant farmer. The Bailiff family then took the surname Trenwith but they died out in 1798 with the death of Rebecca Trenwith.

However, it was not until the great Cornish geologist William Jory Henwood set to work in 1843 that the oxide of Uranium present in the copious black mineral, pitchblende, was actually discovered at Wheal Trenwith. In that same year Henwood went to Brazil to take charge of the Gongo Soco Mines. From Brazil he travelled to India in 1855 to report on deposits in Kumaon and Gurhwal in North Western India.

He finally retired from active life in 1858, spending his latter years in Penzance. In 1869 he was elected President of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, to which he communicated numerous papers and addresses. The discovery of the pitchblende in what was previously thought to be black copper ore was essentially due to the thorough analytical work of a Mr Mitchell of Calenick who found it mixed in with the metal Titanium. Below is an extract from a 1907 text on the Geology of Land’s End.

The first document in which Wheal Trenwith is named is dated 1832 and is in the form of a transaction between the owners which included the wellknown and influential Chellew family and the St Ives

Borough or Corporation. This appears to give details of the early workings which included water-powered grist mills one of which was possibly situated behind The Royal Cinema since the mine workings extended this far. It is to be found in the Booke of Recorde Volume 2 (1638-1838) of the St Ives Corporation transcribed by Mr Wescott, Town Clark.

Pitchblende is now also known as Uraninite and the etymological origin of the former suggests that it was in fact black as pitch, hence its confusion with some copper ores and blende is a term used by German miners to denote minerals whose density suggested a high metal content. It had been identified in what is now the Czech Republic as long ago as 1727. The ore contained radioactive Uranium as well as Actinium decay products including lead, radium, and polonium, with a short half life of 140 days, and helium. High grade Uranium ore is now generally mined in the Congo and in Canada. As early as 1909 King Edward VII was considering granting a charter

Left: An extract revealing valuable minerals in St Ives Cornish Story Magazine

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An illustration showing St Ives mine workings

to establish a Royal Radium Institute which included provision for using radium as a therapy against cancer. The council included the discoverer of the electron, Sir J. J Thomson from Cambridge, the President of the Royal College of Surgeons and Sir William Ramsay, famous for the discovery and identification with Lord Rayleigh of the noble gases, including Helium using spectroscopy. In the following year he also identified Radon. Ramsay was to take a close personal interest in the Trenwith Mine mentioned in The Times on 28th January; the same article in which the setting up of the British Radium Institute was announced. At this time the World’s largest source of Radium was to be found in Bohemia and considered so valuable that its export was forbidden by the Austro-Hungarian government.

Ramsay speaking to the Daily Express in May 1909

Kidniav Autumn 2011

had great hopes which he derived from considering the pieces of pitchblende picked from, what he termed, the rubbish-heap mine of Trenwith. He stated, ”every ton of the ore might be expected to yield a quarter gramme of radium, that is about £2500 worth at present prices; and that a yield of two-thirds, at present prices more than £100 000 worth, might be looked for annually in the near future.” Soon Ramsay developed an elaborate but highly efficient process to isolate the radium and two companies were formed, the British Radium Corporation Ltd and St Ives Consolidated Mines Ltd. Pitchblende was considered more valuable than “gold quartz of Johannesburg or the blue ground of diamond mines.” The workings in the mine were to extend over five miles and it was hoped to greatly benefit local employment.

Consolidated Mines reopened operations at Consols, Giew and Rosewall and benefited from a large investment by German interests who provided much needed investment for machinery. Cedric Appleby, a local historian, informed me in regard to the St Austell area that, “I think there is a folk memory of a German who was involved with uranium and drove one of the first cars in the area. He terrified the inhabitants of Bugle by flying into a rage when his car had a mishap”. Yet despite Ramsay’s process of extracting radium, its uses in medicine and the radioactive decay sequences were still unclear and certainly the outbreak of the First World War put

an end to profitable production. On a personal level Ramsay had previously had a close relationship with Germany since his son had studied there. In addition, he was a personal friend of his fellow Nobel chemistry laureate Emil Fischer (1852–1919), but the outbreak of war meant that they sadly now became enemies. In any event although TH North’s company in Grampound was successful at mining Uranium production, the last shaft in St Ives at Giew was shut down by 1922.

In conclusion, to put Trenwith in context retrospectively, it is worth quoting an article in The Times announcing the discovery by amateur prospectors on 5th May 1955 of uranium in Scotland that puts the matter in perspective. The paper’s Science correspondent commented that, “There are many records of minor finds of Uranium in Cornwall……..One Cornish Mine, South Terras near St Austell …..had a total output of 70 to 100 tons of Uranium Oxide. More typical of Cornish sources, however, was Trenwith Mine in St Ives. This although directed by no lesser person than Sir William Ramsay, yielded only five tons during five years of working up to 1917“.

Witty, urbane and a talented linguist as well as an ex-

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pert experimentalist who refined glass-blowing, Sir William did not have as good a record as an advisor to entrepreneurs as he had in chemistry. In 1905 he had advised a company based on the coast, Industrial and Engineering Trust Ltd on the process of extracting gold from seawater, The Company failed and no gold was extracted. He is remembered for identifying Radon, which is responsible for the majority of the public exposure to ionizing radiation, high levels of which are present in the Duchy.

Article sources Clement Reid, Sir John Smith Flett, B. S. N. Wilkinson, Ernest Dixon, William Pollard, Donald Alexander MacAlister, The Geology of the Land’s End District H.M. Stationary Office, 1907. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?ty pe=1&fid=5275520&jid=GEO&volumeId=2&issueId=09& aid=5275512 http://www.cornwallinfocus.co.uk/history/trenwith.php http://chemeducator.org/sbibs/s0009006/ spapers/960378gk.htm

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Crowning the Sand Castle champions of St Ives

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The words of Jack Clemo, ‘Clay Fairy’ -

July’s Tregenna Sand Castle competition, met great expectations. Families and groups armed with bucket and spades gathered at Porthminster beach to join in, and despite drizzly conditions, there was a great turnout with 12 teams participating and over £230 raised for St. Ives Surf Lifesaving Club.

“Best sandcastle” winners were six year old Rachael Kenyon and friend who were presented with their prize - a Pirate Puppet and Treasure Chest, by the Mayor of St. Ives and Sheila Parker from Tregenna Castle. The chest, along with a free swim at Tregenna Castle was kindly donated by Fabulous Kids.

Best sandcastle winner

Team Crabsters

Chair of St. Ives Surf Lifesaving Club is particularly grateful and said “Thanks to the money raised by local businesses such as Tregenna Castle, we can continue to offer excellent lifesaving tuition to our members.”

“...The dumps are fairy castles now “Team Crabsters” were triumphant in the “Beat the Tide/ Last Team Standing” category. As the last team stood proudly on their castle, untouched by the incoming tide, they were awarded an “I Should Coco” chocolate sand castle trophy, hand-made by local chocolatiers ‘I Should Coco,’ along with a Sunday roast voucher for six at Tregenna Castle.

The day was enjoyed by both locals and visitors alike, and funds raised will go a long way. David Bonar, 80

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Which you have climbed with me; they glow With dancing warmth your footstep leave; The tide comes in!

The dazzling palpitations heave...”

Photograph courtesy of Heloise Trott

For more information about the Club, visit http://www.stivesslsc.com/ Cornish Story Magazine

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