June 14 1942: the last day to register for the egg ration.

Long, long before the train from London bearing the evacuee children was due to arrive every available vantage point overlooking the station was crowded with spectators. ..... There was an air of expectancy about, a feeling of curiosity mingled with sympathy for these children sent so far from their own firesides.

Penzance has always been a good venue, what with the excellent trains and all the West Penwith farmers. The 1912 attendance of 21,454 hasn’t been bettered by any show since.....

On 11^th June 1787 some of the women in Ludgvan met at the home of local blacksmith, William Glasson, to set up a Female Friendly Society - their own self-help organisation for the mutual relief of its members in old age, sickness and infirmity

The electors of St Ives in the 1820s would have been perplexed by the lack of enthusiasm of today's electorate……………

....at Trereiffe they were practically neck and neck, Ford just leading. Up Toltuft hill Jasper, who was the strongest in this work, passed Ford, but the latter regained the lead when the downhill work started again, and a desperate finish resulted. 

‘If Mr Walter Langley did not exactly invent Newlyn’, wrote a columnist in the Cornishman, on October 10, 1889, ‘he was the first to make it famous when he migrated from the Midlands.’

William Maddern Eddy, Private 54172 Durham Light Infantry, son of John and Constance Eddy of Carnyorth. Born 1897, missing presumed dead 7 June 1917. 

The first modern census of the UK was taken on Sunday 6 June 1841. Four national census enumerations had been taken previously in 1801, 1811, 1821 and 1831 but these had been purely numeric, except where names were collected locally as in St Hilary in 1801..............

Alderman Thomas has masterminded the whole enterprise. They’ve gone for luxury and comfort.

Cycling can be a dangerous business when Ludgvan's on your route....

Penzance: the magistrates are busy. In fact so busy that the Mayor was taken ill yesterday, and had to go home. What’s been happening? Well, it’s the new pre-fabs they’re building over at New Street. Or supposed to be building.

The news came into Penzance from London, yesterday evening – the end of a sleepy Sunday afternoon. When the telegram arrived at the Post Office, the operator said it was better than being handed a five pound note. The news was bound for the Telegraph offices in Chapel Street, and was posted up outside. 

The St Erth to St Ives branchline was the last new broad gauge line to be built in Britain and celebrates its 140th anniversary this year (2017).

George V’s silver jubilee is the big event of May 1935, and the opening of the already-floodlit Pool three weeks later is to be the central part of Penzance’s celebrations...

Greeting to Buffalo Bill: From the far Wild West to the Western Wilds

Buried in Geneva, commemorated in Westminster Abbey, remembered in Penzance. Sir Humphry Davy died far from home and while he was esteemed by his peers at the Royal Society he was, perhaps, most fondly remembered by the colliers of Britain whose working lives were rendered much safer by the Davy Lamp.

Long days at sea, fat wads of cash, plentiful booze, a cultural misunderstanding of two and an exchange with the boys in blue. Fish, fight and copper?

The miners from the western mines assembled at Penzance to endeavour to get corn and flour sold to them at a reduced rate. John Tregerthen Short, St Ives 27 May 1847

Empire Day 1916 - there is to be a ceremony in Penzance but, at the insistence of Richard Foster Bolitho, it will be unpublicised and winessed only be a few passers-by......

Spring 1916 but not a lot to smile about with the war grinding on and on and the casualty lists growing longer and longer. But this after, in St John's Hall, Mrs Tupper will be openig the Patriotic Housekeeping Exhibition........

What a scene the field presented! Immense crowds everywhere; and all pleased, all delighted. A lovely day, a splendid ceremony……..”

There have been mutterings – and at times official complaints – for some time about railway freight charges. And as if that isn’t enough, trains to the north are slow, and the railway companies don’t seem to appreciate the need to catch the market....

Reinhold Angerstein was considered to be an industrial spy, no surprise then that he visited Cornwall in 1754 and made a special point of a visit to St Just.

The shareholders of Crysede Ltd have every reason to be pleased. Their first annual meeting has been held today, and the story is one of enterprise and hard work rewarded; of good design finding favour; of success.

On 19 May 1835 John Tregerthen Short (JTS) wrote in his diary, “The foundation of the Gas Works was laid by Camborne masons, the St Ives masons having demanded one-third more money to carry out the work.”

It is rumoured that Professor Albert Eistein, famous as the exponent of the space-time theory, is coming to live at Land's End.

Numerous pictures on the Internet claim to show the remains of the schooner Jeune Hortense exposed on Long Rock beach. Her skeleton is occasionally exposed by storms, or is it?

They came in cars from Newquay, Perranporth, Redruth, Camborne, Hayle, St Ives and scores of other places………. A sight that will probably never be repeated….. (The Cornishman 21 May 1936)

At 9.30am the Ono, of St Ives, captain Thomas Brooking Williams, with eighty-two emigrants, sailed for Quebec. - John Tregerthen Short in his diary for 14 May 1849

Sir Rose Price elected President of the new Penzance Library, Dr Forbes as Honorary Librarian.

His Majesty driven off by house surgeon at the West Cornwall Hospital. Read all about it!

Just as turnpikes were being superseded elsewhere, St Just was finally connected to the rest of the country by one of these new fangled roads, enabled by a Parliamentary bill which received its third reading on 11 May 1863.

In the PLHG publication Women of West Cornwall Jean Nankervis wrote on Zennor Women and Wills 1600-1750. What Jean was looking for was evidence of how men treated the women in their families.....

Hear ye, hear ye. From this day forth the Common Seal of the Borough of Penzance shall be the head of John the Baptist, on a platter, as demanded by Salome of King Herod II - nice pun terrible association.......

The water was brought into the town this day. The expense was defrayed by public subscription – Mr Stephens, of Tregenna, giving £100 and Mr Praed £100. There are eight public fountains. To celebrate the event a band of music went round the town, followed by a great concourse of people. John Tregerthen Short, 8 May 1843 in his diary.

Son of a famous father, traveller, cowboy, lumberjack, soldier, writer and the man credited with creating the inspiration for Poldark – Crosbie Garstin, born Penzance 7 May 1887……...

In 1882 it seems to have been more acceptable to use a horsewhip on a woman than to abuse a horse or donkey.......

In his diary entry for 7 July 1821 John Tregerthen Short of St Ives wrote, “The news reached St. Ives of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte at St. Helena on May 6th.” He was a day out on the date but……..

It's the late 19th century, mining in west Cornwall is in a terrible depression. Many men have left the county and some of those who remain and in work are not being paid.......

The groom is “a sturdy youngster of eighty-six”. You may picture the scene: rehearse the familiar story. Chaucer’s January and May; the folk song chorus of “girls, when you’re young, never wed an old man”.

What could be a more delightful to a town with aspirations to become a sought-after watering place, than a commodious bathing machine?

On May day 1964 the helicopter service to Scilly began to operate. The helicopters replaced De Havilland Rapide bi-planes and initially operated from Land's End airfield, St Just.........

Picture this: three little children playing outside at Tregeseal. Imagine the spring sunshine, the usual childish boasts and claims - and that sense of limitless possibility and freedom, the peculiar quality of those moments in early childhood when no grown-ups are about................

April 1901 and the Penwith boys and their mates from Hayle and Helston are coming home from South Africa........ well nearly, the train is pulling into Bodmin!

 Christopher Hawkins of Trewinnard, St Erth, died on 28 April 1767. He'd been born in Cornwall in about 1694...........

On 27^th April 1864 not one, but three foundation stones were laid to start the building of the Penzance Public Buildings.........

On April 2 1832 the St Ives Chronicler, aka John Tregerthen Short (JTS), wrote in his diary that the demolition of the old market house had begun. He noted that the old building had been constructed in 1490......