Charles Campbell Ross: Scoundrel, Fantasist or Fool?

Tin dressing floors could be hazardous places and required an adult attitude from the children and young people who provided much of the work-force......

High on the windswept moors of West Penwith isolated Ding Dong Mine has accumulated its share of myth and legend. So old it was commonly believed that Christ had been there as a boy, so deep you could hear Australian church bells if you listened by one of the many shafts. But Ding Dong would not get any deeper............

Saturday nights: you never know what might happen. And last night, up at Polteggan Farm Heamoor, things were definitely getting lively.

Father absent at sea and mother mother unable to cope and taking solace in the bottle, it was never going to be easy for the Yates children.........

Blasting in mines was a dangerous business, especially if Bickford's safety fuse was not being used.........

The Wesley brothers visited St Just on more than 30 occasions but John Wesley's encounter with Squire Stephen Usticke of Botallack is one of the more bizarre events to arise from these frequent visitations of west Cornwall.....

St Ives Coastguards had a busy time in July 1831 seizing nearly 450 tubs of brandy and gin and assorted other contraband......

The stranding of whales on Long Rock beach in 1911 revealed conflicting attitudes in the Cornwall of the time, a place still heavilt dependant upon harvesting the sea........

Don’t mention Trafalgar, and certainly don’t mention De Ruyter burning Chatham. For here we present: the Western Union Fleet....

St Peter’s Feast Day, June 29, 1885. Charles Campbell Ross, MP for St Ives, laid the foundation stone of the new South Pier at Newlyn.

At one o’clock the doors of the new Guildhall, Corn and Shamble-markets were thrown open for the Great Dinner provided by public subscription. More than 1,000 people sat down to a meal of “good old English fare” including the beef Penzance market was famous for.....

Michael Joseph, a blacksmith from St Keverne on the Lizard, one of the leaders of the Cornish Rebellion of 1497, is reputed to have said on his way to his execution that he would have ‘a name perpetual and a fame permanent and immortal’.

The convinced, curious, the frankly sceptical:  all have gathered today at Tregeseal to listen to a report of the latest antiquarian enquiries based upon the work of Sir Norman Lockyer.

It is not easy to find any document from almost 700 years ago but Penzance is fortunate in that one is held in the National Archives of today’s date. It describes the property of Henry Tyes, who held the manor of Alverton.

Parish of Pendeen was created by the tin and copper mining industry, its church was created by the people of the industry and the human cost of the industry is cut into the stones in the graveyard which surrounds the church.

As night fell, youths gathered, “vainly endeavouring to assume a very careless air” but with “an anxious manner” and “mysterious protuberances” beneath their coats......

The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 was quickly followed by the restoration of the stannaries and a new Lord Warden. 

Saturday afternoon, and the season’s begun. Down at the Jubilee Pool, in a match between the two county champion teams, we’ve had the better of Devonport. The score..........

On board the Febrero, a Spaniard out of Bermeo bound for Newport are 23 crew including: the cook, Roque Iriarte, a small, moustachioed youth of 20 who has worked at sea for the past few months; and the chief engineer, Jose Espinoso, in the pockets of his blue trousers a lottery ticket............

who was the unfortunate Richard White who was buried in 1840?

On 18^th June 1817 a meeting was held at the Guildhall in Penzance, chaired by the High Sheriff - Mr Harris of Kenegie, to consider how to help the widows and orphans of the 14 fishermen on “two mackrell boats” who had drowned in a great storm on 13^th June.

after six weeks of money hunting we are informed at a meeting of the Committee that only sixty pounds have been raised and that several leading hotel keepers …….. have, with extreme munificence, contributed the extraordinarily large sum of ten shillings.....

The new pier, completed in 1813, represented an extension of 150 feet which significantly increased the capacity of the harbour but not all vessels wished to pay the increased dues...................

At the Baptist Church, the Reverend Alfred Bird does not look a happy man. To be honest, the congregation perhaps reflect, he hasn’t looked happy for quite a while. But here he is in the pulpit – and what is he saying?