Cornwall

Yesterday

Tanya Gold

Cornwall’s gypsies face eviction

‘Don’t use our real names,’ says the teenage gypsy. ‘Other gypsies will laugh at us.’ Even in a tracksuit, the girl is crazy beautiful, and strangely remote. She is talking to me because her mother, whom I call Susan, has been ordered to remove her caravans from a council site in the West Country. If Susan, mother of five, and carer to two grandchildren, is evicted by Cornwall council, her family will be scattered to the winds. It’s a peculiarly awful fate for gypsies. They are tribal, and family is everything to them. It is the first eviction of a gypsy from a council site in this county. The site

Tuesday

Michael Arditti

A quest for retribution: Fire, by John Boyne, reviewed

At the end of John Boyne’s novel Earth, Evan Keogh, a conscience-stricken young footballer, hands evidence of his connivance in a rape to the police. Two years earlier, he and his teammate Robbie had been found innocent of the charge by a jury, whose foreperson was Dr Freya Petrus. Freya, a consultant in a hospital burns unit, becomes the protagonist of Fire, the third of Boyne’s Elements quartet. Like its predecessors, the novel is dominated by issues of aberrant sexuality. As a 12-year-old girl on a summer holiday in Cornwall, Freya was first raped and then buried alive in a sadistic ritual by 14-year-old twins, Arthur and Pascoe. Once freed,

Thursday

Tanya Gold

Curiously understated: Porthminster Kitchen reviewed

Porthminster Kitchen sits above Warren’s Bakery on St Ives Harbour, like a paradigm of the British class system in food. This happens everywhere, but it is particularly pronounced in St Ives, which is unlucky enough to be a site of pilgrimage for Virginia Woolf addicts – her childhood holiday home sits above the town, her lighthouse is on the bay – and other feckless Londoners. But the balance is long lost. Since the Tate Gallery arrived in 1993, Cornish natives, who used to live alongside artists – Barbara Hepworth, Patrick Heron – have left the old town (‘downalong’). It is now a wonky Disneyland of holiday cottages with stupid names

Sunday

Andrew Watts

How serious is Cornish nationalism?

The Office for National Statistics has been publishing interesting insights from the last census – perhaps to counter the bad press that censuses get at this time of year, forcing pregnant Jewish women to travel to municipalities in the West Bank – and its latest release shows that 18.1 per cent of people in Cornwall identify as ‘Cornish’.  Whether as their national identity, ethnic group or, in a tiny fraction of cases, their main language, this is an increase from 13.8 per cent in the last census, in 2011. All of these were write-in responses – despite a campaign by councillors and local MPs in Cornwall, there was no Cornish tick-box – and

Thursday

Fergus Butler-Gallie

Did Jesus visit Cornwall?

I remember the ephemera at the back of St Barnabas. The church stands in Oxford’s suburb of Jericho, near the University Press. It had proper church clutter: stumps of candles, dogeared pamphlets and reminders of long gone diocesan initiatives. St Barnabas – a beautiful Italianate monstrosity, plonked by the high Victorians, with their classic tact, amid a cluster of crabby little houses, once slums but now worth millions – is good at collecting this stuff. In the sacristy is a vestment made from the coronation hangings of Tsar Nicholas II, smuggled out of Petrograd at the revolution; now the double-headed eagle peeps through the incense, delighting porters, dons and motor

Jeremy Clarke

Modern capitalism has failed my son

A light was on in the caravan site office so I went over to try and buy a gas canister. Come Easter the little Cornish seaside resort will be heaving. Now a stiff north wind blew in off the sea and it felt like the dregs of winter still. The site office was shut but a woman came out and said she was expecting a delivery tomorrow but she didn’t know yet how much a canister would cost. Nor did she know of anywhere open where we could get something to eat. She thought there might be a place down by the beach. Nobody had managed to get any seasonal

Monday

Sean Thomas

How King Charles saved Cornwall

I’m a 30th generation Cornishman. I’m so Cornish my mum can make Cornish pasties blindfolded, my maternal grandmother was employed aged nine to break rocks in a Cornish tin mine (she was a ‘bal maiden’), and my second cousins founded Cornish Solidarity, which is the very-lightly-armed wing of Mebyon Kernow (the Cornish Plaid Cymru). Nonetheless my visits to the county are infrequent, probably because I am not overly fond of rain.  However, on my most recent visit I noticed that something in Cornwall has changed. Perhaps I noticed it because I only go down to the see the folks once or twice a year, so I am made suddenly aware

Tuesday

Joanna Rossiter

How the royals do Cornwall

There was arguably no better advocate for holidaying in Britain than Queen Elizabeth II. Her Majesty loved to spend her summers in Scotland, having stayed at Balmoral each August since she was a girl. But could the next generation of royals favour the warmer climes of Cornwall over chilly Scotland? It certainly seems so. After Charles became King, William inherited the Duchy of Cornwall estate from his father. Not only is he now responsible for the Duchy’s extensive portfolio of Cornish property and farmland but he also inherits the 500-year-old Restormel Manor in the heart of Cornwall. Situated only a few miles from the house that inspired Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, it

Thursday

Andrew Watts

We do love to be beside the seaside

In the garden of my house in Cornwall there is a smooth granite stone about the size and shape of a goodly pumpkin. In the middle, where the stalk would be, there is a hole filled with rusting iron. The day I moved in, a neighbour told me that the hole was drilled and filled with molten iron to attach a hook, long since rusted away, to make a ‘sinking stone’. Smuggled cargo could be submerged just off shore if there were any danger of meeting King George’s men, to be harvested when the coast was clear. About a year later, another Cornish neighbour saw it and told me that,

Monday

Jacob Little

Where to escape the crowds in Cornwall and Devon

The wild, rugged beauty of the far southwestern tip of the UK needs no introduction. The appeal of life by the sea is at fever pitch. Nowhere in the UK boasts quite the same breadth or quantity of excellent, award winning beaches – picturesque stretches of sand, coves and swimming spots can be found peppered up and down the coastline. Keeping away from the crowds is increasingly difficult, but it can be done. In this list of some of the best beaches in Devon and Cornwall, we’ve focused on a good balance between accessibility and facilities, and those more secluded beaches that require a little more effort to get to.

Thursday

Chloë Ashby

Messy family matters: Bad Relations, by Cressida Connolly, reviewed

Cressida Connolly’s new novel begins with a couple of endings. It’s spring 1855, and on the battlefields of the Crimea William Gale is mourning the deaths of his brother Algernon and his friend Mr Lockwood. He writes to his wife Alice, who back home has befriended the progressive Dr Nolan, and asks her to call on Mrs Lockwood in Cheltenham. Upon returning from the war a medalled hero, William isn’t himself, and after meeting the ‘good lady’ widow and her two little girls, Molly and Kitty, he makes a rash decision that reverberates across generations. It’s hard not to play favourites with a novel divided into three fairly distinct parts,

Wednesday

Liz Rowlinson

The coastal boltholes that rival Cornwall

May Day is behind us, the summer season approaching, and already the tensions between second homeowners and locals in Cornish seaside towns have been gleefully reported by the tabloid press. Visit Cornwall is considering a register of second homes while councils are proposing a tax on empty properties. House prices have gone up by an average of 28 per cent across Cornwall since the pandemic began, according to the Land Registry, so is it time to look elsewhere for a coastal bolt hole? The British coastline is at least 1,200km long so there are some great alternatives, although the perennial favourites can get just as ‘overrun’ as the likes of St

Wednesday

Tanya Gold

The social cost of Cornwall’s second home boom

Cornwall has a boast this week and it has nothing to do with ice-cream or tides: we have made more than 2000 offers to house Ukrainian refugees. I am not surprised. The duchy is filled with second homes, and they are very often empty. Harboursides are dark in winter and the old town in St Ives is no more than a monied ghetto now. Cornwall is now more of a business than a place, with an owner and a servant class Since the war began it is often said that it is easier to offer refuge to those closest to you. The Polish don’t want Syrians, for instance, but they

Thursday

Olivia Potts

What makes a pasty Cornish?

This week, world leaders are doing what countless Brits do every summer: unpacking their bags in a charming corner of Cornwall. The G7 summit — Joe Biden’s first, and Angela Merkel’s last — is taking place in the resort town of Carbis Bay, a stone’s throw from St Ives. Between the speeches and the roundtables, will the world leaders find time to tuck into Cornwall’s proudest and most popular export, the Cornish pasty? Boris Johnson talked about the region’s industrial history in the run-up to the event: ‘Two hundred years ago Cornwall’s tin and copper mines were at the heart of the UK’s industrial revolution and this summer Cornwall will

Andrew Watts

A second home in Cornwall is nothing to be proud of

Last week there was a public toilet for sale on the coast of Cornwall. The Kent-based auctioneer called it ‘an exciting and rare opportunity’, although its video tour of the property did not even undo the padlock on the security door. It was on the market for £20,000, which was a bargain — the last exciting and rare toilet block to be auctioned in Cornwall went for five times its asking price, even though it didn’t have as nice a view. It did, however, have windows. It’s undeniable that the property market in Cornwall is overheating. The backlash to the toilet auction was such that it was withdrawn from sale,

Monday

Jacob Little

How to try Cornwall’s new 150-mile cycle route

With many people having taken up cycling during lockdown, the West Kernow Way is bound to prove popular this summer. A new initiative from Cycling UK, it’s one that I’m surprised hasn’t come sooner. This part of the world is awash with bridleways, cycle-able terrain and quiet backcountry roads suited to bikes. It’s also part of the world best explored slowly – drive past this landscape without stopping at the ruins, the pubs and the hamlets and you’re missing a fundamental part of what makes this area of Cornwall special. It’s set to be a popular route, intended to be covered over four days. So what are the highlights and where should you

Monday

Steerpike

Jon Lansman finally gets a left victory

While the Conservatives in Cornwall may celebrate winning control of the council in last week’s election, they had one notable setback: Liberal Democrat Thalia Marrington won the Mousehole, Newlyn and St Buryan division, which has been Tory for as long as anyone can remember. What did it take for the Tories to lose England’s biggest fishing port? According to those sages at the Guardian it was the Cornish fishing vote turning against the government after the Brexit deal. Others argue that the traditional rivalry between farmers and fishermen means they were never going to vote for a farmer like William Bolitho.  Bolitho is a name that carries brand recognition in this part of

Thursday

Tanya Gold

Cornwall, but not as the locals know it: Stein’s at Home reviewed

The Stein’s at Home steak menu box (£65) says ‘Love from Cornwall’: it is not for people who live in Cornwall. It is, rather, a cardboard mirror of Padstow, Rick Stein’s slate-covered, teal-painted, monstrous Cornish Center Parcs for upper-middle-class holiday-makers, and it has its own whimsical map of Rick Stein outlets in case you stray too far from the Rick Stein path, like Dorothy heading to her death. I went to Padstow during the first lockdown and heard guilty testimony: some natives enjoyed pandemic because Padstow was almost real again. But that is over now, and here comes the counter-revolution to reassert itself in cardboard. People will follow later. Cornish

Thursday

Martin Gayford

One of the greatest of all outsider artists: Alfred Wallis at Kettle’s Yard reviewed

Alfred Wallis (1855-1942) should be an inspiration to all late starters. It was not until he had passed the age of 70 that, after his wife of many years had died and having previously worked as a sailor, fisherman and rag and bone merchant, he decided to take up art. ‘Aw! I dono how to pass away time,’ he explained to a shopkeeper in his native town of St Ives. ‘I think I’ll do a bit a paintin’ — think I’ll draw a bit.’ Three years later, his work was spotted by the leading British modernists Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood. By and by, Wallis’s pictures were being exhibited in

Thursday

Deborah Ross

An extraordinary debut: Make Up reviewed

Make Up is the first full-length film from writer–director Claire Oakley, set in an out-of-season holiday park on the Cornish coast where the wind blows, waves crash, rain lashes and gulls screech so you know it’s not a rom-com (foxes shriek in the night too). But while it’s easy to say what it isn’t, it’s harder to say what it is. It’s a thriller but not quite a thriller, and a horror flick but not quite a horror flick, and a psychosexual fantasy but not wholly a psychosexual fantasy… It may be we can settle only on one thing, and the one thing is this: it is very, very good.