CORNWALL  land of mythical King Arthur

CALLINGTON ;   FOWEY;  LEWANNICK;    LINKINHORNE & east ;     PILLATON and beyond ;  MENHENIOT ;
St NEOT;      St KEW & St Minver ;   TREGONY ;    TREWEN ;    TYWARDREATH; 

Non Conformist Pomery's in Cornwall      Cornwall Mapping Site      The Visitations of Cornwall

CORNWALL from the air

For millennia the main land holders of Cornwall  has been the Crown & the Duchy of Cornwall .Without  a class of  aristocrats the social structure centred on a core of gentry, who formed the ruling class. It was they who were filled  political roles, being Justices of the Peace and Sheriffs of the county. This led to a social interchange between the classes, not much seen elsewhere in England at that time.

The Merchant classes, who achieved wealth, married their children into the less affluent Gentry classes who had bloodlines and lands. Female heirs married elsewhere taking their inheritances out of the county and the Gentry married their children into the peerage where they could.

Bevilles, de Vere, and Courtenay all held lands in Cornwall,  Trelawney married into trade, the Arundel’s married into the peerage, but they remained outsiders who never resided in the County.The  Pomerai's, who came with William the Conqueror, held their baronial seat at Berry Pomeroy , in Devon with  Tregony Castle  held by the 2nd sons. 

During the C17th English Civil War 1642 to 1655  The Cornish held out fiercely for the King and when Parliament  triumphed paid a bitter price in pillaged estates and villages and bad harvests  during the vengeful retribution that followed but their independent spirit  remained intact .

 Cornwall  is surrounded on three sides by fish rich seas but the land is rocky and windswept and agriculturally  poor because of the shallow nutrient deficient soils which are laid over granite. That granite has always been rich metals in particular in tin. 

In the C18th a few men of daring took risks to dig deep into the granite bedrock for tin & copper creating deep hard rock mines ; a few  grew rich flourishing as always on the backs of the workers, whilst the miners who risked their lives  every day lived in poverty on pittance wages. 

 The landscape seems to have created in the people a distinctive individualism and independence and this still characterises the nature of the Cornish people.