Vote for Object of the Year in Cornwall Heritage Awards

Archive photograph of two women riding bellyboards in the surf

A century ago, before surfing became synonymous with Cornwall, two sisters were riding the waves at Fistral on a wooden board that had travelled thousands of miles to reach them.

Now, that board is in the running for Object of the Year at the Cornwall Heritage Awards 2026, and you can vote for it.

A board with a story to tell

If you have visited our SURF! Exhibition, you may have noticed a worn and weathered blue board. It belonged to Anne Stephens, used on the waves of Fistral Beach in the 1920s.

Anne and her sister Dora were among the first known female surfers in Cornwall. At a time when the very idea of women riding waves was far from commonplace, these two sisters were out on a board that had made a remarkable journey to reach them.

The board was a gift from their uncle, Alfred Perrin, a member of the Cornish tin mining diaspora who had settled in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and taken to surfing at the famous Muizenberg Beach. Like so many Cornish families of that era, the Perrins had followed the global movement of miners and engineers, carrying their skills abroad and quietly bringing new ideas home in return.

This year’s Cornwall Heritage Awards theme is Community, and we think Anne’s surfboard speaks to that theme in a global way.

With Cornish families spread across the world, forming tight-knit diaspora communities that stayed connected to home even across vast distances, Alfred Perrin’s gift of a surfboard to his nieces back in Cornwall ties in to that larger story. What’s more, these two women were at the forefront of a sport long assumed to be male, doing something quietly extraordinary on a Cornish beach.

The board represents a community who stayed connected across continents, and represents a community of women who claimed space in a sport that did not yet know it needed them. It also represents the community that came together to found this museum and to make sure stories like this could be told…

A living link to our founding story

Anne’s son, George Hogg, rode this same board for most of his life, a living link between Cornwall’s industrial diaspora and its emerging surf culture. We also remember George as one of our key founders of the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, shaping our collections and ensuring that all aspects of Cornish maritime history would not be forgotten.