On Thursday 7 November Elizabeth Dale will be exploring the hidden histories of Cornish women in her talk Forgotten Women of the Cornish Coast. Elizabeth is the writer behind the hugely popular blog The Cornish Bird where she shines a light on the people, places – and animals – from Cornwall’s past, often unearthing untold and lost tales.
We recently caught up with Elizabeth and asked her to tell us a bit more about what we can expect from her talk and about her fascinating work.
Sadly I never learnt any Cornish history while I was growing up, I just knew that I loved where I was from and felt deeply connected to it. I suppose my real starting point was my own family history, tracing my ancestors and building my family tree, finding out just how deep those roots ran, and that inspired me to start researching.
As a woman I think you become naturally inclined to seek out other women’s stories and other women’s voices, especially when they tend mostly to be the silent, background figures in history. When you do find one, especially an ‘ordinary’ woman not someone from the upper classes, who has been part of something amazing, has achieved something significant, has left her mark in some way, then that always feels really important and needs to be celebrated. For me it automatically feels like a story that needs to be told.
The ideas for the stories I research come from so many different places. I walk a lot so some stories simply come from looking into the village, the woodland or the cove that I visited that day. I also love churches and graveyards and get inspiration and ideas from the plaques on the walls or from an unusual headstone.
I spend a lot of time looking at old newspapers, often spotting another area of research while I am looking for something else. I began collecting books about Cornwall when I was a teenager and they help me a great deal – despite what people seem to think, not everything can be found on the internet.
We are incredibly lucky to have resources like Kresen Kernow, the archive in Redruth, that holds over a million documents dating back hundreds of years all relating to Cornwall’s past.
Plus the people who read my blog often trigger a new idea, I get messages all the time asking if I know about a particular place or person, or asking whether I have heard this story or that and before you know it I am obsessed with a new subject.
Basically I think it is all about being interested and curious.
I think that it is important for us to preserve as many stories from Cornwall’s history as we can. It is our collective heritage and it is so easy for them to just disappear. For me it is the stories of the individuals, the ordinary folk, that really bring the past to life and help me connect to it.
For example, we have all heard about the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries but a few years ago I spent some time looking into women in Cornwall who had actually been charged with witchcraft. There is something so much more impactful about learning their names, filling in the details of their lives (as much as you can) and relating them to places that you actually recognise.
It has actually been very difficult to decide who to include and who I leave out! I tend to think that all their stories are wonderful and important!
I particularly love connecting Cornish women to wider events so this talk is about bringing some of them to the fore rather than them being seen as background figures or supporting characters.
Jenny Mopus, our cover girl, was such an obvious choice for me because not only do we have her portrait which is so unusual for a woman of her time and class but I think her strength and personality really shine through from the stories that we know about her.
A lot of the women I have chosen I would describe as powerhouses – strong, no-nonsense personalities, so I just hope that I can do them justice.
Every story that we learn and then preserve for the future helps us to gain a fuller, more rounded understanding of the past, and of the events and people that made Cornwall what it is today.
And Cornwall can feel like a very masculine place sometimes, our heritage – mining, fishing, farming – can feel like the preserve of men, a place where there was no space for women’s lives but of course that’s not true. They were there, working just as hard and with the same hopes and fears. It is just that their stories have mostly been overlooked.
We know the names of a few of them – Dolly Pentreath, Mary Bryant, Mary Killigrew, Emily Hobhouse maybe – but of course there are so many more who have just been forgotten by history. Their lives may not have been of national significance, but they still have tales to tell and they still help us understand our past.
Mostly I just hope people enjoy it! And that maybe they come away with an appreciation and an excitement for how many wonderful stories there are out there still waiting to be discovered!
Elizabeth Dale is a Cornish writer and blogger with a passion for uncovering the lesser-known stories from Cornwall’s history. As well as writing about Cornwall for local and national publications, she has published more than 400 articles on her blog ‘The Cornish Bird’ since 2016. She graduated with a First in Journalism & Creative Writing from Falmouth University in 2018 and in 2022 was awarded Cornwall Heritage Trust’s Heritage Champion Award for her work in promoting and preserving Cornwall’s heritage.
£8 per person, £5 students, 10% off for NMMC Members.
£6 per person for the online webinar.
After Forgotten Women of the Cornish Coast there is just one more Lecture left in the series: Risk, Reward, Shipwrecks & Secrets with Clare Howdle and Sharon Austin, Thursday 14 November.
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