Author Archives: yamey

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About yamey

Active author and retired dentist. You can discover my books by visiting my website www.adamyamey.co.uk .

Mining and a road to the coast in Cornwall

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SURFERS AND INDUSTRIAL archaeologists will be familiar with the small village of Porthtowan on the north facing coast of Cornwall. It has a magnificent beach from which one can watch or immerse oneself in the glorious foam crested rollers. The name of the village derives from the Cornish ‘Porthtewyn’, which means ‘landing place at the sand dunes’. The road from the major A30 highway to Porthtowan passes through a wild landscape that resulted from intensive mining activity in the distant past.

An engine house

The terrain through which the road winds its way is dotted with the ruined remains of industrial buildings: engine houses for mines and chimneys of the former foundries and other processing plants. Most of these relics are recognisable but in a dilapidated state. However, we passed on of them, which has been beautifully restored, and converted into guest accommodation.

Tin mining in Cornwall ‘took off’ in earnest in the 16th century. During the 18th and 19th centuries, deep mining for tin and copper was a major activity in the county. Mining of arsenic was added to this, and for a while in the late 19th century, Cornwall was a major supplier of this for the world. The engine houses that dotted the landscape housed steam operated pumping engines that allowed mines to be dug deeper than before.

Today, mining in Cornwall has declined. However, it might pick up now that valuable deposits of lithium containing ore are beginning to be found. The landscape through which we drove to Porthtowan is now protected from development by having become part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2006.

A tragedy in west London remembered in Cornwall

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THERE IS A MEMORIAL that was recently erected in a tiny, picturesque seaport in Cornwall: Mousehole.

It commemorates the 7th anniversary of the disastrous fire that occurred at Grenfell Tower in west London, during which 72 people, including 18 children, perished. Since that tragedy, Cornwall has been hosting survivors of the tragedy as is explained in a newspaper article in The Packet (dated 12 June 2024):

“The plaque was the work of Cornwall Hugs, a Cornish charity that hosted hundreds of Grenfell Tower fire survivors, bereaved family members, and firefighters in the years following the disaster in London … The charity welcomed its 500th Grenfell guest in October 2023. Since then, many families have made their temporary homes in Mousehole. This village also saw Grenfell families unveiling a special street sign featuring a green Grenfell heart in 2019.”

The thoroughfare on which this memorial has been placed is called Grenfell Street. Incidentally, the name Grenfell is associated with several families in Cornwall.

End of an era at a pub in Cornwall

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EGLOSHAYLE FACES WADEBRIDGE across the River Camel. The Earl of St Vincent pub is hidden away up a hill behind Egloshayle’s St Petroc church. It is housed in a building built in the 17th century as a boarding house for masons. Later, it became a pub. One of its many guests was Admiral Sir John Jervis (1735-1823). When we visited the pub in May 2022, I wrote the following about it:

“The interior of the pub has timber roof beams and a delightful feeling of times long gone by. It is a great example of many people’s idealised vision of a typical ‘olde worlde English’ country pub. Soon after entering the dimly lit establishment, and your eyes adjust to the low light levels, it becomes evident that the pub is full of clocks, mostly differing in design. Most of them appear to be in working order, but not many of them show the same time. A great number of them chime at least once an hour, but not all at the same time. This being the case, there is usually at least one clock chiming at any given moment. This produces a lovely background symphony of chimes. I asked one of the pub’s staff why there were so many clocks in the pub. She replied:

“Some people like children. We like clocks”

Later, I asked the landlady about the clocks. She told me that when they took over the pub some years ago, there was no clock in it. She and her husband bought one clock for the pub, and this became the start of their collection. From then onwards, they could not stop buying timepieces. She told me that there are over 200 clocks in the pub and winding them up every day is quite a huge task.Apart from the fascinating clocks, the pub can be recommended for the delicious, excellently prepared, unpretentious food that can be eaten there.”

In 2023, when we returned to Cornwall, we were looking forward to eating at the eccentrically decorated Earl pub. However, it had closed by then. In September 2025, we noted that the pub had re-opened, and we booked a Sunday lunch there. Apart from a few clocks outside the pub, there were no clocks within it. The pub had been tastefully renovated. I asked what had happened to the clock collection, and the new publican told me that he had got rid of them. That was a shame, but the food we ate was far better than what I remember eating when the pub was filled with clocks and owned by two ageing sisters, who have, sadly, died since our last visit. The Sunday roast lunch was excellently cooked by the publican, who does the cooking.

Remembering Queen Victoria in a car park in Cornwall

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ON THE EIGHTH of September 1846, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert disembarked at Fowey in Cornwall. To commerote this momentous occasion, a stone obelisk was erected on Albert Quay (formerly named ‘Broad Slip’), where the royal couple landed. For many years, it lay on the seabed of Fowey’s harbour.

However, it was recovered from beneath the water in 1977, and re-erected to commemorate the visit to Fowey of queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in 1962. It was not put in its original location, but at the Caffa Mill car park, which stands on the site of former shipyards. The name, Caffa Mill, comes from the river Caff or Cough which flowed here and the 2 water mills recorded as early as 1272.

Although not one of Fowey’s main attractions, this stone monument is of interest because of its curious history of submersion and recovery.

Baptising children since the time of the Normans

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THE PARISH CHURCH at Luxulyan in Cornwall, which is dedicated to St Ciricius and St Julitta, is very attractive. Although it was built in the 15th century, it contains a stone baptismal font that was created long before the church was constructed. It is a Norman stone font designed like that in St Petroc’s Church in Bodmin (Cornwall). It consists of a circular bowl with carved outer sides on a central shaft, with 4 outer shafts each surmounted by a carved head. It stands on a granite plinth. 

The font in Luxulyan is in a good state of preservation. The carved faces on it have a simplicity of design that made me think of early Greek Cycladic sculpture as well as mid-20th century ‘modern art’. Sculpted before the era of gothic art, these faces are curiously alluring. It is amazing to think that this beautiful item has been in use for about 1000 years.

A standing stone that could serve many purposes

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OUTSIDE THE PARISH church of St Hugh in the Cornish village of Quethiock, there is a tall stone cross. Dating from the 10th or 11th century, this is one of the tallest such crosses in Cornwall. During the Reformation, many churchyard standing crosses were destroyed, and disposed of. Such was the case for the cross in Quethiock. However, in 1881, it was resurrected after Quethiock’s Reverend William Willimot’s workmen discovered it while repairing the south wall of the graveyard.

At Quethiock

Cornish crosses, such as the one in Quethiock, served a variety of purposes including: places for preaching; way markers for religious processions; and places for public proclamations and expressions of penance.

A man from Bohemia remembered in a church in Cornwall

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QUETHIOCK IS A tiny village in Cornwall. It has a church, St Hugh, that contains many interesting features.

One small thing that fascinated me was a small brass plate attached to a wooden table. It commemorates Dr Erich Schneider of Aussig (Usti na Labem) in Bohemia, who was born in 1889, and perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. His wife, Marketa, was interned in the Terezin concentration camp, but survived. She moved to England after WW2. The Schneiders had a son, Johann, who was born in 1921. He was educated in England. At school or college, he became friendly with Reverend Lintell’s children, and spent holidays with them in Quethiock. Later, Johann became an economist at the Treasury, and between 1987 and 2005, he was an assistant pastor at St Anne’s Lutheran Church in London.

It was a great surprise finding this memorial to a victim of the Holocaust in sucharemotepart of Cornwall.

Tagore and the oppression of women in traditional families in Bengal

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THE BENGALI POLYMATH Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is modern India’s most important cultural figure. In 1913, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, and in 1915 he was honoured with a knighthood by King George V. Following the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh in 1919, which was instigated by a British military commander, he renounced the knighthood. Five years before this, Tagore, who did not tolerate injustice, wrote “Streer Patra” (‘A Wife’s Letter’), a short story that highlighted and questioned the domination of women by men in 19th and early 20th century families. Kolkata’s leading English language actress and two colleagues have created a play “I am Mrinal”, which is based on Tagore’s short story.

Piali Ray on stage

On the 9th of September 2025, I watched a performance of this play at London’s Nehru Centre. Piali Ray skilfully and convincingly acted all the roles in the play. These were: Mrinal, the wife of the second eldest son in the family; Bindu, an orphaned child, related to one of Mrinal’s in-laws; Mrinal’s brother-in-law’s wife; and Mrinal’s husband. Against everyone except Mrinal’s wishes, Bindu was accepted into the household.  Mrinal’s husband disapproves of Bindu’s presence in the joint family home, but childless Mrinal treasures this young girl’s presence. Mrinal’s husband is keen to evict Bindu, and eventually decides to marry her off to an insane man. In desperation, Bindu sets herself alight, and she dies. Then, Mrinal flees from Kolkata to Puri, where, at the end of the play, she writes a letter to her husband, explaining that she will never return to the domestic bondage that she had to endure for 15 years as his wife. Tagore’s story vividly illustrates the oppression of women in conventional Bengali families, and his feeling that this injustice needed to be combatted. It was written in 1914, the year the First World War commenced. It might not have been “the war to end all wars”, but after it was over, women in many parts of the world began to question their roles in society, and to improve their status.

During Piali’s performance, she switched roles effortlessly, and one was never in doubt as to whom she was portraying at any given moment. Even when she was playing the role of the husband, one forgot that she was not actually a man playing this part. She used a different tone of voice and set of gestures for each of the characters. Throughout the performance, there was music playing in the background. It impressed me that Piali’s movements on stage seemed to harmonize with the music. Her performance was not simply dramatic but also balletic.

It was fascinating watching this play not only because it gave an insight into the oppressive conditions experienced by women in traditional bourgeois Bengali joint families in the early 20th century, but also because it gave me a chance to watch a skilled actress conveying the story so beautifully.

Adam Yamey is the author of “88 Days in India: A Journey of Memory and Discovery” [https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FKTFBFM2],  and several other books about Indian topics.