Gunwalloe - Church Cove
View across Church Cove in Gunwalloe at the base of the Lizard Peninsula.
The church is St Winwalloe with it's distinctively seperate bell tower and surrounding Tamarisk hedge....
newlyn house
Wonderfully painted frontage....
rogers tower
A folly built 18th C, for Mr Rogers, a local landowner....
Remember that during the hundreds of years that the Romans held much of Britain, Cornwall was probably quite heavily forested, and comparatively densely populated, possibly due to the favourable climate compared with the rest of Britain.
The higher ground might have been clearer due to 'slash and burn' agriculture, and many of the streams and rivers busy with tin streaming, and with surface works where there was shallow ore.
Cornwall might have looked very different from today, and been peaceful and prosperous, trading with the Romans.. (I believe some of our best preserved extensive Celtic round house settlements date from this period.. Marhak will put me right on this)
I seem to remember suggestions that there was more Roman or Roman inspired activity around the Marazion/Hayle area, possibly to protect a trade route over land and down the Hayle River to avoid the treacherous navigation of Lands End?
Dumere ("great fort")isn't Roman, but a circular (well, oval) Iron Age (Cornish Celtic) fort. Lovely site, too, if you can find it in all those trees!
Not so sure that we had too much forest left in the Iron Age. Deforestation had been going on since the Neolithic period. Down in the valleys, perhaps.
The Mount's Bay Roman activity is an interesting one. The Breage and St Hilary "milestones" indicate a route leading SW towards Mount's Bay and the Mount itself (which had been a major port since God knows when,, but certainly was in c.325 BC when Pytheas dropped in). Sherds of Mediterranean amphorae were found on the Mount a few years ago, indicating active trading port use during Roman times. The relationship between these two "milestones" and the one at Gwennap (Menheer Farm) is one I can't quite work out and I must get studying to trace any trackway between Gwennap and Breage. It would make sense if there was one - Gwennap is rolling in tin (didn't someone once call Gwennap parish the richest square mile on earth?).
I went to Nanstallon primary school and we went on a school trip to the field where the fort would once have stood. there's nothing there now, not that there would be, it's just a normal field. Had a good view over the rest of the region.
Time team should be invited down to do a dig.
I am awake at 4am to the terrifying undeniable truth that there is nothing I can do to stop the monster
Re: Nanstallon Roman fort. The north, west and south hedges stand on the remains of the old rampart (east rampart has gone completely). The eastern half of the fort was completely excavated between 1965 and 1969. They found it was quartered by roads, had gates at the mid-point of each rampart, foundations of barrack blocks and the central principia (HQ).
There are interim reports in Cornish Archaeology No 5 (1966), No 6 (1967), No 7 (1968),and No. 9 (1970). Your library should have them and they'll be very useful to you.
From Dumnonia to Cornubia. (by Professor Philip Payton 1996 - "Cornwall" chapter 4)
If it is in the Iron Age that Cornwall acquires that 'Celtic identity' which we recognise today, then it is in the succeeding era –as we move from prehistoric to historic times – that Cornwall begins to develop the territorial idenitity which marks it out geo-politically as the land apart. But, as we have seen in earlier chapters, characterising Cornwall is never that simple, and as ever there are difficulties and paradoxes. To begin with, the modern territorial identity emerges out of a wider geographical construct – Dumnonia – while the defining act of setting the River Tamar as the Cornish border was a function of English intrusion in the tenth century. And yet, there is also a suggestion that Cornwall was long before that time an administrative sub-division (pagus) of the Roman canton of Dumnonia. However, (in a further paradox) if we are to acknowledge the Romans as the first to establish Cornwall as an administrative-political unit, then we must also admit that in other respects Roman influence west of the Tamar was in fact minimal.
Even so, we are constrained by historical convention to speak of pre-Roman, Roman and post-Roman Cornwall, a relatively harmless convenience if we can agree what we mean by these terms but altogether more misleading (and dangerous) should we infer that Cornwall was somehow an exemplar of Roman Britain. 'Roman Britain' is an inherently misleading concept, implying as it does a homogenous political and cultural Romanisation of the entire island.
Worse still is the idea of a 'Roman Britain' that gives way to an 'Anglo-Saxon England', a view of early history that leaves little room for consideration of indigenous continuity (not least in Cornwall), encourages the erroneous equation of 'Britain' with 'England', and reduces British (and thus Cornish) experience to a succession of invasions – Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans.
This is the approach of the so-called National Curriculum, the staple diet of schoolchildren in Cornwall as much as it is in Sussex or Hampshire, one that leaves pupils in many Cornish schools with little idea of the reality and issues of early Cornish history. We can only agree with Professor Charles Thomas when he expresses ‘sorrow and annoyance…
...at the undue extension of words like England, English or a philosophy of a taught British past underlying such book –titles as "Everyday Life in Roman and Anglo-Saxon Times", "Roman Britain and the English Settlements", or "Roman Britain to Saxon England".
There are still others of us, west of Offa’s Dyke and the River Tamar, and north of Hadrian’s Wall’.*
*Charles Thomas, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak ? - Post-Roman Inscriptions in Western Britain, 1994
I know this is not so much to the point you are making but people are constantly finding Roman coin and artifacts here in Cornwall. I spoke to some metal detector enthusiast who say ever week someone finds Roman coins and they are all over Cornwall. This must tells us that the Romans did in fact spent time here and in numbers.
When i go on holiday to Europe, I take Euros... Doesn't mean that everybody in Europe is European? First we had to be born in a country to assume their nationality now we can carry their Coins to get it!!!!
It doesn't mean that the Romans spent extended time here, for the simple resaon that no Roman settlements have ever been found in Cornwall. What the finds of Roman coins does tell us is that there was frequent trading contact, much of it probably by sea. Mediterranean amphorae sherds of that period found on St Michael's Mount testify to this. All the signs are that Romans appeared to leave the Cornish pretty well to their own devices and that the description of (West) Cornish people given 300 years earlier by Pytheas still held true: "The inhabitants of that headland of Britain called Belerion are friendly to strangers and, through their contact with external traders, civilised in their way of life". I dare say that the Roman administration saw little point in conquering the Cornish, as it was a lot easier for them to maintain friendly contact through trading.
Accused teacher's apology letter
A letter of apology to sex abuse victims was not an admission of guilt a former outdoor instructor says.
Fewer Cornish homes repossessed
Fewer homes have been repossessed in Cornwall in the past year, bucking the national trend.
Man in court over shooting death
A man appears in court charged with murdering the father of his former girlfriend in Cornwall.
Robbery gang sentenced for raids
Five members of an armed gang who committed offences in Devon and Cornwall are sentenced.
Sailor in Spain saved by 999 call
Falmouth Coastguard coordinates the rescue of a missing sailor off Spain after his wife dials 999 in England.
Review urged over toll rise plans
Councillors in Cornwall want plans for a 50% increase in toll charges to cross the River Tamar to be reviewed.
Safety DVD helps migrant workers
A safety DVD aimed at helping migrant workers in Cornwall settle into life in the county is released.
MK CALL ON SW RDA TO SUPPORT SOUTH CROFTY PLAN
Members of the Camborne and Redruth constituency party of Mebyon Kernow have called on both the South West Regional Development Agency (RDA) and the Urban Regeneration Company (URC) for the area to drop any opposition to the current re-opening of South Crofty Mine. The MK members want statements issued in support of the mine.
