by Pamela Lomax and Ron Hogg
with a foreword by Douglas Williams
Newlyn, the fishing village at the edge of Mount’s Bay is the subject of this detailed and carefully researched history. The first of four volumes that will record Newlyn’s history until 1950, Newlyn Before the Artists Came, tells its story before the harbours were built and the artists of the Newlyn School arrived.
The parish of Newlyn St Peter’s was formed in 1848 and it bound together three small settlements in an uncomfortable alliance; so although the place marked Newlyn on the early maps shared the characteristics of a fishing community – the pilchard trade, absent landlords and poor living conditions – it was not really a unity but three quite distinct villages: Newlyn Town on the hill and below on either side of the Coombe River, Street-an-Nowan and Tolcarne.
The Newlyn fishing luggers were manned by six or eight man crews and each man’s life depended on the others. The bonds between the men had to be strong so the crews of most boats comprised fathers, sons, brothers, kinsmen, and close neighbours. There was little geographical mobility and Newlyners identified with the boats in which they worked, the street where they lived and the cottage in which they were born.
This is the tale of seafaring families, fishermen and mariners but also of carpenters and ship-builders, farmers and market gardeners, church and chapelgoers, innkeepers − and women, engaged in ‘homework’ but capable of surviving and caring for their children when their men were lost at sea.
PUBLICATION DETAILS
The publication of this first book of four books in the series is a significant contribution to the history of Cornwall, bringing together previously unpublished material and a wealth of fascinating insights from rare books and manuscripts, newspapers, family archives and numerous interviews with the descendants of old Newlyn families.
The hard-back book has an attractive dust jacket and is lavishly illustrated throughout with 197 maps, drawings and photographs, with an extensive general index and separate indexes covering place names and Cornish family names, themselves providing an important reference source for family and local historians.
The book will be launched in September 2009 and it
will cost £25. There is a £7 discount for pre-publication
orders. To reserve your copy of the book simply fill in the form by clicking on the link belowand return it before September 19,
2009.
order form 139.22 Kb
The proceeds from the sale of this book will go to the photographic collection at the Morrab Library
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Before they came to live at Newlyn in 1996, Pam Lomax and Ron Hogg had travelled widely, Pam as a Professor of Educational Research and Ron as a Consulting Engineer. Their jobs helped them to refine their research skills and also to develop their interests in the stories that people had to tell about their history. Both are members of the Penwith Local History Group and both have contributed to its books about Penwith. Pam has also written a number of books on educational subjects as well as the definitive biography about Thomas Cooper Gotch, the Newlyn artist. She is editor of the Journal of the Cornwall Association of Local Historians.
