Kowethas Kernow Goth - Gerens ha Porthskathow 2018/19 SEASON Friday 20th September 2019 Crying the Neck at Lanhay The 2018/19 season starts on Wednesday, October 10th at 7.30pm in the Memorial Hall in Portscatho with a brief A.G.M. followed by a presentation on the History of the R.N.L.I. This will be followed on the second Wednesday of each month from November to April inclusive, with presentations including Music and Song inspired by The Beauty of Cornwall; Oysters and The River Helford; Country House Fires in Cornwall; The Levant Mine Disaster; A Cornish Mariner, Captain Joseph Banfield and Witchcraft and Folk Magic in Cornwall. As is usual, our May meeting is an evening visit, this year to St. Anthony in Roseland and the final meeting in June is an afternoon pilgrimage to RAF Portreath. St. Piran's evening will again be celebrated on March 5th at the Royal Standard at Gerrans, with a pasty supper and Du Hag Owr and Dew Vardh, to entertain us. Our Bring your own Picnic, to celebrate the Feast Days of St Gerrans and St. Anthony will again be held on August 4th on Gerrans Village Green. The cost of membership will remain at £7.50 per person for the season, which covers all the talks and includes reduced rates for the outside meeting and the pilgrimage visit. Visitors and non-members are always welcome to individual meetings at an admission fee of £2.50 per person for each event. We hope that you will find something of interest in the programme and will come along and join us for the season, or you are welcome to just come for the meetings that are of particular interest to you. For more information ring 01872 580238. The subject at the very well attended first meeting of the 2018/2019 Season was 'The History of the RNLI'. Our speaker was David Nicholl, who has been in the lifeboat service for 38 years and is deputy coxswain of the Falmouth lifeboat. The illustrated talk was mainly about the development of the service in Cornwall and included films showing the state of the sea at the time of some rescues. The lifeboat service was founded in 1824 by Sir William Hilary with the motto 'With courage, nothing is impossible' has led to the saving of more than 140,000 lives. The organisation, being a charity, is dependent on gifts from the public, 16% of which comes from legacies. The first lifeboat in Europe was a rowing boat at Penzance from 1803-1812 and from 1867-1884 the 'Richard Lewis'. The first boat in Falmouth in 1867 was the 'City of Gloucester', which could be loaded on a horse- drawn trailer to enable it to be taken overland. From 1894 to 1922 was the 'Bob Newbon', which in February 1914 was involved in the rescue of some of the crew of the 'Hera' in Gerrans Bay. The lifeboat was towed by tug to Gull Rock but because of the fog the wreck could not be found. Eventually the sound of a bosun's whistle enabled contact to be made and five of the crew were rescued and taken by tug back to Falmouth in a force 8-9 gale. 18 of the crew who perished are buried in Veryan churchyard. The first motorboat in Cornwall was the steam engine 'John Stevens' in 1899 at Padstow. A major disaster on the Doom Bar in 1900 at which the lifeboat had difficulty in attending led to the use of a tug to tow the lifeboat to sea and sometimes carrying out rescues itself. The following years led to the development of the service. In 1901 at Coverack the 'Constance Melanie' was a sailing/rowing boat and at St Agnes from 1909- 1920 was the 'Charles Deere'. The current Falmouth lifeboat is the Severn class 42 ton 'Richard Cox Scott' with a range of 200 miles its 2,500 hp engine uses 4 gallons of fuel per mile. The inshore boat the 'Eve Pink' has a top speed of 35 knots. On 18th October 2018 The Old Cornwall Society marked the 100th anniversary of the actions of Horace Curtis which lead to him being awarded the Victoria Cross in World War 1. Horace was born at Cellars in St Anthony Parish where his father was employed as a gamekeeper, and he is the only V.C. recipient born in the current Gerrans Parish. The Society put together a poster giving details of Horace Curtis and his actions. The poster was put up on local noticeboards, including the one at Bohortha which is the nearest to his former home. His actions were highlighted at the November meeting of the Old Cornwall Society. For its November meeting, the Old Cornwall Society departed from its traditional presentation style format and took great pleasure in welcoming Tir Ha Tavas to join us for the evening. Wife and husband, Delia and Dave Brotherton, formed Tir Ha Tavas in February 2013. Based in St Ives, both Delia and Dave are experienced and respected musicians, who are part of the Cornish and Celtic folk scene. Tir Ha Tavas means land and language in Cornish, which is exactly what their music reflected. Delia and Dave write a lot of their own music and much of it is written and sung in Cornish. They take their inspiration from the beauty of the Cornish landscape and feelings of nostalgia felt for Cornwall. Both Delia and Dave have been made Bards of Gorsedh Kernow for their services to music. The programme was varied, vocally and instrumentally, with songs in Cornish and some in English. Delia and Dave performed some of their own compositions, as well as pieces by other composers, giving an introductory explanation to each item, to ensure that the audience understood the language and the context. November was declared too early for Christmas music, but they did make a musical nod to the approach of winter in a song about Jack Frost. In this piece the music imitated the sharp, jagged frost crystals deposited by Jack Frost on a moonlit night in a wood near St Ives, quietly observed by Delia hidden in the bushes. The evening ended with a beautiful, haunting unaccompanied piece performed by both singers. As a child, probably until the early 1950s, I remember my grandfather Maurice Collins as River Bailiff at Percuil as part of the Duchy Oysterage, tending to the oysters with Teddy Harris. The young oysters were brought on in tanks below what is now the Roseland Paddle and Sail office and then collected by an East Coast cockle boat to be sent to the Helford to grow on. I can recall the working boats with "scandalised" sails on the Fal, dredging when there was an 'R' in the month. Most of the facts were a mystery to me then. Imagine how they were brought to life for me by Don Garman, of the Constantine Museum, who gave an excellent talk to the Society's Christmas meeting in December. His talk was naturally more from a historical standpoint and relating to the Helford industry. "Helford Oysters sell in Truro at one shilling per hundred of six score" said the Royal Cornwall Gazette of September 12th, 1807. That is about 12,000 oysters and illustrates just how cheap they were, being particularly a staple food of the poor. What a difference today! We heard of the processes, unchanged for centuries, of young oysters being brought in from Truro, separated to grow on at three years, harvested if the invading Pacific oyster, but left for another year if the native variety. The oysters were lifted and graded on board the working boats, then brought ashore to be packed and sent away by train to London. From the 1950s the method was speeded up; the seed oysters being flooded with UV light for better hygiene and cages of mature oysters being placed in the intertidal zone to strengthen their adductor muscles. There were the owners and tenant entrepreneurs: The Diocese of Exeter and the Duchy, as well as the Vivians, Tyacks, Scotts and Hodges. There was renown: in 1921, the Duke of Cornwall, later Edward VIII, visited Port Navas and during the '30s the October Oyster Festival was inaugurated there. More recently, sadly, the environmental lobby has caused the Duchy to withdraw the oysterage licence and the industry was closed down. However, from spring 2019 Tristan Hugh-Jones from Ireland, the new lessee, will be processing native oysters in a new building — the future looks challenging but bright, for the Helford if not for Percuil. The opening meeting for the New Year was a fascinating talk on Country House Fires in Cornwall given by Joanna Mattingley. There were a significant number of grand houses in Cornwall housing art galleries and museums with paintings and artefacts of considerable worth and value. The fires had a great impact as they destroyed a considerable amount of history for future generations. The talk spanned the years from 1646, a fire at Arwennack which is speculated could have been burnt down by the owners or the Parliamentarians, to the year 2000, a fire at Prideaux Place which was not too serious. Fires were frequently chimney fires and were often in the spring after there had been roaring fires all through the winters. Smoking was another cause of fire and at Ince Castle someone smoking in bed! Fires during the day were usually less disastrous as there were people to raise the alarm and help could be summoned more rapidly whereas at night the fire could have taken hold before anyone became aware.