When the mines closed, men left Cornwall in their thousands, going out literally into the unknown. Many left from Redruth Station and their heartache is still there. Clock creeps to midnight Soft sleep its gentle hostage takes Throughout the tired town. But there, where arc of bridge Throws high its granite span The day…Continue Reading “Redruth Railway Station at Night – a poem by David Oates”
David Oates has provided us with a fair numbers of articles and now we include one of his poems which clearly found him in relective mood. Godrevy was Camborne by the sea and in my childhood days it seemed as if we lived there – every day seemed fine, every sun-filled moment was…Continue Reading “Godrevy Days by David Oates”
David Oates draws on intensely personal childhood memories, of some seventy years ago, to find echoes of an age now gone. An age where leisure and pleasure before the time of universal car ownership was found close to home. The advent of car ownership, too, marked the beginning of the end of communities travelling and…Continue Reading “Over the hills and far away …”
David Oates, himself a superb deliverer of Cornish dialect stories, brings us an article about Herbert Lean who he describes as the master storyteller. To back up this claim he includes an audio recording of Herbert telling the tale of the Penponds Outing. Penponds Outing – Herbert Lean The dialect stories of…Continue Reading “Herbert Lean”
Close to 200 years after the first Cornish miners came to the wilderness of the Keweenaw peninsula on the shores of Lake Superior, seeking a better life than the lives they had left behind in Cornwall, a group of Cornish men and women of the twenty first century re-traced their footsteps and uncovered tales of…Continue Reading “Far From ‘ome – Part Two”
In this article, frequent contributor, David Oates steps across “The Pond” to bring us a compelling mining story with a very strong Cornish connection. In 2001 and 2007 I visited the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan with the Holman-Climax Male Voice Choir. The second visit was for the gathering of the Cornish Cousins of…Continue Reading “Far From ‘ome – Part One”