Culture of Cornwall

These include Andrew George, Dan Rogerson, Sarah Newton and Scott Mann, who have all used the language, at various times, to swear their oaths of allegiance to the Queen.

The ancient Brittonic country shares much of its cultural history with neighbouring Devon and Somerset in England and Wales and Brittany further afield.

However, significant portions of the 'Matter of Britain' relate to the people of Cornwall and Brittany as they do to the modern 'Welsh'--this extends from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Mabinogion and the Breton-derived tales of King Arthur which make frequent and explicit reference to the geography of the early Brythonic nation, such as his capital at 'Kelliwic in Cerniw' and the legendary sea fortress of King Mergh at Tintagel.

By the Shakespearean period, these ancient texts still maintained a currency demonstrated by King Lear based on the ancient tale of Leir of Britain which names Corineus the eponymous founder of the Cornish nation; he traditionally wrestled the giant Goemagot into the sea at Plymouth Hoe and claimed the land beyond for his people; the probable origin of the tale of Jack the Giant Killer.

Many are still extant, and provide valuable information about the language: they were performed in round 'plen a gwary' (place for playing) open-air theatres.

The Nobel-prizewinning novelist William Golding was born in St Columb Minor in 1911, and returned to live near Truro from 1985 until his death in 1993.

The late Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman was famously fond of Cornwall and it featured prominently in his poetry.

[8] The poet Laurence Binyon wrote "For the Fallen" (first published in 1914) while sitting on the cliffs between Pentire Point and The Rumps and a stone plaque was erected in 2001 to commemorate the fact.

Cornwall provided the inspiration for "The Birds", one of her terrifying series of short stories, made famous as a film by Alfred Hitchcock.

Medieval Cornwall is also the setting of the trilogy by Monica Furlong Wise Child, Juniper, and Colman, as well as part of Charles Kingsley's Hereward the Wake.

Charles de Lint, writer of many modern and urban fairy tales, set his novel The Little Country in the village of Mousehole in Cornwall.

[15] Over Sea, Under Stone and Greenwitch from the series of fantasy novels The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper, are set in Cornwall.

Agatha Christie's "Poirot" short story "The Cornish Adventure" take place in Polgarwith, an (imaginary) small market town in Cornwall.

[20] In the Paddington Bear novels by Michael Bond the title character is said to have landed at an unspecified port in Cornwall having travelled in a lifeboat aboard a cargo ship from darkest Peru.

Prolific writer Colin Wilson, best known for his debut work The Outsider (1956) and for The Mind Parasites (1967), lived in Gorran Haven, a village on the southern Cornish coast, not far from Mevagissey.

Arthurian legends tell of a rider escaping on a white horse as the land sunk beneath the waves, surviving and settling in Cornwall.

J. Burrow & Co., 1921 "the official handbook of the London Cornish Association" So-called 'Celtic art' is found in Cornwall reflecting its ancient Brythonic heritage, often in the form of Celtic crosses erected from the 6th century onwards.

Many place-names are formed with the element Lan of sacred enclosures of early Cornish saints from Wales, Ireland and Brittany.

The activities of these saints resulted in a shared cultural inheritance which particularly includes the post-Roman corpus of literature relating to King Arthur and Tristan and Iseult, presumed nobility of ancient Dumnonia.

[clarification needed] Cornwall boasts the highest density of traditional 'Celtic crosses' of any nation, and medieval holy wells are numerous.

[clarification needed] The destruction of monastic institutions such as Glasney College and Crantock during the dissolution of the monasteries (1536–45) is often regarded as the death knell of independence in Cornish language and culture; the very few remaining Cornish language manuscripts, including the miracle plays Beunans Ke and Beunans Meriasek are thought to have originated at these ancient centres of academic excellence, some areas however retain their outdoor performance spaces, known as plen an gwary.

In 1928 Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood visited the town and met Alfred Wallis the naive painter, native to St Ives, who was to become an important influence on a generation of British artists: particularly those who were members of the Seven and Five Society.

Other artists of international repute joined the colony later: notably Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton and Sandra Blow.

Cornish vernacular architecture is characterised by its use of abundant natural stone, especially Cornubian granite, slate, and local white lime-washing and its plain unadorned simplicity, sharing cultural and stylistic similarities, with the architecture of Atlantic Brittany, Ireland and Wales, as well as neighbouring Devon.

The architecture of west Cornish towns such as St Ives is particularly distinctive for its use of solid granite and featuring also the type of early promontory hermitage particularly associated with Celtic Christianity.

Early and continuous use of stone architecture over more than two thousand years, begins with the Romano-British enclosed courtyard houses at Carn Euny and Chysauster is regionally distinct from the largely rectangular timber-derived architecture of Saxon England and often features characteristically rounded or circular forms[27] – such as the ringforts, roundhouses and enclosed settlements known locally as "rounds" – the influence of which can be detected up to the building of Launceston Castle and Restormel Castle in the later medieval.

The medieval longhouse was the typical form of housing in early Cornish 'Tre' dispersed settlements of small hamlets of farmsteads and associated field systems apparently originating from before the time of the Norman conquest.

[28][29] The longhouse form is notable for its combined accommodation of humans and precious livestock under a single roof in a form found distributed across northwestern Atlantic Europe; France (Longère) Brittany (Ty Hir), Normandy, Devon and South Wales (Ty Hir) .

Ecclesiastical architecture of Cornwall and Devon typically differs from that of the rest of southern England: most medieval churches in the larger parishes were rebuilt in the later medieval period with one or two aisles and a western tower, the aisles being the same width as the nave and the piers of the arcades being of one of a few standard types; the former monastery church at St Germans demonstrates these features over several periods as the former seat of the bishop of Cornwall.

Cornish wrestling originated in Cornwall, but spread throughout Britain in the middle ages and then throughout the world especially in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the US.