Cornwall is Another Country - They Do Things Differently There

On my holidays I met a lady who runs a tea shop. This is of course nothing unusual, when you visit Cornwall you eat pasties, go to the beach and drink plenty of tea. However, this lady is from the village where my sister lives. Her children were born in the same hospital as my children, she says she misses the blue cheese salad dressing they do at the pub at the end of my street. To many women this lady is living the dream: she chucked in life in the midlands and opened up a teashop in Cornwall: so I asked her how things had changed for her. She told me that Cornwall felt like another country. I've been thinking about this and I can see what she means. Cornwall does feel like a different country, with different landscapes, a different culture, different foods - but for me, so does the North East. When I first went to Sunderland and Newcastle it felt different, there was a distinct Geordie culture, even the North Yorkshire coast feels "elsewhere" to me. I don't know whether it's these far out of the way coastal places have retained their traditional regional cultures more than Warwickshire or Leicestershire or that, as a midlander, the culture of the sea-faring counties is far removed from my own traditions and landscapes. Either way, it is remarkable that in an age where nearly every town has Next and a Costa that this small island of our has managed to retain as much tradition and difference as we have.
Above is a picture of Looe Bridge. Looe is quite a bustling little seaside town, and rather old-fashioned and not a bit chi-chi (unlike Falmouth and perhaps St Ives). My children loved Looe, but on the whole, I think I preferred Polperro - the village 3 or 4 miles down the coast. It was very beautiful and individual and less packed full of sun-scorched holiday makers.

Up until the early twentieth century, when the coastal Cornish economy was dependent on fish rather than tourism, the village women used to supplement their income by hand-knitting Guernseys (or what they called knit-frocks). Whilst I was in Looe I picked up a lovely little book on the history of Cornish knitting, Cornish Guernseys and Knit-frocks, by Mary Wright. In it she writes:
In Looe, knitters regularly organised collections of guernseys from their group, packing about eight or ten each upon their backs. They walked over the cliffs to Plymouth - "about twelve miles, if you know the short cuts" - to deliver them to "W. Johns and Co., General Drapers of Old Town Street", and other agents. They walked in their "pattins", a sort of wooden clog with an iron rim at the bottom which raised their feet an inch or an inch and a half off the ground, to protect them from the wet. They knitted all the way, often pinning and extra skein of yarn to their skirts, "so they would never run out". On their return journey, they brought fresh supplies of yarn.
I'm a keen knitter and a keen walker, but I cannot imagine doing a twelve mile cliff top walk, in clogs, whilst knitting. Did I mention that these guernseys were always knitted in the round? If you're a knitter, or interested in social history, do try to get hold of Mary Wright's wonderful little book, which includes many traditional Cornish guernsey patterns.

Above is a short film on the beauty of Polperro. However, if you look at the photos of the steep cliff paths you may get a sense of the lives of those Cornish knitters.

And finally, here's a short film of the opening of the Polperro festival...a treat for all you folkies!

Anon, goode huswives, anon!