Talk about Cornish mineworkers in South Africa

‘The Parish Next Door’: Cornish mineworkers and South Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

For several decades from the 1850s, South Africa was a major destination for Cornish mineworkers. From the copper mines of Namaqualand, the diamond mines of Kimberley, to the Gold Rush in the Witwatersrand, the Cornish were at the very forefront of development.

© Dr Sharron P. Schwartz

Such was the flow of people to its mining camps, that South Africa came to be regarded as almost the parish next door. Communities throughout Cornwall became reliant on remittances, and events occurring in South Africa were keenly felt back home.

This was a time when Johannesburg had a Cousin Jack Corner, and the Redruth singer, Fanny Moody, sang Trelawney to thousands of her countrymen and women. The Jameson Raid and the Boer War tested loyalties within Cornish communities, and elections in the Mining Division were fought on issues occurring ‘On the Rand’.

However, all that glitters was not gold, for the Cornish miners paid a high price to send remittances back home in the shape of the debilitating lung disease, miner’s phthisis. The legacy of Cornish contact with South Africa is deeply carved into the hearts of countless Cornish families and is evident in the superb industrial archaeology of Namaqualand where the sole surviving Cornish-made steam engine in the southern hemisphere is located.

Yet, the less palatable signs of mass destruction, the despoilation of native land, attitudes to other ethnic groups and the effects of colonisation, all factors closely involving the Cornish, have received rather less attention. 

Join me for this illustrated talk hosted by Kresen Kernow, Redruth, on 20 August 3-4.00pm. The talk is to coincide with their major new exhibition exploring the Cornish influence in South Africa. Book your FREE TICKETS now on their Ticket Tailor event page by clicking here

 

‘The Parish Next Door’: Cornish mineworkers in South Africa