Richard Trethewey
“All the songs and tunes are inspired by either Cornwall and its history, incredible stories I have come across, events, or by people who have touched my life in some way. It is usually when I find a great story that is little known or in danger of being forgotten that I am moved to write songs and this is partly the motivation for compiling this book.” An excerpt from my 2020 songbook Story Singer.
Whilst the above quote refers to my general motivations for song and tune writing as a method of promoting and preserving Cornwall’s unique identity and history, I feel doubly passionate about safeguarding the legacy of Cornwall’s Clay Country. I think the Cornish love an underdog – often we are the underdog, whether in sporting events, musical competitions, or standing alongside other minority cultures to promote and protect our language. Cornwall often punches way above its weight for our numbers and resources. I have always felt that Cornwall’s sense of pride and identity is not only strengthened but also protected by our geography. We are surrounded by the sea with very definite, visible boundaries and just one land boundary with neighbouring Devon. This enables us to really see our land and have a tangible sense of where it starts and finishes, and of all that lies within it.
Distilling further down into Cornish identity, I feel the Clay Country is a unique culture within itself as a distinct geographic area protected by its huge clay tips, pits, pools, dams, refineries, and moorland. Whilst the clay industry has undoubtedly been responsible for the loss of whole villages, consumed by the then expanding industry, I feel it has also protected it as a distinct area that cannot be consumed by expansion of towns and villages due to physical constraints. Perhaps because of the very industrial nature of the area, for a long time it seems to have retained a real sense of identity, with families from its various villages having lived in the area for generations. It is an area of Cornwall around which, even at the height of summer, you can quite happily travel without adding an additional half an hour to your journey because of the amount of extra people visiting!
One of my favourite quotes illustrating the distinct Clay Country Cornish comes from A.W. Holmes’ 1944 novel Out of this Fury:
“Then he cursed all the Tredinnicks, Tretheweys, Rescorls, Borlazes – presumably just because they did not call themselves Smiths, Joneses and Robinsons. He disliked them because they ate pasties – damned great things ten inches long which they ate wrapped up in newspapers in their hands. He cursed them for the gallons of tea they drank, and for the cake they gorged; cake for breakfast, cake for lunch, cake for supper.”
It sounds pretty accurate to me!
I was born in 1988 and spent my first years living at Little Carnegga Cottage at Menna, which sits between St Dennis and the Goss Moor. My family then moved to Truro, but we grew up spending a lot of time visiting my Granny, Great Aunts, and Aunties in St Dennis, and as a youngster I was taken round the various chapels (many of which are now residences) of the Clay Country and North Cornwall with my father Raymond Trethewey’s musical group, consisting of Raymond (Tenor), John Heard (Violin), Caroline Harrison (Soprano), Bill Wareham (Bass), and Rosemary Heard (Piano). It was these experiences which no doubt helped kindle not only my love of music and songs, but also of community and in particular authenticity. Authenticity is one of the most important aspects of music that I am drawn to, and it is the same with people and places too, and the clay country feels to me to be one of the most authentically Cornish areas of Cornwall. There is no façade here put on for visitors. I have lived in many different areas of Cornwall over the years from Truro, St Day, Illogan, Rame, and Ventongimps! It was, however, when I moved back to the Clay Country in 2019, to Goonabarn between Foxhole and Nanpean, that I felt most connected to a landscape and a history. I would set off from home on foot and walk the roads and lanes that I knew my ancestors walked on their way to work. I would sit at the top of Clay Tips or Foxhole Beacon to watch the sunset, surrounded by Clay Boroughs and Tips on all sides and feel protected by the landscape they provided. Between Goonabarn and Gwindra at the bottom of St Stephen is a tiny collection of houses at a place called Carloggas. I had a vague recollection of my dad telling me that Tretheweys used to live at Carloggas, and when walking those lanes I used to tangibly feel the history of the area and the families that lived there. It was only recently when thinking of writing about my thoughts on the area, that with the help of my Dad and Sally Whiffing (historian and researcher for the Trethewey Society), I found out that one house in particular that I always stopped by and admired, coveted even, and was very drawn to was one of the houses where Tretheweys lived. It was in fact lived in by Richard Trethewey! Richard (1791-1871) was a shoe maker and after some research (by Sally!) she has informed me that we are seventh cousins six times removed (four times!). She had to go back to our common ancestor of James Trethewy (d. 1573) to work that out!
The songs and tunes that I have written or adapted (so far) inspired by the Clay Country and its people are:
- Carnegga
- The Clay Worker’s Strike of 1913
- Hope in a Jam Jar
- Myrgh Nans Byghan
- Trethewey Mine
- Up Over the Downs
- We Be
As already mentioned, Little Carnegga Cottage was the first house I lived in and is somewhere I still love to walk or cycle past. This tune is probably a minuet, written in 3/4 which is often played in both Ionian (Major) and Aeolian (Minor) modes.
The Clay Worker’s Strike of 1913
I wrote this strike song in the style of a ballad around 2009 whilst looking for and struggling to find songs about the China Clay Industry. I was studying on the Newcastle-based Folk Music degree and putting together my final recital, which was a concert of music and song all inspired by or telling the story of the various Cornish industries which have flourished over the years. I came across the story of the 1913 China Clay Strike and couldn’t believe the drama and incredibility of the facts I was reading about. In the summer of 1913, the entire China Clay Industry went on strike in hopes of better pay and working conditions. Although the industry was booming, some clay workers were still being paid as little as 18d for a week’s hard labour. It was a very violent time in the clay district, with intimidation and violence being used to make sure every person in the industry came out on strike. The strike came to a head when the specially trained riot squad brought in from Glamorgan (and billeted with the striking clayworkers!) charged on a group of strikers including women and children.
“The batons they fell on the ones who couldn’t flee
Down in the clay country,
But policemen will rest well, they’ll rest with you and me.
Down in the clay country my bonny boys, down in the clay country”
The strike lasted for months but was ultimately unsuccessful, and the starving, broken clay workers went back to work. The following summer saw the outbreak of World War One and the men left the clay pits once again.
Clay Workers Strike sung at Lowender Peran 2017, video courtesy of Max De Franco (RadMax Productions)
I wrote this in 2021 for a project put together by Kneehigh Theatre called Random Acts of Art. Because of limitations on people being able to access art and for artists to perform, they contacted many artists with connections to the clay country to see if they could come up with an act of art that would happen in their community without prior notice to those who lived there. My granny was born in Nanpean in 1924 and will turn 98 in May 2022! One of the many stories she has told me quickly emerged as the inspiration for my own act of art.
My act of art was based on her memory of the Winter of 1933. Granny was nine years old and from her bedroom window witnessed an original act of art – the curate of Nanpean Church, Reverend Ralph Perry-Gore collecting candles in jam jars and ice skating on the frozen clay pit behind her house. This happened against the backdrop of the great depression. Granny recalls queues of men outside the Methodist Sunday School who were queuing to go onto the dole, and miners from ‘down west’ coming up at Christmas to sing carols to collect anything they could to ease their situation. I worked with Kneehigh Theatre and in particular Anna Murphy who linked me up with automata-maker Tony Crosby to create a moving model of Reverend Perry-Gore which I would be able to take through the village singing a song I wrote for the project. As you can see from the photo, he did a fantastic job – the level of detail is fantastic and it was exactly what I pictured in my head when we first talked about the idea.
The most moving moment of the night and one I will never forget was reaching the millennium memorial in the village and being able to sing the story to my Granny 88 years after she witnessed the original moment of magic. Her story now lives in the minds of many other children of the village who perhaps will tell their grandchildren of this night one day.
After the event I had an article published in The British Virgin Islands newspaper ‘The BVI’ as Reverend Perry-Gore went out there after leaving Nanpean. I was fortunate enough to have some correspondence with people with connections to him there, and then received a photograph of Perry-Gore which is the only one I have managed to find, which was amazing!
Myrgh Nans Byghan (Daughter of Nanpean)
This tune was written in 2007 to commemorate the year that my Granny Mona Trethewey (nee Whitford) was made a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh. She was ‘barded’ in Penzance for all her work with the Old Cornwall Society and her support of her family’s involvement with the Brass Band movement over the years.
I wrote this song in 2020 and it’s about the incredible story of William and Joe Trethewey whose family left Gothers (in the St Dennis area) in the mid 19th century with their family to start a new life in Ontario. The family then moved west to British Columbia before William was drawn back to Ontario.
This song imagines William’s letter back to Joe asking him to join him at the Trethewey Mine. The chorus imagines their Cornish life as children in the Clay Country and partaking in feast day dances. There is part of The Rescorla Snail Creep at the end – a traditional Clay Country tune used for such dances!
It was fascinating researching this and speaking to people in Canada about this shared history. Huge thanks to Cobalt Historical Society for their enthusiasm and their kindness in using some of their images. Huge thanks too for the China Clay Historical Society and Tony Mansell for some of the Cornish ones. Thanks to Tom Fosten for his beautiful guitar playing! I have stayed in touch with the Cobalt Historical Society who even sent me a sample of some rock from the waste pile on the site of the original Trethewey Mine which contains small amounts of genuine Trethewey Silver!
This tune emerged in my head around 2009 I think! I was cycling from Truro to St Dennis and cycling over Trelavour Downs nearly at the end of my journey and eagerly anticipating the pasty my Granny had made for me! I always enjoy hearing St Dennis locals talking about going up over the downs and I enjoy the double meaning it could have with feeling happy and enjoying good times!
I wrote a new melody to this traditional song which was originally collected in St Austell in the 1920s and contributed to Ralph Dunstan’s Cornish Dialect and Folk Songs book (1932) by Mr W. W. Piper of St Austell. It is a song that itinerant tailors would have sung as they travelled from farm to farm. The song had a very jovial tune and I wanted to give it something of the Scottish waulking work songs in Gaelic. I re-wrote the chorus and had it translated into Cornish by Matthew Clarke which I think helped bring to life the Celtic connection I was hoping to show.
Video courtesy of Carmen Hunt
Notes
For more information about Richards albums, publications and gig list visit www.richardtrethewey.org
See also:
Myrgh Nans Byghan (Daughter of Nanpean)