Cornwall: Map & History

History

Humans reoccupied Britain after the last Ice Age. The area now known as Cornwall was first inhabited in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods. It continued to be occupied by Neolithic and then by Bronze Age people.

Cornwall in the Late Bronze Age formed part of a maritime trading-networked culture which researchers have dubbed the Atlantic Bronze Age system, and which extended over most of the areas of present-day Ireland, England, Wales, France, Spain, and Portugal.

During the British Iron Age, Cornwall, like all of Britain (modern England, Scotland, Wales, and the Isle of Man), was inhabited by a Celtic-speaking people known as the Britons with distinctive cultural relations to neighbouring Brittany.

Economy

Cornwall is one of the poorest parts of the United Kingdom in terms of per capita GDP and average household incomes. At the same time, parts of the county, especially on the coast, have high house prices, driven up by demand from relatively wealthy retired people and second-home owners. The GVA per head was 65% of the UK average for 2004. The GDP per head for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly was 79.2% of the EU-27 average for 2004, the UK per head average was 123.0%. In 2011, the latest available figures, Cornwall's (including the Isles of Scilly) measure of wealth was 64% of the European average per capita.

Historically mining of tin (and later also of copper) was important in the Cornish economy. The first reference to this appears to be by Pytheas: see above.

Culture

A member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic language family, Cornish is closely related to the other Brythonic languages (Breton and Welsh), and less so to the Goidelic languages (Scottish Gaelic, Irish and Manx).

Cornish is recognised under Part III of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, placing it alongside the other the Celtic languages of the UK.

Cornish died out in the late 18th century. There has been a revival of the language by academics and optimistic enthusiasts since the mid-19th century that gained momentum from the publication of Henry Jenner's Handbook of the Cornish Language in 1904. It is a social networking community language rather than a social community group language.

Physical geography

Cornwall forms the tip of the south-west peninsula of the island of Great Britain, and is therefore exposed to the full force of the prevailing winds that blow in from the Atlantic Ocean. The coastline is composed mainly of resistant rocks that give rise in many places to tall cliffs. Cornwall has a border with only one other county, Devon, which is formed almost entirely by the River Tamar, and the remainder (to the north) by the Marsland Valley.

The north and south coasts have different characteristics.