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Posted: 29-01-2005 02:53 Post subject:

as someone born and bred in cornwall, can i just confirm that camborne is indeed a shithole and newquay is hell and would be much better if it was just bulldozed.

as for mizzle - it's the worst weather on earth.

inbreeding does indeed go on down there, hence the term 'a redruth wedding.' there was a couple of obviously inberd kids at my school.

as for independence, yeah right. and what's going to support the economy? the eden project? dream on. you haven't even got a motorway.

as for weirdness, yes, cornwall is very weird and particularly good for nature spirits. oh, and my mate knew the bloke that hoaxed the mawgawr sea monster thing back in the 70s. yes, it was all a big joke.

Posted: 29-01-2005 11:30 Post subject:

Posted: 29-01-2005 12:26 Post subject:

Ah! Morgawr! A nice article in The Unexplained but my amusement was reserved for a proclamation by Alex "I'm a King of witches, I am" Gardiner. He got lots of reporters together and declared he would 'summon' the monster. After a fruitless hour or so of ranting, he then said he'd actually cast a 'spell of protection' on the beast to save it from all the nasty reporters.

There's a jolly good ghost walk in Penzance.

Posted: 29-01-2005 18:35 Post subject:

am sworn to secrecy, but i think he's dead now.

Posted: 27-07-2005 01:03 Post subject:

Posted: 10-09-2007 08:45 Post subject:

Biblical error costs Church £½m
Ruth Gledhill and Rajeev Syal

An historic collection of religious books whose sale for £36,000 was approved last year by a Church of England diocese has been sold on by a book dealer for more than £500,000.

The Diocese of Truro sanctioned a deal in September 2006 to sell hundreds of old Bibles and manuscripts from its library to John Thornton in a move to clear shelf space.

The decision to sell at such a low price has astounded antiquarian booksellers, who have described it as “one of the killings of the century”.

Auction sales alone after Mr Thornton gained access to the collection have generated about half a million pounds. Mr Thornton has now closed his shop in Chelsea, West London, and has told The Times that he is planning to retire to the country.

Church officials have been left baffled by the decision to sell the collection. They are seeking legal advice to discover why the trust that owns the books did not profit more from the sale. Jeremy Dowling, spokesman for the Truro diocese and its board of finance, said that the deal was a “terrible shame” but had been done to make room.

“Those on the management committee had no idea of the value of the material they were dealing with. The decision was made in principle that the pre1800 collection be disposed of simply because in the past ten years no one had inquired about any book in it at all. Therefore, the library management committee felt that the space was being taken up in a way that was not productive.

“What Mr Thornton bought, he bought in good faith. The difficulty arises as to whether or not the trustees were sufficiently aware of what was going on,” he said.

The collection came from the Bishop Phillpotts Library, founded by Henry Phillpotts, a 19th-century Bishop of Exeter, who left 2,000 books to serve the clergy of Cornwall.

In 2004 the Truro diocesan board of finance approved plans by the trustees of the library to sell all the pre1800 volumes to a dealer. They failed to call in a recognised auction house to make a valuation. Instead, they invited a number of dealers to make offers.

There remains some dispute over how many dealers wanted the collection, but the Church concedes that Mr Thornton’s offer was the highest that they received. Two years later the library accepted it and the books were taken away in three white vans.

Experts first became aware of the deal last December as rare Bibles from the collection began to emerge on the market. Dominic Winter, of Dominic Winter Book Auctions in South Cerney, near Cirencester, sold an illustrated 400lb 63-volume Macklin Bible for £47,000 on Mr Thornton’s behalf – £11,000 more than Mr Thornton had paid for the entire collection.

He told The Times yesterday that the library should have evaluated the books properly or gone to auction.

“The fault, if there is a fault, lies with the people looking after the library because they did not cast around. We do not think that they went to any auctioneers in the first place or get any more quotes for the job,” he said.

About 50 lots with provenance from the Phillpotts library were offered in a Sotheby’s book sale in June. The story of the extraordinary sale first emerged in the magazine Bookdealer.

Alan Shelley, president of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association, said that somewhere, someone had made a big mistake. “No one knows what happened down in Truro,” he said. “Clearly, some great error has been made somewhere along the way, at what stage and by whom I do not know.”

Mr Shelley added: “We were approached some years ago to see if any of our members would be interested in providing a valuation. We know from our records that three members responded to the advertisement we put in our bulletin.”

Mr Thornton, 74, an expert in theological books, told The Times that he had decided to retire after decades as a bookseller and has closed his terraced shop in Chelsea.

A cricket enthusiast, who is married with at least one child, he said that he had offered a fair price for the Phillpotts collection. “I was invited to make an offer to clear the books and two years later I took them away. It was difficult to give an accurate evaluation of the collection when we were asked to do so in 2004 because of the dimly lit and confined conditions in which they were held.

“As for any queries on the deal, I will wait and see what the lawyers say,” he said.

More info...

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2419379.ece

Posted: 11-09-2007 18:26 Post subject:

Diocese contemplates legal action

The Diocese of Truro is seeking legal advice to see if it has any cause for redress after losing out from the sale of antique books.
A dealer bought the collection for £36,000 in 2006. However the books, some dating back to 1470, have just sold at Sotheby's for £500,000.

Prior to the sale last year, the religious books had been in the Bishop Philpotts Library in Truro.

The library was set up in 1856 for the benefit of clergy in Cornwall.

In 2002 the Bishop Philphotts Library approached the Diocese of Truro to see if the trustees would be happy for them to sell a small proportion of its extensive collection.

The trustees approved the move.

A spokesman for the Diocese of Truro, Jeremy Dowling, said: "The Library paid for a valuation in 2002 and was told the books were worth £20,000."

The spokesman added that when it was approached by a London book dealer in 2005 and again in 2006 "a £16,000 increase over three to four years seemed reasonable."

The London bookseller put in the highest bid for the collection at £36,000.

The Diocese only realised it had lost out when a single volume recently made £78,000 alone at a Sotheby's auction.

The Diocese of Truro, who is acting on behalf of the Bishop Philpotts Library, is now seeking legal advice on the situation and is unable to comment.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/6988692.stm

Posted: 25-09-2007 19:56 Post subject:

Last week I actually saw, with my very own eyes, what could only be described as a truly astonishing sight. There, in the middle of Fore Street in Redruth, as bold as brass, was a woman who must have weighed less than 10 stone. I kid you not! It is a great regret that I didn't have my camera with me at the time. I expect that such a rare occurrence will make the front page of The West Briton this Thursday. We may never witness the like again.

Posted: 08-04-2009 20:30 Post subject:

The last couple of days I've taken dozens of digital pics. I've not processed them all yet, but already I've found an 'anomaly'.

Here's a view from the high ground S of Redruth, looking N to St Agnes Beacon.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/rynner/IMG_2326b.jpg

But what's this white streak in the trees (apparently)?
(This is a full-size crop from the original.)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/rynner/IMG_2326.jpg

Is it another plant stalk, similar to those on the LHS? But it gives the impression of being set back from the foreground. Is it a toilet roll thrown into the trees? Rolling Eyes

Anyhow, I may look at it some more later - for now I have more pics to look at! Cool

Posted: 08-04-2009 21:08 Post subject:

Just a stick I think. Either that or one of those mysterious and unravelled rolls of toilet paper you sometimes see stuck in odd places.

Posted: 05-11-2009 16:00 Post subject:

There are half-a-dozen mentions of Pengersick castle on FTMB, but somehow they'd slipped my mind every time I'd passed the place, maybe because the most recent mention was in 2004:

Posted: 03-08-2013 21:57 Post subject:

This is fun, but I suspect it was a spoof video (or film) when made (the local rag is rather flippant about it too):

The world's fastest Cornishman? VIDEO unearthed in attic shows 'land speed record attempt'... maybe!
12:00pm Saturday 3rd August 2013 in Falmouth/Penryn .

Here is a film to make you giggle, a video billed as an an "early attempt to break the motorbike speed world record".
It says that after being "locked away in an attic in Redruth for over fifty years, this recently unearthed footage shows an early attempt to break the motorbike speed world record".

Adding: "Apparently shot at some unknown salt flats during the old 'Cornwall Speed Week' event, the negative film has now been digitally remastered to show local man Chris Ryan attempting to become 'The World's Fastest Cornishman'."

Well, maybe!!

http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/fpfalmouth/10575460.The_world_s_fastest_Cornishman__VIDEO_unearthed_in_attic_shows__land_speed_record_attempt_____maybe_/

Ignore the video on page - watch the YouTube one, at full-screen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gb-8zBhPqSY#at=47

You can forget about 'unknown salt flats', as there aren't any in Cornwall - but there are lots of flat sandy beaches when the tide is out.

"Hayle Speed Shop" on the van suggests this might have been filmed on nearby Hayle Towans beach, which reaches a few miles NE to Gwithian, but the images don't really match.

I think the filming took place on the beach west of Marazion on the south coast. There are reefs just west of there which reach out at right angles to the shore, and seem to match the rocks in the film. Newlyn and Penzance can be seen beyond the rocks, on the far side of Mounts Bay.

But I doubt you'd reach 200 mph on such a beach, which is more evidence for a spoof. Cool

(My website has a few pics of the area, about half-way down this page:
http://cornwalltidesreach.weebly.com/man-pen-2.html )

Any locals with comments?

Posted: 04-08-2013 01:01 Post subject:

Posted: 04-08-2013 06:58 Post subject:

Everything about this video screams "Hoax"!

It is clearly a digital video - not some sort of 16mm film used at the time. And the attire, the hair-dos and the girl with the camera - that's a 1970s model - mayne 60s at best.

My father was an avid 16mm amateur in that period - the camera looked nothing like that.

Posted: 04-08-2013 07:23 Post subject: