My Old House

Hello & thanks for stopping by. It was gloriously sunny in Cornwall yesterday on my first day as a blogger. I’d been toying with the idea of starting a blog for a while now and finally decided that now was a good time as any to join the land of blog (sounds like a good title for a book!).....First though I would like to say thanks to Polly of Counting Your Blessings for providing the beautiful banner you see on my blog & for giving instructions on how to download it....Thank you Polly for helping a technology challenged first time blogger....lol...

The name Primitive Cornish Hovel came from my love of anything prim, the beautiful county I live in & the fact that my house at present resembles a hovel. Being a very old house under renovation lends itself well to that name. It would be easier to rebuild it but it’s a solid old girl crying out to be restored to her former glory, so as a lover of anything old & vintage hubby & I are doing just that, slowly but surely. We are fortunate in having all the original documents including some beautiful parchment deeds with seals. Having read the history of my house I now know of all the people who have ever lived here (and some still do!!!). What I do not know is when it was built but I do have a will dated 1830 which shows a bequest of ‘The Land and Dwelling Thereon’. The house was once surrounded by green fields & stood detached on an area called Meadow Row. But along with progress comes change & due to the busy iron foundry owned by the local Harvey family this quite little Hamlet soon developed into the small town of Hayle (Heyl) that is seen today. Although my house didn’t change the area around it did. The fields gave way to houses to accommodate the foundry workers and Meadow Row became Penpol Road, which can be seen in the picture below as it was in about 1910. Very little has changed to the area since those days. The shop seen on the left is now a house & cattle no longer walk down the road but the houses still stand....where’s mine you may ask, well it's just around the corner in the background opposite the tree. I’m yet to find a picture of my house as it was then. I do know that it was once a police house for about 50 years & at one time owned by a vicar...so I better behave myself...

Don’t you just love those pinafores, makes me want to get out my sewing machine & start making one.....for a doll of course, my days of wearing one are over......a little extra snippet about Hayle. It was also a thriving port as well as a busy industrial centre. One of the greatest ships built at Hayle was the Cornubia . Built in 1858 for the Hayle Steam Packet Company she served as a packet ship and ferry. During the American Civil War the Cornubia was purchased by agents for the Confederacy , taken to the USA, renamed Lady Davis and became a famous blockade runner (information curtsy of eyehistory.mysite)......Well that’s all for now from the Hovel..lol...