Celtic Culture & heritage

Richard Lower – Royal physician, first physician and scientist who conducted transfusion between animals and animals and also between animals and human beings, philanthropist

Submitted by Kernow Matters to Us on February 18, 2016 - 5:24pm

Richard Lower

Richard Lower was born in 1631 in St. Tudy in Cornwall, to Margery Billing and Humphry Lower. He completed his education from Westminster school and Christ Church, Oxford. In Westminster, he got acquainted with John Locke and in Oxford he met Robert Boyle and Thomas Wills, who founded the Royal Society in later years. John Locke and Robert Boyle became his companions in research. Under Thomas Wills, he started his medical career and research.

He completed his B.A in 1653 and M.A in 1655.

At Oxford, Richard Lower worked under Thomas Wills. Lower collaborated with him to conduct research on the nervous system. In the meantime, he also did some research on the functioning of the heart and studied the circulation of blood when it passes through the lungs. Here, he came up with some ground-breaking concepts and showed that it is possible to transfuse blood from one animal to another or from an animal to a human being. He successfully performed his first transfusion in 1665 at Oxford where he transfused blood from one animal’s artery to the vein of another animal. After receiving a medical degree in 1665, he relocated to London in 1666, where Thomas Wills had already relocated.

Jan Harvey – TV personality, actress

Submitted by Kernow Matters to Us on February 18, 2016 - 5:26pm

Jan Harvey

Jan Harvey was born on 1st June 1947 in Penzance.

She is possibly best known for her starring role as Jan Howard in the British TV drama Howards' Way, from 1985–90, in which she ran a fashion boutique named Periplus.

The boutique specialised in the sale of après sail wear (and was also the first UK headquarters of the German mail order franchise, Die Spitz). Subsequently a partnership, Howard Brooke, was formed which ran multiple boutiques as well as producing its own designs. There followed the launch of an internationally renowned couture house (with attendant fragrance and cosmetics lines), the House of Howard, which was successfully floated on the stock exchange.

During the 1990s, Harvey appeared in the action series Bugs, and more recently was a regular cast member in the Five soap opera Family Affairs (in which she played Babs Woods). She has also guest starred in many other high profile British dramas including A Touch of Frost, Inspector Morse and Lovejoy.

John Passmore Edwards – journalist, campaigner for the working people, chartist, pacifist and anti-war campaigner, philanthropist, he twice refused Royal recognition

Submitted by Kernow Matters to Us on February 18, 2016 - 5:31pm

John Passmore Edwards

John Passmore Edwards was born on 24th March 1823 in Blackwater, between Redruth and Truro, Cornwall, the son of a carpenter.

After an education at the village school, he became a journalist and by the early 1840s was working as a free-lance writer in London.

During this time he became an activist and served on several committees. These included such causes as the abolition of capital punishment, the suppression of the opium trade and the abolition of flogging in the services. Passmore Edwards also helped direct the Political Reform Association.

From 1848 onwards, he attended various peace conferences in Europe as a delegate from the London Peace Society. He also published and edited various magazines, promoting such things as peace and temperance. Over the following years, he purchased several successful publications and in 1876 bought the ‘Echo’, the first London daily halfpenny paper.

Susan Penhaligon – stage, TV and movie actress, author, proudly and outspokenly Cornish

Submitted by Kernow Matters to Us on February 18, 2016 - 5:34pm

Susan Penhaligon

Susan Penhaligon was born on 3 July 1949 and is a Cornish actress probably best known for her appearances in the controversial 1976 drama Bouquet of Barbed Wire and for playing Judi Dench's sister in the 1981 sitcom A Fine Romance. She also played a British military officer in Paul Verhoeven's Soldier of Orange.

Although born in Manila, both her parents were Cornish and there can be little doubt of her being Cornish with a fine Cornish surname like Penhaligon! She returned with her family to Cornwall, aged 6. She spent her formative years living in St. Ives and Falmouth.

Aged 11 she was sent to boarding school in Bristol where her acting ambitions were encouraged. She has two brothers and a sister in the U.S.A. After her parents divorced, her father went to live in San Francisco and worked as a private detective.

She is a cousin of the late David Penhaligon MP, a former Liberal member of parliament in Cornwall.

While training at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art,Penhaligon shared a flat with soon-to-be rock star Peter Hammill. Tagged the 'British Bardot' in the 1970s, Clive Aslet in The Daily Telegraph wrote that Penhaligon ‘was the face of the decade’.

Christopher "Chris" Morris - professional footballer who played for Scotland’s Celtic, played for the Republic of Ireland against England, now a businessman in Cornwall’s pasty industry

Submitted by Kernow Matters to Us on February 18, 2016 - 5:38pm

Chris Morris

Christopher "Chris" Morris was born 24 December 1963 in Newquay, Cornwall.

He is a former professional footballer who made his name as a defender with Celtic in Scotland and Sheffield Wednesday & Middlesbrough in England, among others. Chris also had a successful playing career with the Republic of Ireland national side during the Jack Charlton era.

Chris first began his career in 1982, signing for Wednesday under ex-England international, Jack Charlton, in the old Division Two. He won promotion to the First Division with Wednesday in 1984. He made seventy-four appearances between 1983 and 1987, scoring one goal along the way. He then moved north of the border to Celtic, signing for £125,000 on 10 August 1987.

He made his debut in the 4-0 win over Morton, at age 23. Between 1987 and 1992, He was the regular right-back for the Bhoys, with 160 appearances and 8 goals to his name. He then moved on to Middlesbrough on 14 August 1992, where he remained for several seasons as a first team regular without ever becoming a crowd favourite. Troubled by an anterior cruciate ligament injury, he retired at the end of the 1996-97 season, when Boro were runners-up in the FA Cup and Football League Cup, but a 3-point deduction for postponing a match at short notice had caused them to be relegated from the Premier League.

St Piran's Day in Redruth - Saturday 5th March, 2016

Submitted by Myghal Map Serpren on February 6, 2016 - 4:39pm

St Piran's Day

Redruth in Kernow has published the programme brochure for one of the biggest celebrations of Cornish culture and identity with organisers promising that this year's St Piran's Festival will be better than ever!

Saint Piran has been widely accepted now as Cornwall's National Saint and his black flag with its white cross is flown as the flag of Cornwall outside public buildings and other places across the Duchy.

Such is the popularity of the Redruth event, that it was mentioned in a submission by the Westminster Government to the Council of Europe as an example of Cornish difference and National Identity.

Mike Trebilcock - professional footballer, scoring twice in 1966 FA Cup Final for Everton

Submitted by Kernow Matters to Us on January 31, 2016 - 4:40pm

Mike Trebilcock

Mike Trebilcock was born on 29th November 1944 in Gunnislake in Cornwall.

A professional footballer, he played primarily as a winger and is most famous for scoring twice in the 1966 FA Cup Final for Everton, becoming the second black player to score in an FA Cup Final (Bill Perry of Blackpool being the first in 1953).

Mike Trebilcock played for non-league Tavistock before joining Plymouth Argyle in December 1962. He scored 27 times in 71 league games for the Pilgrims, leading to a £23,000 move to Everton on 31 December 1965. He made his debut a few days later against Aston Villa, but was injured and spent much of the rest of the season on the sidelines. In the meantime, Everton had been progressing through to the FA Cup final, where they would meet Sheffield Wednesday.

Cyril Richard ‘Rick’ Rescorla - 9/11 hero

Submitted by Kernow Matters to Us on January 31, 2016 - 4:58pm

Rick Rescorla

Cyril Richard ‘Rick’ Rescorla BA MA LLB holder of ‘The White Cross of Cornwall’, US Silver Star, US Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, US Purple Heart, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, British General Service Medal ‘Hard Core’ ‘The Cornish Hawk’ - saved 2,687 lives on September 11, 2001 whilst singing Cornish songs, academic, Cornish patriot, hero supreme, the man who predicted 9/11.

Rick Rescorla was born on 27th May, 1939 in Hayle in Cornwall. He grew up there with his grandparents and his mother, who worked as a housekeeper and companion to the elderly. In 1943, his hometown of Hayle served as headquarters for the 175th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. 29th Infantry Division, largely composed of American soldiers from Maryland and Virginia preparing for the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Young Rick idolized the American soldiers and wanted to become a soldier because of them.

Rescorla was a natural sportsman, setting a school record in the shot put, and was an avid boxer. When a professional boxing match was scheduled between a British boxer and an American heavyweight contender named Tami Mauriello, his friends backed the Cornishman. Rescorla stated, ‘I'm for Tammy’ [sic] and after Mauriello won the fight everyone in Hayle knew him as ‘Tammy’.

Henry Trengrouse - inventor of rocket powered ‘Bosun’s Chair’ rescue system and self righting lifeboat, savers of 1000s of lives

Submitted by Kernow Matters to Us on January 31, 2016 - 5:13pm

Henry Trengrouse

Henry Trengrouse - inventor of rocket powered ‘Bosun’s Chair’ rescue system which has saved 1000s of lives to this day, inventor of the self righting lifeboat, recognised in Cornwall and Russia but not by the British Government

Henry Trengrouse was born in Helston, Cornwall on 18 March 1772

He was educated at Helston Grammar School and became a cabinet maker.

On 24 December 1807 he witnessed the wreck of the Anson frigate off the Loe Bar, Cornwall, when over a hundred lives were lost and this disaster led him to devote his life to the discovery of some means for saving lives at shipwrecks. He spent much labour in attempting to devise a lifeboat, but produced no satisfactory results and turned his attention to the ‘Rocket’ life-saving apparatus, an early form of the Breeches buoy.

In addition to this, Trengrouse was dismayed at the then common practice of burying victims of shipwrecks in common graves in unconsecrated ground near the site of the wreck, having seen the dead from the Anson buried in the dunes at Loe Bar. He persuaded his local MP to work for a change in the law and from 1808 the practice was abolished.

Kristin Scott Thomas - Actress

Submitted by Kernow Matters to Us on January 31, 2016 - 3:33pm

Kristin Scott Thomas

Kristin Scott Thomas was born in Redruth, Cornwall on 24 May 1960.

She was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (Number 50).

She was also chosen by "People" magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World.

She speaks French fluently and dubbed herself in French in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994).

She was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2003 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama.

She was nominated for a 2004 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actress of 2003 for her performance in "Three Sisters" at the Playhouse.

She was awarded Legion d'Honneur, France's highest civilian award, in the January 2005 honors list.

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