119-530: Wolf Rock Lighthouse is on the Wolf Rock ( Cornish : An Welv , meaning the lip ), a single rock located 18 nautical miles (33 km ; 21 mi ) east of St Mary's , Isles of Scilly and 8 nautical miles (15 km; 9.2 mi) southwest of Land's End , in Cornwall , England , United Kingdom . The fissures in the rock are said to produce a howling sound in gales, hence the name. The lighthouse
238-505: A 24-inch (62 cm) flint glass lens for the Craig telescope . The French lens craftsman George Bontemps helped on the project, which for its day was a very large lens. They only made part of the lens which was a doublet, Thames Plate Glass Company made the other part. In 1870 Chance Brothers took over the failing Nailsea Glassworks in Somerset , but problems with coal supply led to
357-546: A 4.3 m (14 ft) high cone-shaped beacon, which took five years to build. Made of iron plates and filled with concrete rubble this was completed in 1848, it can still be seen next to the lighthouse. In April 1860, Trinity House applied to the Board of Trade for funds to build a lighthouse on Wolf Rock. Approval was given and Walker, as engineer-in-chief, drew up designs for a 117 ft (36 m) masonry tower, tapering in diameter from 41 ft 8 in (12.70 m) at
476-454: A Cornish scribe. No single phonological feature distinguishes Cornish from both Welsh and Breton until the beginning of the assibilation of dental stops in Cornish, which is not found before the second half of the eleventh century, and it is not always possible to distinguish Old Cornish, Old Breton, and Old Welsh orthographically. The Cornish language continued to flourish well through
595-555: A basis, and Nicholas Williams published a revised version of Unified; however neither of these systems gained the popularity of Unified or Kemmyn. The revival entered a period of factionalism and public disputes, with each orthography attempting to push the others aside. By the time that Cornish was recognised by the UK government under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 2002, it had become recognised that
714-455: A complete version of a traditional folk tale, John of Chyanhor , a short story about a man from St Levan who goes far to the east seeking work, eventually returning home after three years to find that his wife has borne him a child during his absence. In 1776, William Bodinar, who describes himself as having learned Cornish from old fishermen when he was a boy, wrote a letter to Daines Barrington in Cornish, with an English translation, which
833-551: A lampoon of either of the Tudor kings Henry VII or Henry VIII . Others are the Charter Fragment , the earliest known continuous text in the Cornish language, apparently part of a play about a medieval marriage, and Pascon agan Arluth ( The Passion of Our Lord ), a poem probably intended for personal worship, were written during this period, probably in the second half of the 14th century. Another important text,
952-868: A less substantial body of literature than the Middle Cornish period, but the sources are more varied in nature, including songs, poems about fishing and curing pilchards , and various translations of verses from the Bible, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Creed. Edward Lhuyd's Archaeologia Britannica , which was mainly recorded in the field from native speakers in the early 1700s, and his unpublished field notebook are seen as important sources of Cornish vocabulary, some of which are not found in any other source. Archaeologia Britannica also features
1071-516: A lesser extent French entered the Cornish language throughout its history. Whereas only 5% of the vocabulary of the Old Cornish Vocabularium Cornicum is thought to be borrowed from English, and only 10% of the lexicon of the early modern Cornish writer William Rowe, around 42% of the vocabulary of the whole Cornish corpus is estimated to be English loan words, without taking frequency into account. (However, when frequency
1190-499: A major lighthouse engineering company, producing optical components, machinery, and other equipment for lighthouses around the world. James Timmins Chance pioneered placing lighthouse lamps inside a cage surrounded by Fresnel lenses to increase the available light output; the cages, known as optics, revolutionised lighthouse design. Another important innovation from Chance Brothers was the introduction of rotating optics, allowing adjacent lighthouses to be distinguished from each other by
1309-503: A manifesto demanding a return to the old religious services and included an article that concluded, "and so we the Cornyshe men (whereof certen of us understande no Englysh) utterly refuse thys newe Englysh." In response to their articles, the government spokesman (either Philip Nichols or Nicholas Udall ) wondered why they did not just ask the king for a version of the liturgy in their own language. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer asked why
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#17327975211251428-767: A marriage ceremony from being conducted in Cornish as the Marriage Act 1949 only allowed for marriage ceremonies in English or Welsh. In 2014, the Cornish people were recognised by the UK Government as a national minority under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . The FCNM provides certain rights and protections to a national minority with regard to their minority language. In 2016, British government funding for
1547-540: A mixture of English and Brittonic influences, and, like other Cornish literature, may have been written at Glasney College near Penryn . From this period also are the hagiographical dramas Beunans Meriasek ( The Life of Meriasek ) and Bewnans Ke ( The Life of Ke ), both of which feature as an antagonist the villainous and tyrannical King Tewdar (or Teudar), a historical medieval king in Armorica and Cornwall, who, in these plays, has been interpreted as
1666-481: A new clockwork-driven revolving pedestal. 100V DC power for the light was provided by Crompton Parkinson generators, driven by Ruston-Hornsby diesel motors, which were installed in what had been the coal store. The new optic maintained the same light characteristic as the old, flashing (alternately red and white) every fifteen seconds. It was a four-sided optic, made up of two wide lens panels and two narrow ones (the wider panels being fronted with ruby glass), so that
1785-519: A new process to grind the surfaces of plate glass was patented by James Timmins Chance . In 1848 under the supervision of Georges Bontemps , a French glassmaker from Choisy-le-Roi, who had purchased the secret of the stirrer after the deaths of Pierre Louis Guinand and Joseph von Fraunhofer , the pioneers of the manufacture of high-precision lenses for observatory telescopes, a new plant was set up to manufacture crown and flint glass for lighthouse optics, telescopes and cameras. Bontemps agreed to share
1904-648: A number of orthographic, and phonological, distinctions not found in Unified Cornish. Kernewek Kemmyn is characterised by the use of universal ⟨k⟩ for /k/ (instead of ⟨c⟩ before back vowels as in Unified); ⟨hw⟩ for /hw/, instead of ⟨wh⟩ as in Unified; and ⟨y⟩, ⟨oe⟩, and ⟨eu⟩ to represent the phonemes /ɪ/, /o/, and /œ/ respectively, which are not found in Unified Cornish. Criticism of all of these systems, especially Kernewek Kemmyn, by Nicolas Williams, resulted in
2023-678: A number of toponyms, for example bre 'hill', din 'fort', and bro 'land', and a variety of animal names such as logoden 'mouse', mols ' wether ', mogh 'pigs', and tarow 'bull'. During the Roman occupation of Britain a large number (around 800) of Latin loan words entered the vocabulary of Common Brittonic, which subsequently developed in a similar way to the inherited lexicon. These include brech 'arm' (from British Latin bracc(h)ium ), ruid 'net' (from retia ), and cos 'cheese' (from caseus ). A substantial number of loan words from English and to
2142-504: A number of verbs commonly found in other languages, including modals and psych-verbs; examples are 'have', 'like', 'hate', 'prefer', 'must/have to' and 'make/compel to'. These functions are instead fulfilled by periphrastic constructions involving a verb and various prepositional phrases. The grammar of Cornish shares with other Celtic languages a number of features which, while not unique, are unusual in an Indo-European context. The grammatical features most unfamiliar to English speakers of
2261-595: A period of rationalisation at Pilkingtons, a management buy-out reverted the Chance plant in Malvern to private ownership and it became an independent company, changing its registered name to Chance Glass Limited, but retaining the historical Chance logo. Since then the company has continued to develop its range of products and processes, and areas now served include the pharmaceutical, chemical, metrology , electronics and lighting industries. From 1851, Chance Brothers became
2380-413: A petrol-driven generator for recharging its batteries. On 18 December 1944, German submarine U-1209 hit Wolf Rock and was subsequently scuttled with the loss of 9 lives. In 1955 electrification came to Wolf Rock Lighthouse: in place of the oil lamp a 1 kW tungsten filament lamp was installed, within a new fourth-order catadioptric optic (again made by Chance Brothers); the optic was provided with
2499-417: A pressurised paraffin supply system was retained. In the early 1960s a new diaphone fog signal was installed in place of the old reed fog horn; powered by a pair of Lister diesel compressor sets, it was one of the last diaphone systems to be installed by Trinity House. In 1972 Wolf Rock became the first lighthouse in the world to be fitted with a helipad ; completed the following year, it greatly eased
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#17327975211252618-613: A result of finding a solution for an order from Joseph Paxton for a large greenhouse on the Chatsworth estate of the Dukes of Devonshire . It led to a contract to glaze the Crystal Palace in 1851 and which earned Joseph Paxton a knighthood. Based on technology by Sir William Crookes , Chance Brothers was responsible for perfecting the manufacture of glass for the earliest optical lenses to block harmful ultraviolet rays from
2737-614: A study by Kenneth MacKinnon in 2000. Jenefer Lowe of the Cornish Language Partnership said in an interview with the BBC in 2010 that there were around 300 fluent speakers. Bert Biscoe , a councillor and bard, in a statement to the Western Morning News in 2014 said there were "several hundred fluent speakers". Cornwall Council estimated in 2015 that there were 300–400 fluent speakers who used
2856-525: A variety of reasons by Jon Mills and Nicholas Williams , including making phonological distinctions that they state were not made in the traditional language c. 1500 , failing to make distinctions that they believe were made in the traditional language at this time, and the use of an orthography that deviated too far from the traditional texts and Unified Cornish. Also during this period, Richard Gendall created his Modern Cornish system (also known as Revived Late Cornish), which used Late Cornish as
2975-516: A voyage from Ireland to Zeebrugge , Belgium following a loss of power. Managing to clear the rock, Mazarine was initially unable to start the engines and drifted towards Mount's Bay . At around 16:00 hours a tug provided a tow to Falmouth Bay , where the ship underwent a dive survey and was drydocked for repairs . The hull required extensive repairs on the port side aft in order to close up multiple hull perforations and replace deformed plating . The Wolf Rock Lighthouse features prominently in
3094-458: A wolf was placed on top; but by 1795 the daymark was washed away. In the late 1830s John Thurburn built a beacon , which was completed on 15 July 1840, and in November of that year was wrecked by storms when the pole and globe on its top were washed away and not replaced until 1842 but they were once more washed away in a storm on 9 October 1844. Trinity House engineer James Walker constructed
3213-434: Is taken into account, this figure for the entire corpus drops to 8%.) The many English loanwords, some of which were sufficiently well assimilated to acquire native Cornish verbal or plural suffixes or be affected by the mutation system, include redya 'to read', onderstondya 'to understand', ford 'way', hos 'boot' and creft 'art'. Many Cornish words, such as mining and fishing terms, are specific to
3332-474: Is 116m in height and is constructed from Cornish granite prepared at Penzance , on the mainland of Cornwall. It took eight years, from 1861 to 1869, to build due to the treacherous weather conditions that can occur between the Cornish mainland and the Isles. The light is visible from Land's End by day and night. It has a range of 23 nautical miles (43 km; 26 mi) and was automated in 1988. The lighthouse
3451-627: Is inherited direct from Proto-Celtic , either through the ancestral Proto-Indo-European language, or through vocabulary borrowed from unknown substrate language(s) at some point in the development of the Celtic proto-language from PIE. Examples of the PIE > PCelt. development are various terms related to kinship and people, including mam 'mother', modereb 'aunt, mother's sister', huir 'sister', mab 'son', gur 'man', den 'person, human', and tus 'people', and words for parts of
3570-447: Is to support the language, in line with the European Charter. A motion was passed in November 2009 in which the council promoted the inclusion of Cornish, as appropriate and where possible, in council publications and on signs. This plan has drawn some criticism. In October 2015, The council announced that staff would be encouraged to use "basic words and phrases" in Cornish when dealing with the public. In 2021 Cornwall Council prohibited
3689-647: The Tregear Homilies , was realized to be Cornish in 1949, having previously been incorrectly classified as Welsh. It is the longest text in the traditional Cornish language, consisting of around 30,000 words of continuous prose. This text is a late 16th century translation of twelve of Bishop Bonner 's thirteen homilies by a certain John Tregear, tentatively identified as a vicar of St Allen from Crowan , and has an additional catena, Sacrament an Alter, added later by his fellow priest, Thomas Stephyn. In
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3808-532: The Cranken Rhyme , a corrupted version of a verse or song published in the late 19th century by John Hobson Matthews , recorded orally by John Davey (or Davy) of Boswednack , of uncertain date but probably originally composed during the last years of the traditional language. Davey had traditional knowledge of at least some Cornish. John Kelynack (1796–1885), a fisherman of Newlyn, was sought by philologists for old Cornish words and technical phrases in
3927-703: The Black Country in the agglomeration of the Midlands industrial heartland, they took advantage of the skilled workers, canals and many advances that were taking place in the industrial West Midlands at the time. Throughout its almost two centuries of history many changes affected the company which, now in private ownership, continues to function as Chance Glass Limited , a specialised industrial glass manufacturer in Malvern, Worcestershire at one of its small subsidiary factories. The social and economic impact of
4046-592: The Bodmin manumissions , which is a list of manumittors and slaves, the latter with mostly Cornish names, and, more substantially, a Latin-Cornish glossary (the Vocabularium Cornicum or Cottonian Vocabulary), a Cornish translation of Ælfric of Eynsham 's Latin-Old English Glossary, which is thematically arranged into several groups, such as the Genesis creation narrative , anatomy, church hierarchy,
4165-699: The Corporation of Trinity House received a patent of the Crown to build a lighthouse on Wolf Rock. The rights were leased to a Lt. Henry Smith; but (such were the technical challenges of the venture) the project was transferred to the less exposed location of the Longships , where construction of a lighthouse proceeded. On Wolf Rock, rather than a lighthouse, Lt. Smith went on to build a 6.1 m (20 ft) high wrought iron daymark , 10 cm (4 in) in diameter and supported by six stays. A metal effigy of
4284-582: The Elizabeth Tower, Palace of Westminster (housing Big Ben ) of the Houses of Parliament were damaged by Luftwaffe bombs during World War II . The damaged glass pieces needed to be replaced, but because of a difference in colour, it was decided to replace all the glass. The glass replaced by Chance Brothers was opal glass. In about 1848, Chance was one of the first companies to produce very long pieces of window glass, following technology developed as
4403-484: The Paris Exhibition of 1867 as an example of the latest in lantern technology, using curved rather than flat panes of glass and helical rather than straight glazing bars. James Chance of Chance Brothers had designed a large ( first-order ) rotating multi-panel optic for installation in the tower, 2.58 m (8 ft 6 in) high by 1.73 m (5 ft 8 in) diameter. In order to differentiate
4522-492: The 'glotticide' of the Cornish language was mainly a result of the Cornish gentry adopting English to dissociate themselves from the reputation for disloyalty and rebellion associated with the Cornish language since the 1497 uprising. By the middle of the 17th century, the language had retreated to Penwith and Kerrier , and transmission of the language to new generations had almost entirely ceased. In his Survey of Cornwall , published in 1602, Richard Carew writes: [M]ost of
4641-621: The 1549 edition of the English Book of Common Prayer as the sole legal form of worship in England, including Cornwall, people in many areas of Cornwall did not speak or understand English. The passing of this Act was one of the causes of the Prayer Book Rebellion (which may also have been influenced by government repression after the failed Cornish rebellion of 1497 ), with "the commoners of Devonshyre and Cornwall" producing
4760-497: The 16th century, resulting in the nasals /nn/ and /mm/ being realised as [ᵈn] and [ᵇm] respectively in stressed syllables, and giving Late Cornish forms such as pedn 'head' (Welsh pen ) and kabm 'crooked' (Welsh cam ). As a revitalised language , the phonology of contemporary spoken Cornish is based on a number of sources, including various reconstructions of the sound system of middle and early modern Cornish based on an analysis of internal evidence such as
4879-664: The 1925 Dr Thorndyke detective novel, The Shadow of the Wolf , by R. Austin Freeman . Cornish language Cornish ( Standard Written Form : Kernewek or Kernowek , pronounced [kəɾˈnuːək] ) is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family . Along with Welsh and Breton , Cornish is descended from the Common Brittonic language spoken throughout much of Great Britain before
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4998-448: The 1970s. Criticism of Nance's system, particularly the relationship of spelling to sounds and the phonological basis of Unified Cornish, resulted in rival orthographies appearing by the early 1980s, including Gendal's Modern Cornish , based on Late Cornish native writers and Lhuyd, and Ken George's Kernewek Kemmyn , a mainly morphophonemic orthography based on George's reconstruction of Middle Cornish c. 1500 , which features
5117-496: The 1980s, Ken George published a new system, Kernewek Kemmyn ('Common Cornish'), based on a reconstruction of the phonological system of Middle Cornish, but with an approximately morphophonemic orthography . It was subsequently adopted by the Cornish Language Board and was the written form used by a reported 54.5% of all Cornish language users according to a survey in 2008, but was heavily criticised for
5236-507: The 19th century. It is difficult to state with certainty when Cornish ceased to be spoken, due to the fact that its last speakers were of relatively low social class and that the definition of what constitutes "a living language" is not clear cut. Peter Pool argues that by 1800 nobody was using Cornish as a daily language and no evidence exists of anyone capable of conversing in the language at that date. However, passive speakers , semi-speakers and rememberers , who retain some competence in
5355-518: The 20th century, including the growth in number of speakers. In 2002, Cornish was recognized by the UK government under Part II of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . UNESCO 's Atlas of World Languages classifies Cornish as "critically endangered". UNESCO has said that a previous classification of 'extinct' "does not reflect the current situation for Cornish" and is "no longer accurate". Cornwall Council 's policy
5474-512: The Cornish Language . The publication of this book is often considered to be the point at which the revival movement started. Jenner wrote about the Cornish language in 1905, "one may fairly say that most of what there was of it has been preserved, and that it has been continuously preserved, for there has never been a time when there were not some Cornishmen who knew some Cornish." The revival focused on reconstructing and standardising
5593-829: The Cornish language ceased, and responsibility transferred to Cornwall Council. Until around the middle of the 11th century, Old Cornish scribes used a traditional spelling system shared with Old Breton and Old Welsh, based on the pronunciation of British Latin . By the time of the Vocabularium Cornicum , usually dated to around 1100, Old English spelling conventions, such as the use of thorn (Þ, þ) and eth (Ð, ð) for dental fricatives , and wynn (Ƿ, ƿ) for /w/, had come into use, allowing documents written at this time to be distinguished from Old Welsh, which rarely uses these characters, and Old Breton, which does not use them at all. Old Cornish features include using initial ⟨ch⟩, ⟨c⟩, or ⟨k⟩ for /k/, and, in internal and final position, ⟨p⟩, ⟨t⟩, ⟨c⟩, ⟨b⟩, ⟨d⟩, and ⟨g⟩ are generally used for
5712-469: The Cornish language comes from this period: a 9th-century gloss in a Latin manuscript of De Consolatione Philosophiae by Boethius , which used the words ud rocashaas . The phrase may mean "it [the mind] hated the gloomy places", or alternatively, as Andrew Breeze suggests, "she hated the land". Other sources from this period include the Saints' List , a list of almost fifty Cornish saints,
5831-438: The Cornish orthography within them. Around 1700, Edward Lhuyd visited Cornwall, introducing his own partly phonetic orthography that he used in his Archaeologia Britannica , which was adopted by some local writers, leading to the use of some Lhuydian features such as the use of circumflexes to denote long vowels, ⟨k⟩ before front vowels, word-final ⟨i⟩, and the use of ⟨dh⟩ to represent the voiced dental fricative /ð/. After
5950-513: The Cornishmen should be offended by holding the service in English, when they had before held it in Latin , which even fewer of them could understand. Anthony Fletcher points out that this rebellion was primarily motivated by religious and economic, rather than linguistic, concerns. The rebellion prompted a heavy-handed response from the government, and 5,500 people died during the fighting and
6069-827: The Crystal Palace to house the Great Exhibition of 1851, and the Houses of Parliament , (built 1840–1860). At that time it was the only firm able to make the opal glass for the four faces of the Westminster Clock Tower which houses the famous bell, Big Ben . The ornamental windows for the White House in America were also made there. Other products included stained glass windows, ornamental lamp shades , microscope glass slides, painted glassware, glass tubing and specialist types of glass. They made
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#17327975211256188-399: The English language came to dominate. For centuries, until it was pushed westwards by English, it was the main language of Cornwall , maintaining close links with its sister language Breton, with which it was mutually intelligible , perhaps even as long as Cornish continued to be spoken as a vernacular. Cornish continued to function as a common community language in parts of Cornwall until
6307-560: The Middle Cornish ( Kernewek Kres ) period (1200–1600), reaching a peak of about 39,000 speakers in the 13th century, after which the number started to decline. This period provided the bulk of traditional Cornish literature , and was used to reconstruct the language during its revival. Most important is the Ordinalia , a cycle of three mystery plays, Origo Mundi , Passio Christi and Resurrexio Domini . Together these provide about 8,734 lines of text. The three plays exhibit
6426-466: The Trinity House; James's younger brother, William Douglass , then became resident engineer at Wolf Rock. William himself laid the first stone of the new tower on 6 August 1864. Masonry construction was completed on 19 July 1869. The finished tower was topped by a lantern storey manufactured by Chance Brothers of Smethwick to James Douglass's design. The lantern had previously been exhibited at
6545-479: The authorities came to associate it with sedition and "backwardness". This proved to be one of the reasons why the Book of Common Prayer was never translated into Cornish (unlike Welsh ), as proposals to do so were suppressed in the rebellion's aftermath. The failure to translate the Book of Common Prayer into Cornish led to the language's rapid decline during the 16th and 17th centuries. Peter Berresford Ellis cites
6664-506: The base to 17 ft (5.2 m) at the top. Details of the design followed closely that of other Walker-built lighthouses: the recently completed Bishop Rock and Hanois lights, and the Smalls (which was then nearing completion). While his designs were inspired by Smeaton's third Eddystone Lighthouse , Walker introduced new innovations, not least the use of vertical as well as horizontal dovetail joints (first achieved at Les Hanois at
6783-409: The basis of revived Cornish ( Kernewek Dasserghys ) for most of the 20th century. During the 1970s, criticism of Nance's system, including the inconsistent orthography and unpredictable correspondence between spelling and pronunciation, as well as on other grounds such as the archaic basis of Unified and a lack of emphasis on the spoken language, resulted in the creation of several rival systems. In
6902-483: The beginning of the Celtic Revival in the late 19th century, provided the groundwork for a Cornish language revival movement. Notwithstanding the uncertainty over who was the last speaker of Cornish, researchers have posited the following numbers for the prevalence of the language between 1050 and 1800. In 1904, the Celtic language scholar and Cornish cultural activist Henry Jenner published A Handbook of
7021-617: The body, including lof 'hand' and dans 'tooth'. Inherited adjectives with an Indo-European etymology include newyth 'new', ledan 'broad, wide', rud 'red', hen 'old', iouenc 'young', and byw 'alive, living'. Several Celtic or Brittonic words cannot be reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European, and are suggested to have been borrowed from unknown substrate language(s) at an early stage, such as Proto-Celtic or Proto-Brittonic. Proposed examples in Cornish include coruf 'beer' and broch 'badger'. Other words in Cornish inherited direct from Proto-Celtic include
7140-408: The challenge of getting keepers to and from the lighthouse in heavy seas. Nevertheless, fifteen years later the lighthouse became fully automated: the last keepers left Wolf Rock on 3 June 1987, after which the automation crew took over, remaining on the lighthouse until July the following year, whereupon the automation process was complete. During automation the red colour was removed from the light and
7259-479: The closure of that business. Elihu Burritt (1810–1879) the American philanthropist and social activist, once said about Chance, "In no other establishment in the world can one get such a full idea of the infinite uses which glass is made to serve as in these immense works." In 1900 a baronetcy was created for James Timmins Chance (22 March 1814 – 6 January 1902), a grandson of William Chance who had started
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#17327975211257378-417: The colour-change. The light first shone on 1 January 1870; as planned, it displayed "alternate flashes of red and white of equal intensity every thirty seconds". The completed optic (which together with its pedestal stood 20 feet (6.1 m) high) was described by Douglass as "probably the most perfect for the purpose that has yet been constructed"; it continued in use for the next eighty-five years. The optic
7497-819: The company on the region is the subject of a project sponsored by the Heritage Lottery Fund . Robert Lucas Chance (8 October 1782 – 7 March 1865), known as 'Lucas', bought the British Crown Glass Company's works in Spon Lane in November 1822. The company specialised in making crown window glass . The company ran into difficulty and its survival was guaranteed in 1832 by investment from Chance's brother, William (29 August 1788 – 8 February 1856) who owned an iron factoring business in Great Charles Street, Birmingham. After
7616-548: The company was involved in production of cathode-ray tubes for early radar sets, making up to 7,000 per week. In 1943 the artist Mervyn Peake was commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee , WAAC, to paint pictures recording such work. Pilkington Brothers acquired a 50% shareholding in 1945 but the Chance operation continued to be largely separately managed and a factory was established in Malvern, Worcestershire in 1947 to specialise in laboratory glass where
7735-557: The creation of Unified Cornish Revised, a modified version of Nance's orthography, featuring: an additional phoneme not distinguished by Nance, "ö in German schön ", represented in the UCR orthography by ⟨ue⟩; replacement of ⟨y⟩ with ⟨e⟩ in many words; internal ⟨h⟩ rather than ⟨gh⟩; and use of final ⟨b⟩, ⟨g⟩, and ⟨dh⟩ in stressed monosyllables. A Standard Written Form , intended as a compromise orthography for official and educational purposes,
7854-616: The culture of Cornwall. Examples include atal 'mine waste' and beetia 'to mend fishing nets'. Foogan and hogan are different types of pastries. Troyl is a 'traditional Cornish dance get-together' and Furry is a specific kind of ceremonial dance that takes place in Cornwall. Certain Cornish words may have several translation equivalents in English, so for instance lyver may be translated into English as either 'book' or 'volume' and dorn can mean either 'hand' or 'fist'. As in other Celtic languages, Cornish lacks
7973-527: The defeat of the Britons at the Battle of Deorham in about 577. The western dialects eventually evolved into modern Welsh and the now extinct Cumbric , while Southwestern Brittonic developed into Cornish and Breton, the latter as a result of emigration to parts of the continent, known as Brittany over the following centuries. The area controlled by the southwestern Britons was progressively reduced by
8092-504: The dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/, a usage which is unique to Middle Cornish and is never found in Middle English. Middle Cornish scribes tend to use ⟨c⟩ for /k/ before back vowels, and ⟨k⟩ for /k/ before front vowels, though this is not always true, and this rule is less consistent in certain texts. Middle Cornish scribes almost universally use ⟨wh⟩ to represent /ʍ/ (or /hw/), as in Middle English. Middle Cornish, especially towards
8211-431: The end of this period, tends to use orthographic ⟨g⟩ and ⟨b⟩ in word-final position in stressed monosyllables, and ⟨k⟩ and ⟨p⟩ in word-final position in unstressed final syllables, to represent the reflexes of late Brittonic /ɡ/ and /b/, respectively. Written sources from this period are often spelled following English spelling conventions since many of the writers of the time had not been exposed to Middle Cornish texts or
8330-436: The evidence of this rhyme, of what there was to lose by neglecting John Davey." The search for the last speaker is hampered by a lack of transcriptions or audio recordings, so that it is impossible to tell from this distance whether the language these people were reported to be speaking was Cornish, or English with a heavy Cornish substratum , nor what their level of fluency was. Nevertheless, this academic interest, along with
8449-475: The existence of multiple orthographies was unsustainable with regards to using the language in education and public life, as none had achieved a wide consensus. A process of unification was set about which resulted in the creation of the public-body Cornish Language Partnership in 2005 and agreement on a Standard Written Form in 2008. In 2010 a new milestone was reached when UNESCO altered its classification of Cornish, stating that its previous label of "extinct"
8568-605: The expansion of Wessex over the next few centuries. During the Old Cornish ( Kernewek Koth ) period (800–1200), the Cornish-speaking area was largely coterminous with modern-day Cornwall , after the Saxons had taken over Devon in their south-westward advance, which probably was facilitated by a second migration wave to Brittany that resulted in the partial depopulation of Devon. The earliest written record of
8687-530: The family business in 1771. James became head of Chance Brothers until his retirement in 1889, when the company became a public company and its name changed to Chance Brothers & Co. Ltd . Sir James Chance was the first baronet. The company in partnership with the Ministry of Munitions' Optical Munitions and Glass Department expanded significantly during World War I In the early 20th century, many new ways of making glass evolved at Chance Brothers such as
8806-460: The family, names for various kinds of artisans and their tools, flora, fauna, and household items. The manuscript was widely thought to be in Old Welsh until the 18th century when it was identified as Cornish by Edward Lhuyd . Some Brittonic glosses in the 9th-century colloquy De raris fabulis were once identified as Old Cornish, but they are more likely Old Welsh, possibly influenced by
8925-413: The fourth-order optic was adapted so as to display one white flash every fifteen seconds. A more powerful lamp was fitted, which increased the range of the light to 23 nautical miles (43 km; 26 mi). Also, an electric emitter replaced the diaphone fog signal at this time, Fifteen years later the lighthouse was converted to solar power, with photovoltaic cells being installed around the exterior of
9044-547: The helideck support structure. The lighthouse continues in operation. Set within the fourth-order revolving optic, its solar-powered lamp has a range of 16 nautical miles (30 km; 18 mi); it flashes once every 15 seconds and is remotely monitored from the Trinity House Planning Centre in Harwich , Essex. The ro-ro vessel Mazarine grounded near the lighthouse on 10 July 2023, while on
9163-400: The individualised nature of language take-up. Nevertheless, there is recognition that the number of Cornish speakers is growing. From before the 1980s to the end of the 20th century there was a sixfold increase in the number of speakers to around 300. One figure for the number of people who know a few basic words, such as knowing that "Kernow" means "Cornwall", was 300,000; the same survey gave
9282-402: The inhabitants can speak no word of Cornish, but very few are ignorant of the English; and yet some so affect their own, as to a stranger they will not speak it; for if meeting them by chance, you inquire the way, or any such matter, your answer shall be, " Meea navidna caw zasawzneck ," "I [will] speak no Saxonage." The Late Cornish ( Kernewek Diwedhes ) period from 1600 to about 1800 has
9401-692: The innovative welding of a cathode-ray tube used for radar detection. In 1933, the company was reported to be involved in an attempt to contact "any intelligent life" on the planet Mars, using adapted lighthouse optics from a mountaintop, the Jungfrau , in Switzerland. Chance also popularised slumped glass tableware, Fiestaware that included many innovative designs, including the famous Swirl pattern (1955), and also Lace (1951), Night Sky (1957), Green Leaves (1958), Calypto (1959), with floral depictions from 1965 with Anemone. During world War II ,
9520-412: The intensity of the red light would, as before, be equivalent to that of the white. The visible range of the light was 16 nautical miles (30 km; 18 mi). An automatic lamp changer was fitted, including an emergency battery lamp in case the generator sets should fail; but provision was also made for the substitution of a multi-wick oil burner in the event of a complete electrical failure, for which
9639-957: The language are the initial consonant mutations , the verb–subject–object word order, inflected prepositions , fronting of emphasised syntactic elements and the use of two different forms for 'to be'. Cornish has initial consonant mutation : The first sound of a Cornish word may change according to grammatical context. As in Breton, there are four types of mutation in Cornish (compared with three in Welsh , two in Irish and Manx and one in Scottish Gaelic ). These changes apply to only certain letters (sounds) in particular grammatical contexts, some of which are given below: Cornish has no indefinite article . Porth can either mean 'harbour' or 'a harbour'. In certain contexts, unn can be used, with
9758-406: The language as critically endangered , stating that its former classification of the language as extinct was no longer accurate. The language has a growing number of second-language speakers, and a very small number of families now raise children to speak revived Cornish as a first language . Cornish is currently recognised under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , and
9877-407: The language despite not being fluent nor using the language in daily life, generally survive even longer. The traditional view that Dolly Pentreath (1692–1777) was the last native speaker of Cornish has been challenged, and in the 18th and 19th centuries there was academic interest in the language and in attempting to find the last speaker of Cornish. It has been suggested that, whereas Pentreath
9996-454: The language is often described as an important part of Cornish identity, culture and heritage. Since the revival of the language, some Cornish textbooks and works of literature have been published, and an increasing number of people are studying the language. Recent developments include Cornish music , independent films , and children's books. A small number of people in Cornwall have been brought up to be bilingual native speakers, and
10115-602: The language is taught in schools and appears on street nameplates. The first Cornish-language day care opened in 2010. Cornish is a Southwestern Brittonic language, a branch of the Insular Celtic section of the Celtic language family , which is a sub-family of the Indo-European language family. Brittonic also includes Welsh , Breton , Cumbric and possibly Pictish , the last two of which are extinct . Scottish Gaelic , Irish and Manx are part of
10234-580: The language regularly, with 5,000 people having a basic conversational ability in the language. A report on the 2011 Census published in 2013 by the Office for National Statistics placed the number of speakers at somewhere between 325 and 625. In 2017 the ONS released data based on the 2011 Census that placed the number of speakers at 557 people in England and Wales who declared Cornish to be their main language, 464 of whom lived in Cornwall. The 2021 census listed
10353-438: The language, including coining new words for modern concepts, and creating educational material in order to teach Cornish to others. In 1929 Robert Morton Nance published his Unified Cornish ( Kernewek Unys ) system, based on the Middle Cornish literature while extending the attested vocabulary with neologisms and forms based on Celtic roots also found in Breton and Welsh, publishing a dictionary in 1938. Nance's work became
10472-476: The light from the nearby St Agnes lighthouse (which displayed a white light) and from Les Hanois Lighthouse (which displayed a red light) it was resolved that the Wolf Rock light should revolve and flash alternately red and white; in order to achieve the required characteristic it was planned to install 'ruby' coloured panes of glass over half the panels on the optic (with the intervening panels left clear). It
10591-436: The meaning 'a certain, a particular', e.g. unn porth 'a certain harbour'. There is, however, a definite article an 'the', which is used for all nouns regardless of their gender or number, e.g. an porth 'the harbour'. Cornish nouns belong to one of two grammatical genders , masculine and feminine, but are not inflected for case . Nouns may be singular or plural. Plurals can be formed in various ways, depending on
10710-437: The mid 18th century, and there is some evidence for traditional speakers of the language persisting into the 19th century. Cornish became extinct as a living community language in Cornwall by the end of the 18th century , although knowledge of Cornish, including speaking ability to a certain extent, persisted within some families and individuals. A revival started in the early 20th century, and in 2010 UNESCO reclassified
10829-690: The noun: Chance Brothers Chance Brothers and Company was a glassworks originally based in Spon Lane, Smethwick , West Midlands (formerly in Staffordshire ), in England. It was a leading glass manufacturer and a pioneer of British glassmaking technology. The Chance family originated in Bromsgrove in Worcestershire as farmers and craftsmen, before setting up business in Smethwick in 1822. Situated between Birmingham and
10948-565: The number of Cornish speakers at 563. A study that appeared in 2018 established the number of people in Cornwall with at least minimal skills in Cornish, such as the use of some words and phrases, to be more than 3,000, including around 500 estimated to be fluent. The Institute of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter is working with the Cornish Language Partnership to study the Cornish language revival of
11067-410: The number of people able to have simple conversations as 3,000. The Cornish Language Strategy project commissioned research to provide quantitative and qualitative evidence for the number of Cornish speakers: due to the success of the revival project it was estimated that 2,000 people were fluent (surveyed in spring 2008), an increase from the estimated 300 people who spoke Cornish fluently suggested in
11186-403: The number of times per revolution that the light flashes. John Hopkinson , the noted English physicist and engineer, invented this system, while employed at Chance Brothers. One of Chance's major contributions was the development of rolled-plate glass . During the 20th century, rolled-plate glass became the mainstay of the company's operation. The German opal glass in the faces of the clock in
11305-412: The operation was incorporated as an arms-length subsidiary. In 1948 the Malvern plant produced the world's first interchangeable syringe . By the end of 1952 Pilkington had assumed full financial control of Chance Brothers, but were not actively involved in its management until the mid- to late-1960s. When plastic disposable syringes displaced glass in the late 1960s, the range of its precision bore product
11424-415: The orthography and rhyme used in the historical texts, comparison with the other Brittonic languages Breton and Welsh, and the work of the linguist Edward Lhuyd , who visited Cornwall in 1700 and recorded the language in a partly phonetic orthography. Cornish is a Celtic language, and the majority of its vocabulary, when usage frequency is taken into account, at every documented stage of its history
11543-835: The other Brittonic languages. The first sound change to distinguish Cornish from both Breton and Welsh, the assibilation of the dental stops /t/ and /d/ in medial and final position, had begun by the time of the Vocabularium Cornicum , c. 1100 or earlier. This change, and the subsequent, or perhaps dialectical, palatalization (or occasional rhotacization in a few words) of these sounds, results in orthographic forms such as Middle Cornish tas 'father', Late Cornish tâz (Welsh tad ), Middle Cornish cresy 'believe', Late Cornish cregy (Welsh credu ), and Middle Cornish gasa 'leave', Late Cornish gara (Welsh gadael ). A further characteristic sound change, pre-occlusion , occurred during
11662-638: The partnership with the Hartley Brothers was dissolved in 1836, Lucas and William Chance became partners in the business, which was renamed Chance Brothers and Company . Chance Brothers was amongst the earliest glass works to carry out the cylinder process in Europe, and the company became known as "... the greatest glass manufacturer in Britain." In 1832, it made the first British cylinder blown sheet glass using French and Belgian workers. In 1839,
11781-413: The phonemes /b/, /d/, /ɡ/, /β/, /ð/, and /ɣ/ respectively, meaning that the results of Brittonic lenition are not usually apparent from the orthography at this time. Middle Cornish orthography has a significant level of variation, and shows influence from Middle English spelling practices. Yogh (Ȝ ȝ) is used in certain Middle Cornish texts, where it is used to represent a variety of sounds, including
11900-447: The publication of Jenner's Handbook of the Cornish Language , the earliest revivalists used Jenner's orthography, which was influenced by Lhuyd's system. This system was abandoned following the development by Nance of a "unified spelling", later known as Unified Cornish , a system based on a standardization of the orthography of the early Middle Cornish texts. Nance's system was used by almost all Revived Cornish speakers and writers until
12019-473: The rebellion's aftermath. Government officials then directed troops under the command of Sir Anthony Kingston to carry out pacification operations throughout the West Country. Kingston subsequently ordered the executions of numerous individuals suspected of involvement with the rebellion as part of the post-rebellion reprisals. The rebellion eventually proved a turning-point for the Cornish language, as
12138-508: The reign of Henry VIII, an account was given by Andrew Boorde in his 1542 Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge . He states, " In Cornwall is two speches, the one is naughty Englysshe, and the other is Cornysshe speche. And there be many men and women the which cannot speake one worde of Englysshe, but all Cornyshe. " When Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity 1549 , which established
12257-497: The secret with Chance Brothers and stayed in England to collaborate with them for six years. Just three other companies in Britain made glass in the same way, Pilkington of St Helens , Hartleys of Sunderland and Cooksons of Newcastle . During 1832, Chance Brothers became the first company to adopt the cylinder method to produce sheet glass, and became the largest British manufacturer of window and plate glass , and optical glasses. Other Chance Brothers projects included glazing
12376-465: The separate Goidelic branch of Insular Celtic. Joseph Loth viewed Cornish and Breton as being two dialects of the same language, claiming that "Middle Cornish is without doubt closer to Breton as a whole than the modern Breton dialect of Quiberon [ Kiberen ] is to that of Saint-Pol-de-Léon [ Kastell-Paol ]." Also, Kenneth Jackson argued that it is almost certain that Cornish and Breton would have been mutually intelligible as long as Cornish
12495-514: The suggestion of Nicholas Douglass, and likewise incorporated into the design of Wolf Rock). Nicholas's son James Douglass was appointed as resident engineer, and in July 1861 he arrived (fresh from completing his work as resident engineer for the Smalls lighthouse) and surveyed the rock. The following March work began on excavating the foundations. In October 1862, James Walker died (at the age of 81). James Douglass replaced him as engineer-in-chief to
12614-530: The sun while retaining transparency. Chance continued to use Crookes as a tradename into the 1960s. Chance developed cathode-ray tubes (CRTs) just before the outbreak of World War II. Using Hysil glass, a borosilicate glass similar to Pyrex , Chance became a major contributor to developing new methods for producing CRTs during World War II that were the precursors of CRT television screen. The tubes at that time were used for radar detection displays. Chance Bros developed precision bore glass tubing under
12733-678: The trade name Veridia in the 1950s. The glassworks lies between the Birmingham Canal Navigations (BCN) Old Main Line and New Main Line canals near the Spon Lane locks and has several Grade II listed warehouses and adjacent canal bridges on the BCN New Main Line. The works lie within the Smethwick Summit - Galton Valley Conservation area . There is a listed memorial to James Timmins Chance, one of
12852-537: The years 1550–1650 as a century of immense damage for the language, and its decline can be traced to this period. In 1680 William Scawen wrote an essay describing 16 reasons for the decline of Cornish, among them the lack of a distinctive Cornish alphabet , the loss of contact between Cornwall and Brittany , the cessation of the miracle plays, loss of records in the Civil War, lack of a Cornish Bible and immigration to Cornwall. Mark Stoyle , however, has argued that
12971-564: Was a living language, and that Cornish and Breton are especially closely related to each other and less closely related to Welsh. Cornish evolved from the Common Brittonic spoken throughout Britain south of the Firth of Forth during the British Iron Age and Roman period . As a result of westward Anglo-Saxon expansion , the Britons of the southwest were separated from those in modern-day Wales and Cumbria , which Jackson links to
13090-445: Was changed in 1906, so that the flash (red or white, alternating as before) was displayed every fifteen seconds rather than every thirty. In March 1941 the lantern was hit by aerial cannon fire, shattering the glass of the lenses. For a time afterwards the red flash was removed and it simply flashed white, every thirty seconds. The lighthouse was equipped with a radiotelephone in 1941, which greatly improved communications; it came with
13209-406: Was diversified. The production of flat glass ceased at Smethwick in 1976. The remainder of the works closed in 1981 ending more than 150 years of glass production at Smethwick and all flat glass production was absorbed by Pilkington's St Helens factories. Remaining glass tube processing, especially the manufacture of syringes and laboratory glassware, was moved to the Malvern plant. In 1992, during
13328-497: Was installed: a Matthews incandescent oil burner replacing the Douglass multi-wick oil burner. At the same time a reed fog signal was installed, which sounded a four-second blast every 30 seconds using compressed air produced by a small steam engine with a coke and coal-fired boiler; it remained in use until the 1960s. (The bell was initially retained for standby use, but was decommissioned in 1906.) The light characteristic
13447-708: Was introduced in 2008, although a number of previous orthographic systems remain in use and, in response to the publication of the SWF, another new orthography, Kernowek Standard , was created, mainly by Nicholas Williams and Michael Everson, which is proposed as an amended version of the Standard Written Form. The phonological system of Old Cornish, inherited from Proto-Southwestern Brittonic and originally differing little from Old Breton and Old Welsh, underwent various changes during its Middle and Late phases, eventually resulting in several characteristics not found in
13566-418: Was known, however, that the intensity of a light was reduced when shone through coloured glass, so Chance conducted experiments to measure the precise difference. It was concluded that the comparative intensity of clear glass to red was 21 to 9 (i.e. more than double); therefore the red-covered panels on the optic were made wider than the others by the same proportion, in order to maintain an even intensity across
13685-471: Was no longer accurate. Speakers of Cornish reside primarily in Cornwall , which has a population of 563,600 (2017 estimate). There are also some speakers living outside Cornwall, particularly in the countries of the Cornish diaspora , as well as in other Celtic nations . Estimates of the number of Cornish speakers vary according to the definition of a speaker, and is difficult to determine accurately due to
13804-567: Was probably the last monolingual speaker, the last native speaker may have been John Davey of Zennor, who died in 1891. However, although it is clear Davey possessed some traditional knowledge in addition to having read books on Cornish, accounts differ of his competence in the language. Some contemporaries stated he was able to converse on certain topics in Cornish whereas others affirmed they had never heard him claim to be able to do so. Robert Morton Nance , who reworked and translated Davey's Cranken Rhyme, remarked, "There can be no doubt, after
13923-403: Was probably the last prose written in the traditional language. In his letter, he describes the sociolinguistics of the Cornish language at the time, stating that there are no more than four or five old people in his village who can still speak Cornish, concluding with the remark that Cornish is no longer known by young people. However, the last recorded traditional Cornish literature may have been
14042-480: Was rotated by a clockwork drive, that required winding every four hours. A 7-cwt bell, hung from the lantern gallery, was sounded in fog; driven by a separate clockwork mechanism, it rang three times every fifteen seconds. The Wolf Rock was the site of a hake ( Merluccius merluccius ) fishery in the 1870s, especially by fishermen from St Ives with 400 employed in October 1879. In 1904 a more powerful light-source
14161-503: Was the first in the world to be fitted with a helipad . Situated between Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, the Wolf Rock is a small plug of phonolitic lava formed during the early part of the Cretaceous period and is unlike any rock exposed on the Cornish mainland. The Gabrielle of Milford Haven was wrecked on the Wolf Rock in 1394. Her cargo, worth £1000, was washed ashore in Cornwall and collected as wreck. In 1790,
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