The Cornish Timeline
Return to the Library
Home Page
The following is the "Chronological
Appendix" found in "A History of Cornwall," by F.E. Haliday
Published 1959 and 1975 (2nd Ed.) by Duckworth, the Garden
City Press Limited
Letchworth, Hertfordshire SG6 IJS (ISBN # 0 7156 0162
8)
B.C.
c. 7000 Mesolithic Period
c. 2500 Neolithic Period
c. 1800 Beaker Folk invasions
c. 1600 Early Bronze Age
c. 1400 Middle Bronze Age
c. 900 Late Bronze Age, First Celtic immigrants
c. 400 Early Iron Age
c. 250 La Tene invasions
55-54 Julius Caesar's raids on south-east Britain
A.D.
Courtyard house culture.
43 Roman occupation of Britain
c. 250 Romans begin to exploit Cornish tin
c. 312 Constantine makes Christianity the Imperial religion
410 End of Roman occupation
c. 500 Ambrosius Aurelianus defeats Saxons at Badon Hill
Period of King Arthur and King Mark, of Irish raids and the coming of the
Saints.
597 St. Augustine lands in Kent
710 Saxons take Exeter
814 Egbert conquers Cornwall
838 Battle of Hingston Down
931 Athelstan creates diocese of Cornwall, with see at St. Germans
c. 1050 Diocese of Cornwall combined with Devon, with see at Exeter
1066 Norman Conquest
Robert of Mortain , first Earl of Cornwall
1201 King John grants a charter to the Stannaries
c. 1280 Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, makes Lostwithiel the county capital
1337 Creation of the Duchy of Cornwall, with the Black Prince as the first
Duke
1348-49 The Black Death
1473 Lancastrian attempt to seize St. Michael's Mount
1497 Cornish rebellion led by Joseph and Flamank, followed by rebellion led
by Perkin Warbeck
1536-39 Dissolution of the monasteries
c. 1538 Leland's tour of Cornwall
1545 Loss of the Mary Rose and Roger Grenville
1549 Prayer Book Rebellion
1558 Accession of Queen Elizabeth
1577 Cuthbert Mayne executed and Francis Tregian imprisoned
1588 Spanish Armada
1591 Death of Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge
1595 Spanish raid on Penzance
1602 Richard Carew publishes his Survey of Cornwall
1603 Death of Queen Elizabeth
1619 John Killigrew's lighthouse at the Lizard
1629 Sir John Eliot imprisoned
1642 Civil War begins
1643 Battles of Bradock Down, Stratton, Lansdown (Sir Bevil Grenville killed)
and Roundway Down
Royalists take Bristol.
1644 Royalists defeat Essex at Lostwithiel
1646 Parliamentary army under Fairfax invades Cornwall.
John Arundell surrenders Pendennis Castle.
End of Civil War.
1651 John Grenville and Royalists driven out of Scilly.
1660 Restoration of Charles II.
1688 Imprisonment and acquittal of Bishop Trelawny
1702-10 Earl of Godolphin's ministry
1707 Sir Cloudesley Shovel wrecked on the Scilly Isles
c. 1710 First steam pump in Cornwall, and capitalist development of tin and
copper mining.
1743 John Wesley's first visit to Cornwall
1754 William Borlase publishes his Antiquities of Cornwall
1777 James Watt erects his first steam engine in Cornwall
1787 Riots at Poldice mine owing to copper depression
1789 Wesley's last visit to Cornwall
1800-40 Rapid development of mining after Richard Trevithick's high pressure
engine
1818 Royal Institution of Cornwall founded
1832 Reform Act: Cornish M.P.s reduced from 42 to 12
1834 Bodmin-Wadebridge Railway
1837 Discovery of copper at Caradon
1838 Abolition of tin coinage
1842 Man engine installed at Tresavean mine
1847 Plymouth-Falmouth railway begun
1852 West Cornwall Railway (Penzance-Truro) completed
1856 Maximum copper production of 209,000 tons of ore
1859 Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash completed
1864 Mines Commission
1866 Financial crisis, collapse of copper mining, and emigration of miners
1876 Diocese of Cornwall revived with see at Truro
c. 1890 Decline in tin mining and fisheries, and expansion of china clay and
tourist industries
1928 First Cornish Gorsedd
1970 Foundation of The Institute of Cornish Studies and of a Chair of
Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter
Return to the Top of the Page
Return to the Library
Home Page