Cornwall’s role in building the Houses of Parliament and expanding famous ports is vividly portrayed in the latest novel by Mylor author Jane Pollard, just published.
Heart of Stone, her 11th Cornish historical romance written as Jane Jackson, recalls the days when Penryn and its inland neighbourhood was a hive of quarrying activity and bustling quayside operations.
Carnsew, which remains the county’s largest inland quarry, plays a prominent part in Jane’s latest story.
Kinser Landry, its fictitious cut-throat owner in the early 19th Century, wants to buy up all the small quarries and corner the burgeoning market for granite. One target is a quarry between Nanturrian and Longdowns, which 25-year-old lead character Sarah Govier has inherited.
“It was at this time that Cornish granite was being shipped through Penryn to London to build the Houses of Parliament,” explains Jane.
“The granite was also going to various ports – including London, Southampton and Portsmouth – to build and strengthen harbour walls and quays as the ports needed to expand to meet the requirements of the fleets in the Napoleonic Wars.”
Struggling on the income from her quarry, Sarah turns to James Crago, whose business supplies gunpowder for the quarries and mines from a manufacturing base in the valley beneath the present Penryn railway viaduct.
During her research, Jane also discovered that there was considerable resistance to the development of a safety fuse by William Bickford - a textile tube with a core of gunpowder manufactured at Tuckingmill.
"This made blasting far safer for miners and quarry workers, but the Penryn gangers didn’t want to use it,” she says.
“The traditional fuse was a goosequill filled with gunpowder. The gangers imported these quills from Ireland and took a rake-off. So nothing changes, at least so far as man’s tendency to corruption is concerned!”
In Heart of Stone, Carnsew owner Landry will stop at nothing to take Sarah’s quarry from her. Crago is a scarred and reclusive former soldier, and neither is prepared for the powerful attraction that erupts between them.
Heart of Stone, whichis published by Severn House, price £18.99, is Jane’s 26th published novel in a writing career spanning over 30 years.
She is currently working on the provisionally-titled Taken To Heart, which involves characters from her earlier Devil’s Prize and isalso set in Cornwall, to be published in November 2010. Next year she will start researching a novel about a Falmouth brewing family in the 1840s. |