It’s never really occurred to me to be interested in our own history in anything more than an idle curiosity sense. I’ve loved listening to my parents’ stories but no more than that. Partly because I don’t feel as if I’ve ever belonged anywhere (and that sense of ‘homelessness’ came home to me again yesterday when I was exposed for the first time to some Cornish Separatist literature). For those who didn’t know, I was born in Cyprus but of English parents serving in the RAF. My childhood was one of continual moving. We were rarely in any one place for more than a couple of years and often for much less time than that. So I can’t ‘go home’. I don’t have one. I’m sure I wouldn’t be any more welcome in Cyprus than I sometimes feel here.

I’m feeling a bit cheesed off about this sense of ‘you don’t belong here’ at the moment. It’s funny because actually the only person in all the time we’ve been here who has been in any sense derogatory about us buying this house is someone who is also an incomer, which I feel is a bit strange. It’s almost as if it’s OK for some but not OK for others to come here. It’s also seemingly (to a few) fine for Cornish people to settle in the London area, David’s life-long home (or wherever else they feel they want to go) but for anyone to come here is a crime in the eyes of what seems to me (thankfully) to be a minority view.

On a much more positive note, we’ve actually learned a great deal about Cornish history in the short time since we bought the house. I think we know more about the copper mining industry here than most locals do. Our search began with the same idle curiosity about the house and developed quickly into an obsession when we realised what we’d inadvertently bought. We knew a house of nearly 200 years of age would have a strong history but we thought it would be connected with farming rather than heavy industry.

Over the last four months we’ve hungrily consumed all of the information that we can about the mining heritage of this area. We can name all of the shafts in South Caradon and all of the other local mines. We know how many people worked each mine, how much ore they produced, who owned them and when they opened and closed. We’ve read about the way they were kept dry, how the shafts and tunnel systems worked, how they were ventilated and much, much more.

So, for the first time a real sense of history is awake inside me and a real sense of heritage. I want to know more. I want to be able to make connections that keep on building on the knowledge. It’s been a totally unexpected bonus to find ourselves in the midst of all of this stuff. I want to belong here.

The photo is of a bit of local history - it’s a bit of an old porcelain pot, dug from the garden when we put in our new fence. It must have belonged to some long ago resident, possibly the original owners, following the property’s sale from the mine that owned it for nearly a hundred years. We know the couple who bought it for £20 from the mine company lived here for forty years and died here. The fragment is from an ointment jar from a chemist in Oxford and we have been laughing all day at its claims to cure sore breasts as well as ulcers and sore heads!

I suppose I feel a bit rankled that when we have embraced this place so wholeheartedly there are a few who would have us gone to give Cornwall back to the Cornish. But where does that leave me? Does that mean I have to go back to Cyprus, the place of my birth even though I left there before I was two years old? Will I never really be really welcome anywhere in Britain despite it being totally not my fault that I was born outside of the country and despite being born the daughter of a serviceman doing his duty?

The vast majority of the people we’ve met here in Cornwall have treated us wonderfully well. I totally understand the value of wanting to protect this perfect place from the worst excesses of the 21st century and I would do anything in my power to protect it. But we want nothing more than to share in the joys and benefits of this charming, wild place. We want to belong. I want to belong, for the first time in my life. We want to contribute in a positive way to the economy here and to the community. Why is that so wrong?