A Much Contested Border:

The Dynamics of Cultural Memory Regarding the Cornwall-Devon Border

Kayleigh Milden
Institute of Cornish Studies
University of Exeter, England
Introduction
This paper will explore the many 'borders' of Cornwall through the medium of oral
testimony and cultural memory. It will analyse the competing discourses about the
Cornwall-Devon border and contrast the conflicting spatial identities that exist
throughout Cornwall and the Tamar Valley. As we will discover, in the case of the
Cornwall-Devon border there not only occur contradictions between the River Tamar
being perceived as both a county and a national border, but also a number of
contradictions occur within the Tamar borderlands and within Cornwall itself that
are created by cultural and ethnic issues. Arguably, Cornwall is currently one of
the most exciting places to study border identity. It is a land of paradox which
has adopted various images and discourses that both segregate it from England—but
also assimilate the 'county' into England. There is a tension between Cornwall
existing as a Celtic Nation, and to the other extreme, Cornwall being just another
county in the South West of England. Despite Cornwall's constitutional standing as
a Duchy, officially Cornwall is part of England and for many people it is
perceived as being an English county. On the other hand, Cornwall's Celtic
heritage motivates many people in the struggle for political devolution from
England, as they passionately believe that Cornwall is culturally and
historically, distinct from those across the border—east of the River Tamar. Yet,
the construction of ethnicity and the drawing of borders are not as clear-cut as
this English-Cornish dichotomy would suggest, for there are myriad competing
spatial identities and discourses which lie beneath this model. If such approaches
are applied to the Cornwall-Devon border, it emerges that a number of social
relations and narratives function at various spatial levels, both nationally and
locally, externally and internally. Apart from the physical border of the River
Tamar, psychosocial borders cut across a number of imagined Cornwalls that
distinguish between real Cornwall and the 'other'. As will be discussed, whether
through kinship, work, landscape or feelings of exclusion, the 'border' between
Cornwall and Devon (and England) is a much contested phenomenon.

Shifts in Border Studies

Until the turn of the twenty-first century the academic discipline of Cornish
Studies was generally focused on a 'macro-centric' perspective; that is, taking
Cornwall as a collective whole rather than as a collage of diverse sub-regions
within the periphery. New approaches to Cornish Studies, however, are beginning to
move away from macro-analysis and consider the micro-level perspective of the sub-
regions within Cornwall. For Bernard Deacon this micro-level dimension is central
to his view that spatial issues present a useful agenda for the future of Cornish
Studies. Researchers in the field need to recognise that the historical and
contemporary life of Cornwall is based on 'processes that operate at different
scales: the global, the Cornish and the local' (Deacon 2000). Such approaches
inevitably have relevance to the way that 'borders' within Cornwall and Devon are
encountered, as we can no longer understand Cornwall as one homogenous territory
from Lands End to the Tamar and Cornwall is constructed from myriad subjective
discourses and cultural memories. But before exploring the cultural memory of the
'borders' of Cornwall and Devon, it is first necessary to contextualise this, by
reviewing recent developments in border studies in regards to discourse and
cultural memory theory.

Since the 1960s there has been a shift from an interest in what exist within the
border to an interest in the border itself. Migration patterns and the
globalisation of culture have established new perspectives in order to understand
the 'mental borders' within multicultural societies. As Anthony P. Cohen has
demonstrated, borders are 'mental' as well as geographical entities that can shift
according to time, place and the subjectivity of each individual (Cohen 1986 and
1992). James Anderson and Liam O'Dowd have shown how borders are 'contradictory'
in nature and often fail to fit the 'nation-state ideal of cultural homogeneity,
as national borders do not always coincide with the borders of 'culture or
ethnicity' (Anderson and O'Dowd 1999(a), 595-6). Scholars have attempted to
unravel the socio-linguistic formation of border territories such as Anssi Paasi's
study of the Finnish-Russian border. Paasi argues that this border is constructed
by a 'set of social practices and discourses', which are not exclusive, rather,
'boundaries exist and gain meanings on different spatial scales, not merely at the
state level, but these meanings are ultimately reproduced in local everyday life'
(Paasi 1999, 670). Indeed, oral testimony is a valuable medium in which to
discover how borders are emotionally experienced. Oral testimony naturally 'gives
voice' to multiple narratives and allows us to investigate how competing
discourses have been absorbed into peoples' consciousness. The current awareness
in 'post-modern borderlands' and the 'border metaphor' can be explored effectively
though oral testimony, analysing how individuals construct various borders within
their psyche around such categories as race, gender, culture or social background
(Refer to Donnan and Wilson 2001, 35-40).

In relation to border identity, my own experience of dual Cornish-Devonian descent

ultimately influences the nature and interpretation of my research within the
Cornish Audio Visual Archive (CAVA). The oral historian Alessandro Portelli agues
that the relationship and interaction between the oral historian and the speaker
is an intrinsic factor in the creation of historical narratives, in the sense that
it modes the responses of both parties and therefore should be duly acknowledged
as part of the 'creation' of history (Portelli 1997, 3-88). While working in the
Tamar Valley as an oral historian interviewing local horticultural workers, my own
sense of connection to the region has inevitably shaped the way I have perceived
and created my representations of this area of the border. For example, the
importance of family associations in building trust was clear through my own
connections with the Studden family (my mother's family name), the majority of who
were market gardeners and barge people from Calstock, a village on the Cornish
side of the River Tamar (by 'barge people' I mean people who used to transport
local produce along the River Tamar by boat). The majority of people I interviewed
in the Tamar Valley could make a connection to the Studden family name, and I
instantly felt more accepted and trustworthy to these people through merely
mentioning my distant family connection. Nonetheless, this may well be my own
desire to be welcomed into the community, to 'go back to my roots', and striving
to find out more about my own historical (Celtic) identity, which has made me
perceive the importance of kinship connections across the border as being a more
prolific than they actually are in realty. Furthermore in relation to the
methodology of border studies, as I have roots on both sides of the Tamar, I have
a complex and dual sense of place. I am therefore perhaps more attuned to
perceiving and portraying post-modern or hybrid aspects of Cornish identity, than
if I were purely an outsider looking in or an insider looking out, who would
arguably possess a more prescribed, rigid idea of Cornish identity. But of course,
this also means that I have my own bias and 'mental borders' created by emotional
ties to both sides of the Tamar; in this way my research becomes a journey of self
exploration, trying to understand my own sense of dual identity and what it means
to be a 'border Celt'.

Historical Background to the Tamar Border

Following the Anglo-Saxon conquests, King Athelstan set the River Tamar as the
border between England and Cornwall in approximately the year 936, supposedly
(with a few exceptions) separating the ancient Britons of Cornwall from the
English of Wessex (Deacon 2004(a)). Nonetheless geographically at least this has
not been a static border through the ages. As recently as 1966, parts of Cornish
territory stretched across to the Devon side of the river and vice versa. Since
then the geographical border has remained fairly true to the line of the Tamar,
but even today there are villages whose spatial proximity continues to straddle
both sides of the Cornwall-Devon border. In terms of 'psychological borders' the
charting of Cornwall's territory has gone through various historical periods that
have created both unity and divorce from neighbouring Devon. One such period of
unity would be the one hundred years or so spanning from the middle of the
nineteenth to the twentieth century. The Tamar Valley has a rich industrial
heritage provided by a landscape that became dominated by mining and horticulture.
The expansion of Cornish mining spilled across the Tamar, creating cross-border
patterns of trade and migration, to the point where Tavistock (in Devon) 'became
to all intents and purposes an eastward extension of the Cornish mining district'
(Payton 1993, 226-7). For hundreds of years there had been a horticultural
industry in the Tamar Valley, but the market gardening boom really began in the
middle of the nineteenth century. The arrival of the Great Western Railway to
Plymouth in 1849 and the opening of the Royal Albert Railway Bridge in 1859
linking both sides of the Tamar, meant that produce began to be transported to
markets across the country at greater speed (Lewis 2004, 6). The horticultural
industry remained a vital part of the local economy and culture for around the
next one hundred years, creating a network of cross-border kinship and work ties
that have continued to unite both sides of the Valley to the present day.
Moreover, the Tamar has not always been a cultural or geopolitical border. Rural
East Cornwall and West Devon have historically been linked by a shared religious-
political culture that survived longer than in West Cornwall. As Garry Tregidga
has noted, by 1945 the traditional Cornish political Liberal-Nonconformist
framework only really survived 'in the rural heartland of Liberalism centred on
the Cornwall-Devon border [where] religious nonconformity was still a force to be
reckoned with' (Tregidga 2000, 112-3). Indeed, the political culture of the Tamar
Valley remained relatively unchanged, and it has only been since the General
Election of 2005 that the Tamar has returned to being a political border in
electoral terms, with all five Cornish parliamentary seats now being held by the
Liberal Democrats and the Devon side of the border becoming dominated by the
Conservative Party.

Nonetheless, although the political culture of both sides of the Tamar Valley
remained equivalent throughout much of the post-war period, it also witnessed the
beginning of a series of disputes over regional planning strategies that were to
lead to as much division as it was unity. From 1945, attempts by Plymouth City
Council to form a 'Tamarside Community' that spanned across the border into
Cornish territory caused outrage with many local people in the South-East of the
county. The opening of the Tamar Road Bridge in 1961 created easier transportation
links between Plymouth and Cornwall, causing further anxiety over the demographic
and economic impact that this would have upon the eastern part of the Duchy. By
the 1960s the emergence of the standard regional planning areas had enmeshed
Cornwall within a larger 'South West Region' that spanned an area from Lands End
to the northern tip of Gloucestershire (Payton 1993; 229, 231). From then on many
of Cornwall's governmental and business institutions began to be amalgamated with
Devon; such as the formation of the Devon and Cornwall Police in 1967. Government
support of forging links between the two 'counties' caused a great deal of protest
from Cornish nationalists, who were angered by Celtic Cornwall's assimilation into
another part of England and fearful of the impact this would have upon its economy
and identity. The trend to create a Devon-and-Cornwall sub-region, often referred
to as 'Devonwall' continued through to the 1990s and still has reverberations to
the present day. The animosity regarding territorial politics was exacerbated
further due to a number of disputes over the designation of European regional
boundaries. In 1978 the Boundary Commission established the European Parliamentary
Constituency (EPC) for Cornwall and Plymouth, as basically it had regarded
Cornwall as being 'too small' to have its own EPC. A number of Cornish led
campaigns followed and lobbied central government, calling for the formation of a
separate Cornish EPC in reflection of the region's economic and cultural
distinctiveness (refer to Payton 1993; 233, 224, 136-7, 240-2). Nonetheless, so
far such initiatives have been fruitless, and since 1999 Cornwall and Devon have
been integrated within a seven seat European Constituency that encompasses the
greater 'South West'.

Creating Border Narratives:

Cornish Nation vs. South West Region
Although borders are physical constructs (such as rivers or cordons) they are just
as much a mental phenomenon; indeed, to exist borders have to be created somehow
within our minds. The borders we create are ultimately influenced by culturally
produced 'texts'; these texts, whether written, oral or visual dictate where the
border lies between 'us' and 'them'. Post-structural and post-modern approaches
demonstrate that textual ideologies are dispersed beyond the covers of books and
begin to 'function as agents of social reproduction', through what Ben Agger terms
'fast capitalism'. He argues that texts are absorbed into the consciousness of
everyday life and determine how we interpret the world around us:

In fast capitalism the boundary between text and world has blurred to such an
extent that it is nearly impossible to identify where text leaves off and world
begins (Agger 1991, 2).

Benedict Anderson has drawn attention to the power of what he calls 'print
capitalism' on the formation of 'imagined communities', in other words, the
influence of mass publishing creating illusory identities (Anderson 1991). The
more an individual is exposed to the multiplicity of discourses throughout life,
the more fragmentary and complex identity becomes, particularly in the multi-media
age. The impact of the mass media and cultural texts on Cornish identity is
particularly prolific, as the market is saturated with books on Cornwall which
prove very popular with the general public. Rob Burton has termed the authors of
publications on Cornish heritage and identity 'Cultural Entrepreneurs', a business
that has become an influential medium within the region's psyche (Burton 1997,
151-61). The Institute of Cornish Studies has also reinforced the concept of
Cornish identity within the populous; part funded by Cornwall County Council, the
Institute has always had a community as well as an academic face. Cultural
entrepreneurship is not just active in books, as the 'Cornish Movement' has become
increasingly popular in the last decade or so, and there is a plethora of Cornish
regalia such as flags, tartan and Kernow car stickers marketed throughout the
land. Nonetheless, despite the manufacturing of 'Cornishness', as will be
discussed, the cohesiveness of one Cornish identity is largely a myth, as there
are a diversity of 'Cornwalls' to be found within the region and its borders.

While there has been a recent interest in the sub-regions within Cornwall, when it
comes to the issue of the Cornwall-Devon (English) border, arguably the
'narrative' of Cornish Studies has tended to take a 'Kernow-centric' stance.
Bernard Deacon has attempted to examine the 'competing discourses' regarding the
Cornish border being a 'Celtic frontier' or a 'county boundary' during the
nineteenth century (Deacon 2004(a)). Yet this study is still largely centred on
the division at the Tamar between the whole Cornish (Celtic) nation from the
English nation on the other side of the river. Although Deacon highlights the need
for a 'more culturally sensitive approach to borders', he does not focus on the
complexities of identity within the borderland area itself. Within the Cornish
nationhood narrative, the raison d'être of the Tamar as a territorial, ethnic and
constitutional border is paramount. The importance of the Tamar as a 'national'
border separating Cornwall from England is demonstrated in the following extract
by Philip Payton (Director of the Institute of Cornish Studies):
Certainly, by the end of the tenth century the territorial extent of modern
Cornwall had been established, the Athelstan settlement setting the River Tamar as
the divide between Celt and Saxon and investing the territory of Cornwall with an
enduring identity... (Payton 1993, 225).

This extract reveals how the grand narrative of the 'Cornish Nation' has used a
discourse of segregation and difference from those on the other side of the Tamar.
Words such as 'territory' and 'division' are common denominators of this
narrative, which needs to justify Cornwall's standing as an independent nation—
with a national border. Other common elements in this narrative are the
emphasising of the Tamar as an 'enduring' and 'established' border that has
continued to separate the 'Celtic' Cornish from the 'Saxon' English. This cultural
memory tends to focus on ancient history to legitimise the standing of the Tamar
border, espousing a time when the ethnic and constitutional boundaries between the
Celtic and Saxon people appear to have been the most pronounced. Paasi, Anderson
and O'Dowd have all demonstrated that borders have both 'material and symbolic
uses'; borders are often portrayed as 'encapsulating a history of... struggle
against "outside" forces, and as marking the limits of the "community" or
"society"' (Paasi 1999, Anderson and O'Dowd 1999(b)). As discussed, the Tamar
border is not as enduring as the Cornish nationalist narrative would suggest, yet
in terms of the creation of cultural memory the river has become the symbolic
signifier that defines the 'mental' border between the Cornish and the English on
the other side.

A Cornish flag on the banks of the River Tamar at Calstock

Although the narrative of the Cornish Nation may well be dominant at the micro
level of local (Cornish academic) discourse, at the macro level it is the
narrative of the 'South West Region' that controls the discourse of the government
and media. Local press and television have been criticised for creating a
narrative of a 'South West' or 'Westcountry' that shares a homogenous culture and
identity (Payton 1993, 233, Deacon 2004 (b)). For example, the road and rail
bridges across the Tamar are often featured in opening sequences and backdrops in
regional news programmes, arguably undermining the existence of a cultural
'border' and promoting (whether consciously or unconsciously) an image
consolidation across the South West Region. Government bodies such as the South
West Regional Assembly (SWRA) and the South West of England Regional Development
Agency (SWRDA) were established in the late 1990s as a result of initiatives in
regional commerce and development policy. The border of the South West Region
stretches from the Isles of Scilly and encompasses Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and
Dorset, covering an area of 23,829 square kilometres and representing a population
of almost five million. A good example of the workings of the 'South West Region'
narrative is provided by an excerpt from the website of the SWRA:

In early 1998, cross-Party representatives of the Unitary, County and District

Councils in the South West, along with representatives of the region's social,
economic and environmental interests, came together and agreed to form the South
West Regional Chamber. Based on the Government's guidelines and the region's
requirements, proposals were drawn up for a regional chamber that would promote
the economic, social and environmental well-being of the South West and help build
consensus and identity across the region. [Link]

This is a narrative that promotes a rhetoric of 'unity' and 'consensus', and maps
out spatial identity around the parameters of 'South West', 'regional' 'district'
and 'county'. Moreover, this is very much a South West Region within England, and
gives little or no acknowledgment of Cornwall's separate identity (or Devon's for
that matter). In contrast to the Cornish nationalist discourse, within this
narrative the Tamar is a county rather than a national or ethnic border, and
Cornwall is generally subsumed into the greater South West. Reflecting the tone of
regional planning strategy of between the 1960s and 1990s, the South West Region
narrative continues to emphasise the interdependency of the counties within its
border, and the need for cooperation for the good of the whole region. For example
SWRDA states that:

We are responsible for providing regional economic leadership. Our activities

focus on gathering and sharing the best intelligence for the benefit of everyone
in the region. [Link]

Therefore it could be argued that there is two dominant and competing narratives
in regards the border of South West England. A narrative of Cornish nationhood
that asserts that the border is the River Tamar which separates the Celtic nation
from the English nation, and the narrative of the South West Region that sets its
(regional) border somewhere between the Westcountry and the rest of Southern
England. But is the construction of spatial identity as unequivocal as both these
narratives would suggest? As will be discussed, there exist many borders within
Cornwall and Devon, and a number of conflicting narratives concerning spatial
ethnicity.

The National Vs the Ethnic Border

JW: Well the established border now is the Tamar...
KM: Do you think that's correct?
JW: Yeah, I'm happy to go along with that—that was set by Athelstan in 936 as the
border between Saxonia and Cornubia. [... ] and it's still the border today in a
legal sense.
KM: What about in an ethnic sense?
JW: Ah well that's always changing. I mean, people say ah well Cornwall at one
time was the River Parrot in Somerset, and then it was the river in Exeter. That's
true—because with the Saxons coming in it took them about five hundred years to go
from Kent all the way down [... ] to what is now the River Tamar. So if you like,
the border would have been blurred because of pockets of different groups mingling
here, there and everything. But the border in a cultural and ethnic sense would
have always been retreating over those centuries. And then it got the Tamar and
that was set as the border, but in an ethnic sense that may not have been the
border then, it was just convenient for him to choose that huge river as a
dividing line. [... ] The Tamar is recognised now as being the county border,
that's why it's retained in the memory now as county border, when in actual fact
it's a long standing border between England and Cornwall. That has been reflected
in many documents down through the ages... .These are historic relations between
this constitutional entity and that constitutional entity that have come through
time and are still reflected in legislation today.
(Interview of 'JW', CAVA, August 2003)

This is an excerpt from an interview recorded between myself (KM) and 'JW', an
author and Cornish rights campaigner. Within this piece of narrative we can see
how JW constructs his mental border through elements originating from the
discourse of Cornish nationalism. Athelstan's designation of the River Tamar as
the border between Cornwall and England is again central to JW's 'justification'
of this 'national' border. For JW the Tamar is a legal border that separates two
different constitutional entities. Further on in the interview JW asserts that the
fact that the Tamar is still a constitutional border is proven by such instances
at the 1998 Tamar Bridge Act, whereby the Duke of Cornwall and the Queen of
England were 'treated as equals', and neither party could impinge on the other's
constitutional rights within their 'territories'. This echoes the discourse of the
Kilbrandon Commission of 1973, that highlighted the constitutional rights and
distinctiveness awarded to Cornwall by its status as a Duchy. The Kilbrandon
Report was written at the time when the devolution issue within the United Kingdom
was receiving a considerable amount of debate. Although the report advocated
greater use of the title 'Duchy of Cornwall' to emphasise Cornwall's
constitutional status and to acknowledge Cornwall as a separate territorial
region, it did not recommend devolution for the Duchy (Payton 1993, 242-3). But it
could be argued that the remnants of the discourse revolving around the Kilbrandon
period continues to, in part, influence JW's narrative; whereby focusing on the
legal and constitutional history of the Duchy helps him compose a history of two
separate nations divided by the 'enduring border' of the River Tamar.

The discourse between JW and me also reveals my own difficulty in perceiving the
Tamar as an ethnic border. As mentioned, classing myself as a Cornish-Devonian,
having family heritage on both sides of the river, leads me to challenge JW in his
polarisation between the Cornish and English on either side of the border. JW does
concede that the border may well have been 'blurred' in an ethnic sense, but
focuses on the Tamar as a constitutional border as this provides a more effective
justification of Cornwall's distinctiveness from England. Indeed, it perhaps is
just as awkward for him to imagine kinship links across the Tamar as it is for me
to think of the river as an explicit divide between two ethnicities. The issue of
a shared Celtic ethnicity between the Cornish and the Devonians has recently
become a controversial subject with the emergence of the Devon Movement. So far
the Devon Movement has been ostensibly a cultural rather than an political
phenomenon; for example in 2002 during a BBC Radio Devon debate about the county's
sense of identity a Devon flag was created, but thus far the flag has not been
coerced into any political movement. However, perhaps not surprisingly the Devon
Movement has outraged many Cornish nationalists, who as expressed by JW, are angry
that Devon appears to be mimicking Cornish identity and fear for the impact this
could have on Cornwall's Celtic 'distinctiveness'. When asked for his opinion
about the Devon Movement JW replied:

[Groans]... Uh not very happy, not very happy at all, because Cornwall has got to
show that it's distinctive in order to get any benefits from being distinctive. So
if you've got a group of people... who are conjuring up a fictitious history and
image for a region of England and modelling that on Cornwall's distinctiveness
than that is inevitably going to detract from our distinctiveness. (Interview of
'JW', CAVA, August 2003)

A completely different perspective to JW's of where the border between Celtic and
Saxon exists was expressed in an interview of 'KP', who has been highly
influential in the Devon Movement:

I was aware of the fact that there was this element in Devon that were part of the
tribe of the Dumnonii... it was certainly a much larger tribe than Cornwall and
before the recognised time of Cornwall... .The Tamar is a nice and easy devisable
line for people with nice and easy devisable minds, but nothing in the world is
like that, your might get a high density of something, but you also get the
peripheries. (Interview of 'KP', CAVA, August 2006)

In his exploration of 'the past in French history', Robert Gildea argues that
there is no single French collective memory, rather "parallel and competing
collective memories elaborated by communities which have experienced and handle
the past in different ways" (Gildea 1994, 10). Similarly, there is no unified
collective memory in the far South West peninsula and the nature of the historical
relationship between Cornwall and Devon can be a contentious issue. A number of
polemical letters between Cornish nationalists and Devon Movement supporters have
been published in the local press. Supporters of the Devon Movement have drawn
attention to the ancient bloodlines and historic (Celtic) ties between Devon and
Cornwall, as well as the survival of the Cornish language in parts of west Devon
into at least the fourteenth century. Cornish nationalists have retorted against
such claims, and have asserted that Devon was 'ethnically cleansed' of the Cornish
people by the Anglo-Saxon invasions in the tenth century, whereby the Cornish
settled to the west of the Tamar. All borders, to a certain extent, are historical
constructions. Both quotes from JW and KP demonstrate the importance of history in
legitimising borders, and how different versions of history compete to dictate
where the border lies. For JW, focusing on Athelstan's establishment of the Tamar
as the constitutional border between Cornwall and England in 936 as a key event in
history helps to 'justify' the legitimacy of a separate Cornish Nation, and
overrides the legitimacy of any remnants of ethnic ties that may exist across the
Tamar. Whereas, KP (and many others in the Devon Movement) choose to revive the
memory of the earlier period of the Dumnonii, a Celtic 'tribe' that inhabited much
of the South West peninsula covering present day Cornwall, Devon and parts of
southern Somerset. Nonetheless, it is thought that the Kingdom of Dumnonia was not
politically centralised and consisted of a series of independent tribes that
gradually became overrun by the Anglo-Saxons from the seventh century onwards. But
for KP the 'remembering' of a united and related Celtic tribe of Dumnonia
justifies Devon's right to Celtic ancestry on a level footing with Cornwall's
claims of 'distinctiveness'. Often the 'Celtic fringes' of the United Kingdom have
been portrayed as the peripheries of the English state, but such evidence taken
from oral testimony suggests that there exists a more complex axis of centre-
periphery identity at the micro level. For KP the Tamar is neither a national or
ethnic border, and although there may be a 'high density' of Celtic ancestry in
Cornwall, he also seems to perceive Devon as being part of a periphery to the
Celtic fringe of Southern Britain. Indeed, as will now be discussed, Cornwall is
by no means a united entity and the Tamar is not the only border that divides
people within the South West peninsula.

The East vs. West Cornwall Border

So far we have considered the parallel and competing images of the Tamar as a
national and a county border, but there is another border in existence within
Cornwall. It is a far more intangible border but no less real, and runs somewhere
from the east of Bodmin and St Austell, separating 'East' from 'West' Cornwall. It
is a well known local adage that 'you're not really Cornish if you were born east
of St Austell'; an opinion that often causes people in the east of the county to
feel a sense of exclusion from the rest of Cornwall. Paradoxically, despite the
Tamar being portrayed as an ethno-nationalist border polarising the Cornish from
the English, at the same time, there appears to exist varying levels of
'Cornishness' that differentiates the border peripheries from the real
Cornwall/Cornish further west. This mental border between East and West Cornwall
emerged in an interview with 'AB' from Saltash:

My father's family have been here for a very, very long time. Part of my mother's
family also came from Saltash....I've always lived in Saltash, I'm very proud of
my Cornish roots, and when people try to say 'oh because you were born in
Plymouth'. I mean, I was only in there a couple of days, and then brought back to
Saltash, so I know no different than Saltash, and I've got all this Cornish blood
running through me, and then someone tries to tell you that you're not Cornish.
[... ] If you go and talk to somebody from west Cornwall they think... well I
don't know what they class this area as, they think Cornwall starts down around
Bodmin, which is something else that annoys me, because they're eroding their own
county. You know, Cornwall starts at the Tamar and it has done since about nine
hundred and something... . They think we're part of Plymouth or something... they
know that the Tamar is the start of Cornwall but to them Cornwall is down west.
(Interview of 'AB', CAVA, April 2006)

Arguably Saltash is now the principal 'frontier town' in Cornwall, as the majority
of road and rail traffic passes through it. Its close proximity to Plymouth, being
linked to the English city across the Tamar by two bridges, seems to cultivate a
powerful vindication of Cornish identity in Saltash, which is reflected in the
'emblems' of Cornish identity located around the town. Cornish flags are flown
proudly from buildings on the Saltash waterfront on the banks of the Tamar and the
town's railway station has recently had the addition of two bi-lingual signs that
welcomes visitors to Cornwall in both English and Cornish.

Bi-lingual sign at Saltash Railway Station

The perceived threat from Plymouth in regards to economic and migration issues
appears to reinforce the need to retain the 'Cornishness' of the town to avoid it
being sucked into a 'Plymouth suburb'. Indeed, in recent years Saltash has
expanded considerably due to a large amount of new housing developments, which is
arguably due to people wanting to 'move across to Cornwall' from Plymouth, while
still having the convenience of being close to the city. There is also much
grievance from Saltash and South East Cornwall people regarding the necessity to
rely on Plymouth for health care. The major contention being that the maternity
care for South East Cornwall is provided by Derriford Hospital (and before that
Freedom Fields Hospital) in Plymouth; this has meant that most mothers living in
this area have to give birth away from Cornish territory. AB was one of those
Cornish babies born in Plymouth; within the interview he had a very heated debate
with 'MT' (another interviewee) over the issue of place of birth and ethnicity. MT
asserted that you have to be born on the Cornish side of the Tamar to be really
Cornish, and criticised Cornish mothers for relying on Derriford Hospital as they
could give birth at home. AB retorted that some mothers have complications which
mean that they would be unable to take this option. He also asserted (as in his
own case), that many individuals have 'Cornish blood running through them', and
the place of birth does not detract from someone's ethnicity. The point is, here
we have two opposing versions of the meaning of Cornish ethnicity and the mental
borders that define ethnicity either set along the lines of spatial territory or
genetic heritage. For AB the Tamar is still very much the border between Cornwall
and England, but the concentration of his Cornish family heritage enable him to
override his place of birth and defend his sense of Cornish ethnicity.

Nonetheless despite a powerful feeling of Cornish defence at such frontier towns

as Saltash, and the Tamar being perceived as the ethnic border between Cornwall
and England, the mental map of Cornwall is not as simple as this would suggest.
Many residents of East Cornwall perceive themselves as living in the periphery of
West Cornwall, which possesses the majority of the Duchy's infrastructure and, of
course, its capital Truro. Up until now the concentration, at least in academic
discourse, has been on a 'centre-periphery model', that focuses upon Cornwall (as
a whole) being a distinct periphery—yet dominated by the English centre (Refer to
Payton 1992, Lee 1993, 253-69). But insights revealed by oral testimony suggest
that at the micro level there prevails what could be termed as a 'reverse-
periphery model' between the West Cornwall 'centre' and the East Cornwall
'periphery'. More research is required into what extent East Cornwall is
marginalised in socio-economic terms, but in terms of cultural memory certainly
the perception of exclusion and difference from the other side of the West-East
mental border continues to split Cornwall into two conflicting territories. AB's
narrative not only reveals the emotional tensions between East and West Cornwall
but also the dichotomy created by the perceptions of what constitutes 'Cornwall'.
AB comments that 'to them Cornwall is down west', and indeed for many people
Cornwall's image is made up of such 'Cornish things' as mine engine houses,
fishing villages, rugged cliff tops, Celtic Crosses and Holy Wells that create a
sense of 'remote romanticism', which is associated with the west of the periphery
and not the 'softer' landscape of East Cornwall. Ironically, East Cornwall does
have a rich industrial heritage connected to Cornish mining and fishing, as it
does Celtic remnants and such romanticised images of Cornwall are largely the
result of externally generated images created by artist colonies and the tourist
and media industries (Refer to Howlett 2004). Yet, for many individuals this
mental border serves as a bastion to protect again the 'other' and differentiate
'real' Celtic West Cornwall from East Cornwall, which to some is apparently
considered to be 'contaminated' by Plymouth or England.

AB's extract also reveals how competing spatial identities can co-exist within one
person. Anderson and O'Dowd have similarly pointed out that contradictory images
of borders can co-exist concurrently in the same people, as many individuals have
to regularly deal with not one state but two (Anderson and O'Dowd 1999(a), 595-6).
Although the Tamar is not an 'official' state border, it nonetheless denotes a
multiplicity of spatial identities that alternate between it being a country or a
county border. For the people of East Cornwall this is especially complex, as they
may well feel separate from England, yet are often still reliant on the other side
of the border for employment and various services. AB says that those in West
Cornwall are 'eroding their own county'—and the key word here is 'county'.
Although, as discussed, AB feels very strongly Cornish and sees the Tamar as an
ethnic border established since the tenth century, he nonetheless still appears to
perceive Cornwall as a county not a country. AB's construction of Cornwall's
spatial perimeters comprises of linguistic elements stemming from both conflicting
grand narratives that were discussed previously, namely: Cornwall the Celtic
nation, and Cornwall the English county. For AB the Tamar alternates from being an
ethno-national border and an English county border, articulating a sense of both
separateness and unity across the river.

Conclusion
It would seem for now that the two dominant (or at least articulated) narratives
regarding the Cornwall-Devon border, revolves around the Tamar existing as an
English county or a Celtic nation border. This creates a curious paradoxical
tension between two competing levels of consciousness: between Cornwall being
something separate and different from England, yet at the same time being
incorporated across the Tamar as Cornwall is still 'officially' classed as a
English county. But as we have seen, the situation is even more complex than the
country-county model would suggest. There is more than one border that divides or
unites Cornwall and Devon/England. Individuals are exposed to a plethora of images
and discourses which map out a number of borders within Cornwall and Devon and the
larger 'South West'. These competing borders can co-exist within one individual
and shift according to time and place. Perhaps the conflict of internal borders
are especially relevant to those in the Tamar borderlands, as they have to
negotiate their lives 'at the borders' on a daily basis and try to comprehend on
which side (if any) of the border they belong. Certainly within my own struggle to
negotiate my dual Cornish-Devonian identity, my own mental border can shift
depending on whether I am at home (in Devon), or at work (in Cornwall) and what
people and discourses I am surrounding by. In sum, I would argue that more
consideration needs to be given to the diversity and plurality of borders that
exist not only in Cornwall and Devon, but in the wider Celtic 'world'. An
analytical approach to spatial identity is essential in Celtic Studies in order to
fully appreciate both the physical and mental complexities of Celtic borders.

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Copyright © Kayleigh Milden, 2007
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ISSN 1468-6074

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