In the 1880s several families, such as the Daveys, Deeckers, Gluyases and Sowdens, left their homes in the Liskeard district to seek their fortune in the gold mining areas around Johannesburg in the Transvaal region of South Africa. It is very likely that they would have joined the existing Cornish community there, who met regularly at Heath’s Hotel on the corner of Pritchard and Van Brandis Streets to exchange news and gossip from home, the area became known as ‘Cousin Jack Corner’.

Perhaps they were fortunate enough to witness what Fanny Moody-Manners, the ‘Cornish Nightingale’, described as the greatest night of her life; a concert for the Cornish in Johannesburg. In her diary Fanny wrote ‘When we arrived a perfect mob of people [were] waiting for us. They gave a hearty cheer when they saw me. It seemed as is every Jack from Camborne or Redruth, every fisherman from Mount’s Bay, and every reefman from the Duchy [were] on the platform’.

At her concert that evening Fanny was given a tiara decorated with 15 Kimberley diamonds representing the 15 bezants on the Cornish Coat of Arms. A Johannesburg newspaper reported that, after a medley of Cornish songs ending with Trelawny, ‘as she sang, these big men of Cornwall wept [openly]’. If any readers have an ancestor who was present that night email [email protected] with the details.

Brian Oldham, Liskeard Museum volunteer and Bard of the Gorsedh Kernow