May 27th Robert Morton Nance (Death)

     

Cardiff – born, to Cornish parents, Robert Morton Nance (1873 – 1959) was an artist, writer, nautical archaeologist and joint founder of the Old Cornwall Society (1928).

Morton Nance studied art in Bushey and was exhibiting at the Royal Academy at the early age of twenty-five.
After the premature death of his first wife, Beatrice, in 1901 he moved to Cornwall with his second wife, Maud, settling near St. Ives in 1906.

He became the pre – eminent authority of his time, expert on all things Cornish and was one of the founders of the Gorsedh Kernow, taking the Bardic name ‘Mordon’ and served as President of the Royal Institution of Cornwall (1951 – 1955).

His huge range of publications include ‘Britain’s Sea Story’ (1912), ‘A Glossary of Celtic Words in Cornish Dialect’ (1923), ‘Sailing-ship Models’ (1924), ‘Cornish for All’ (1929), ‘A Cornish-English Dictionary’ (1955) and ‘A Guide to Cornish Place-names, with a List of Words Contained in Them’ (1961).

In 1956, he published ‘The Cledry Plays’, an attempt to continue the West Penwith tradition of turning local folk tales into Christmas plays.

 

 

 

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