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Cornwall

Picture of Dolly Portreath's Memorial, Mousehole

Memorial to Dolly Pentreath (d. 1777) in the churchyard at Paul, just outside Mousehiole. Dolly was believed to be the last person to speak Cornish as her native language. After her time people still learned Cornish, but as a second language after English.

Unusually, the memorial is set into the churchyard wall, so that it can be seen equally well from within the churchyard or from the sidewalk outside the churchyard. The memorial was erected in 1860 by Louis Lucien Bonaparte, a descendant of the Emperor Napoleon. The precise site of Dolly's grave is a matter of dispute; the memorial was first erected over a different grave, and was moved to its present location in 1882.

Dolly Pentreath was a local "character", around whom a number of perhaps apocrophal tales have grown up, including the legend that she once saved a local man from being siezed by a press-gang by hiding him in a cavity beside her chimney and lighting a fire in the grate. She then chased the press gang of with a sharop knife and the even sharper edge of her tongue!

Dolly Portreath is also reputed to have been a witch, or wise woman, who lived to the ripe old age of 102. The location of her house in Mousehole is marked by a plaque on a stone wall near the Kegwith Arms. Inside the inn, the chamber she would sit and drink ale is still much as it was during her time.

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