An old house can be admired for the uniqueness of its design. What makes it important, however is the history behind the façade, the people that have lived there, how and why it was built.
Take Cornish House in Upper Lonsdale for example. Half timbered roughcast stucco walls sit beneath a gabled roof. One enters a hallway decorated in wainscotting and timbered ceilings, perhaps unknowing of the family whose name describes the property.
Cornish House, photo courtesy of Paul Haston
Sadly, the annals of history have not been kind to Benjamin John Cornish, the builder and designer of Cornish House. More than a century has passed since this early pioneer placed his mark on the North Shore and time has eroded memories. Fortunately, a folded parchment recently discovered by Cornish’s surviving granddaughter, Penelope reveals a family layered with interest.
Benjamin Cornish
Born in 1862, Benjamin grew up in Hackney, England, the third of seven children to Charles Cornish, a customs inspector for the port of London and Mary Jane Cornish (nee Minifie), previously a governess and teacher in Trull near Taunton, Somerset. Taunton is where Benjamin’s parents met, and the Cornish family traces back to his great grandfather, Peter Cornish born in 1718, a worshiper at Taunton’s Mary Street Unitarian Chapel, built in the early 1700s.
Benjamin Cornish’s uncle, Henry Cornish was a decorated war hero, serving with the British army as a Major Surgeon in the Afghan War, before fighting at the second Boer War at Majuba Hill (1881) where he was mortally wounded rescuing a fellow wounded soldier.
Surgeon Henry Cornish, 1881.
Henry Cornish’s father, Charles Henry Cornish (Benjamin’s great uncle) was a distinguished medical practitioner, alderman and, in 1879, mayor of Taunton. His obituary in The Christian Life, dated 24th September 1887 references a lineage going back even further with three members of the Cornish family involved in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, an attempt by James Scott, First Duke of Monmouth (the illegitimate son of protestant king, Charles II), to overthrow the newly crowned James II, a catholic – a campaign that failed at the Battle of Sedgemoor. Two were sentenced to death at the Bloody Assizes that followed and the other, Henry Cornish, an alderman in London, was tried and later beheaded alongside others for alleged connections with Monmouth and accusations of harbouring refugees from the battle.
Henry Cornish, Alderman of City of London, Executed for Treason 1685
Benjamin Cornish may have inherited some of this fervour. Whilst his brothers followed their father into desk-based jobs, he proved something of an outlier, beginning working life (aged 15) as an apprentice to a builder, before later migrating to Canada. He arrived in Vancouver in the Summer of 1887, a year after the great fire of Vancouver had ravaged the town. It was an opportunity to use his building skills as the town rebuilt, and in 1888 he formed, together with a fellow emigrant from England, Ernest Cooper, the building company, Cornish & Cooper, initially working from a workshop in Seymour Street, Vancouver and, later, from more established premises in Dufferin Street (now Second Avenue).
Cornish House was designed and built by Benjamin in 1911 as his intended retirement home. Others tread its, now creaky, boards, but his memory and those that came before him are continued and it is a heritage that we can appreciate.
If you live in a heritage house and would like to learn more about the history of your house, leave a comment on this blog!
Sources
England and Wales Birth Registration Index, 1837-2008, https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/sources/LRLD-M2P
Cornish family tree found in the possession of BJC’s surviving granddaughter, Penelope Cornish Nabokov, https://www.paulhaston.com/historical-articles
Shadbolt Sydney H, The Afghan Campaign of 1878-1880, London, 1882, https://www.soldiersofthequeen.com/surgeonmajorhenrycornish
Cornish family tree found in the possession of BJC’s surviving granddaughter, Penelope Cornish Nabokov, https://www.paulhaston.com/historical-articles
The Christian Life, Volume 13, 24th September 1887, page 470,
Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monmouth_Rebellion
Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cornish
England and Wales Census 1881, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q279-TYRV
Cornish, Charles Rischmann, notes about his father, Benjamin, 1978, MONOVA - Archives of North Vancouver - Record details (dnv.org)
Wikipedia, Great Vancouver Fire, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vancouver_Fire
Hamilton, JH, Manufacturers Association of British Columbia, 1914, https://archive.org/stream/cihm_990098/cihm_990098_djvu.txt