Richard Edmonds (1801–1886) was a notable
CornishThe Cornish are the people of Cornwall, the most south-westerly part of England, and the United Kingdom. As an ethnic group, the Cornish are interpreted as modern Celts, the lineal descendants of the ancient Britons who inhabited southern and central Great Britain...
scientific writer of the
Victorian periodThe Victorian era of the United Kingdom was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from June 1837 until her death on the 22nd of January 1901. The reign was a long period of prosperity for the British people, as profits gained from the overseas British Empire, as well as from industrial improvements...
.
Edmonds, the eldest son of Richard Edmonds (town clerk and solicitor of
PenzancePenzance is a town, civil parish, and port in Cornwall, England, in the United Kingdom.Granted various Royal Charters from 1512 onwards and incorporated in 1614, it has a population of 20,255....
), was born on 18 Sept. 1801. He was educated in the grammar schools at Penzance and
HelstonHelston is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, at the northern end of the Lizard Peninsula. It is the most southerly town in the UK, being around 1½ miles south of Penzance. In 2001 the town celebrated the 800th anniversary of the granting of its Charter, making it the...
. Articled as an attorney with his father in 1818, he qualified in 1823. He practised in Penzance until 1825 when he moved to
RedruthRedruth is a town and civil parish traditionally in Penwith Hundred of Cornwall, United Kingdom. It lies approximately at the junction of the A393 and A3047 roads, on the route of the old London to Land's End trunk road, the A30. It is approximately west of Truro, east of St Ives, north-east...
, returning to Penzance in 1836.
He had some poetical tastes, afterwards manifested in forty-four hymns contributed to a volume of ‘Hymns for Festivals of the Church’ (1857).
Richard Edmonds (1801–1886) was a notable
CornishThe Cornish are the people of Cornwall, the most south-westerly part of England, and the United Kingdom. As an ethnic group, the Cornish are interpreted as modern Celts, the lineal descendants of the ancient Britons who inhabited southern and central Great Britain...
scientific writer of the
Victorian periodThe Victorian era of the United Kingdom was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from June 1837 until her death on the 22nd of January 1901. The reign was a long period of prosperity for the British people, as profits gained from the overseas British Empire, as well as from industrial improvements...
.
Biography
Edmonds, the eldest son of Richard Edmonds (town clerk and solicitor of
PenzancePenzance is a town, civil parish, and port in Cornwall, England, in the United Kingdom.Granted various Royal Charters from 1512 onwards and incorporated in 1614, it has a population of 20,255....
), was born on 18 Sept. 1801. He was educated in the grammar schools at Penzance and
HelstonHelston is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, at the northern end of the Lizard Peninsula. It is the most southerly town in the UK, being around 1½ miles south of Penzance. In 2001 the town celebrated the 800th anniversary of the granting of its Charter, making it the...
. Articled as an attorney with his father in 1818, he qualified in 1823. He practised in Penzance until 1825 when he moved to
RedruthRedruth is a town and civil parish traditionally in Penwith Hundred of Cornwall, United Kingdom. It lies approximately at the junction of the A393 and A3047 roads, on the route of the old London to Land's End trunk road, the A30. It is approximately west of Truro, east of St Ives, north-east...
, returning to Penzance in 1836.
He had some poetical tastes, afterwards manifested in forty-four hymns contributed to a volume of ‘Hymns for Festivals of the Church’ (1857). In 1828 he contributed to the ‘Cornish Magazine.’
Edmonds joined the
Royal Geological Society of CornwallThe Royal Geological Society of Cornwall is a geological society based in Cornwall in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1814 to promote the study of the geology of Cornwall, and is the second oldest geological society in the world....
in 1814, and made geological observations for the Society in
Mount's BayMount's Bay is a large, sweeping bay on the English Channel coast of Cornwall in the United Kingdom, stretching from the Lizard Point to the eastern side of the Land's End peninsula. The sheltered waters have been used as a natural harbour since ancient times...
, especially on the sandbanks between Penzance and
MarazionMarazion is a civil parish and town in Cornwall, England, UK. It lies on the shores of Mount's Bay, two miles east of Penzance, one mile east of the village of Long Rock, and is served by the Great Western Railway. A causeway passable at low tide unites Marazion with the otherwise insular St...
and the
submerged forestSubmerged forest is a term used to describe the remains of trees which have been submerged by marine transgression, i.e. sea level rise. Examples can be found at low tide around the coast of England and Wales, and off the coast of Denmark...
s of that shore. In 1843 the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society was established. It began to publish in 1846, and communications from Edmonds were revised and collected in a volume entitled ‘
The Land's End District: its Antiquities, Natural History, Natural Phenomena, and Scenery’ (1862). In 1832 Edmonds sent papers ‘On Meteors observed in Cornwall’ and ‘On the Ancient Church discovered in Perranzabuloe’ to the ‘Literary Gazette’ and the ‘London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine,’ and subsequently from time to time he contributed to these journals on antiquarian and geological subjects. Edmonds was corresponding secretary for Cornwall of the Cambrian Archæological Society. He became a diligent inquirer after the evidences of Phœnician commerce, of Roman rule, and Celtic possession in the western peninsula of Cornwall. He collected many interesting facts, but was wanting in the critical faculty necessary for useful investigation.
On 5 July 1843 a remarkable disturbance of the sea was observed in Mount's Bay. Edmonds recorded with much care the phenomena as observed by him at Penzance. He collected accounts of analogous phenomena on the Cornish coast, and in subsequent years several examples of similar alternate ebbings and flowings of the sea were recorded by Edmonds and others, and rather hastily attributed by him to submarine earthquakes. Edmonds thus gained the title of a seismologist, to which he certainly can make no claim. He was singularly modest and timid, even to the point of confusion in stating his views. Notwithstanding this he collected with much labour all the remarkable facts connected with earthquakes, and induces his readers to believe that he traces some connection between the abnormal tides of the Atlantic and the small earthquake shocks sometimes felt in Cornwall. He had never received any scientific training, and failed to attribute the oscillations to their true cause, the formation of a vast tide wave in mid ocean, probably due to astronomical influences.
He wrote about twelve papers on the Celtic remains of Cornwall, upon Roman antiquities, and ancient customs. His papers on the agitations of the sea were sent to the
Royal Irish AcademyThe Royal Irish Academy , based in Dublin, is an all-Ireland, independent, academic body that promotes study and excellence in the sciences, humanities and social sciences. It is one of Ireland's premier learned societies and cultural institutions and currently has approximately 404 Members,...
, to the British Association, the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ the ‘
Philosophical MagazineThe Philosophical Magazine is the world’s oldest commercially published scientific journal. Initiated by Richard Taylor in 1798 and published continuously by Taylor & Francis ever since, it was the journal of choice for such luminaries as Faraday, Joule, Maxwell, J.J. Thomson, Rayleigh and Rutherford...
,’ as well as to the journals published by the Royal Cornwall Geological Society and to the
Royal Institution of CornwallThe Royal Institution of Cornwall was founded in Truro, Cornwall, United Kingdom, in 1818 as the Cornwall Literary and Philosophical Institution. The Institution was one of the earliest of seven similar societies established in England and Wales. The RIC moved to its present site in River Street...
.
Edmonds left Cornwall shortly after 1870, and died in 1886.
External links