Wilkie Collins in Cornwall

Wilkie Collins travelled through Cornwall in 1850 and published Rambles Beyond Railways in 1851. His account of the pilchard fishery describes the huer’s signals, boats surrounding shoals with a seine, and the work of landing and preserving the catch.

He also noticed the people around that work: women and girls in the salting houses, an older man caring for a baby and children trying to obtain fish from passing barrows. These observations concern west Cornwall and St Ives. They provide regional context for Newquay’s fishery, not evidence that the same named households worked beside Newquay’s Huer’s Hut.