St Columb Major - Notable Residents

Notable Residents

• Ralph Allen (1693–1764), Post Master. As a teenager he worked at St Columb Post Office. He moved to Bath in 1710 where he became a clerk in the Bath Post Office, and at the age of 19, in 1712, he became the Post Master of Bath.
• Wilfred Theodore Blake (1894–1968), a pioneer aviator, author and traveller. He was the man who led the first attempt to fly round the world in 1922. The pilot for this mission was Norman MacMillan. The aircraft was a de Havilland DH9A bought from the Royal Air Force. His ambitious round-the-world trip was cancelled after the first stage of the flight after it came to grief in Calcutta.
• Richard Bullock (1847–1921), gunman. A legendary figure of the Wild West Cowboy era, his quick-shooting deeds working on the Deadwood stage gained him the nickname "Deadwood Dick".
• Jack Crapp (1912–1981), England cricketer who played in the English cricket team on tour in the winter of 1948–49.
• Edward Hamley (baptised 1764, died 1834), clergyman and poet.
• Robin Harvey, left-handed cricketer, Captain of Cornwall Cricket team
• Henry Jenner (1848–1934), Celtic scholar, Cornish cultural activist, and the chief originator of the Cornish language revival.
• Cyril Bencraft Joly (1918–2000), inventor, author and Desert Rat Army veteran.
• John Kennall, Rector of St Columb, Cornish scholar
• Stephen Robert Nockolds, FRS, geochemist, petrologist and winner of the Murchison Medal.
• James Paynter, a leader of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion who declared the Old Pretender in St Columb town square.
• James Polkinghorne Champion Cornish wrestler.
• Matthew Smith (1879–1959), artist/painter, lived here in the autumn and winter of 1920
• Ernest Smythe (1904–1975), cricketer and Indian Army officer, who lived in the town in his later years, where he died in 1975.
• John Nichols Thom, the Cornish self-declared Messiah who commanded one force in the last battle to be fought on English soil.
• Dick Twinney, illustrator and wildlife artist.