Europe · The successor kingdoms
Cornwall
drawn on the map AD 710–946
Cornwall (Cornish Kernow) was the last British kingdom of the south-west, the surviving remnant of Dumnonia west of the Tamar. It retained its own language (Cornish) and identity.
- Shown on the map
- AD 710–946
- Peak area
- 5k km²
- Region
- Europe
Names and status
Cornwall (Cornish Kernow) was the last British kingdom of the south-west, the surviving remnant of Dumnonia west of the Tamar. It retained its own language (Cornish) and identity.
Hingston Down and absorption
In 838 (the Chronicle's entry, dated 835, corrected by scholars to 838), a combined Cornish and Viking (Danish) force was defeated by Ecgberht of Wessex at the Battle of Hingston Down (most probably near Callington, Cornwall) — the last recorded battle between the Cornish and the West Saxons. The last recorded king, Donyarth (Doniert), "probably an under-king paying tribute to the West Saxons," drowned c. 875; he is likely commemorated by King Doniert's Stone at St Cleer. Cornwall was progressively incorporated into Wessex/England over the 9th–10th centuries; the Bodmin manumissions (records of freed slaves in the Bodmin Gospels) attest the continued use of Cornish alongside Old English and the region's integration.
Common questions
- What was Cornwall?
- Cornwall (Cornish Kernow) was the last British kingdom of the south-west, the surviving remnant of Dumnonia west of the Tamar. It retained its own language (Cornish) and identity.
- When is Cornwall shown on the map?
- The border data draws Cornwall AD 710–946. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large was Cornwall?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, Cornwall covered about 5,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each kingdom as the primary basis, with Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia, national heritage bodies (Historic Environment Wales and Scotland, the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust), museum sources and the Dictionary of Irish Biography, read against the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Bede and the Irish annals with their own biases. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Cornwall en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornwall
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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