As part of our Farmers Will Like It project to conserve and research some of our oldest collections relating to farming, we are also documenting, collecting and commissioning things relating to Cornish farming today. Our first contemporary commission is a new wassail bowl for Cornwall designed and made by ceramic artist Angi Richardson of AKR Ceramics. It is on display at the museum and we have also made a little film showcasing Angi’s story of how it was created. We also stock Angi’s beautiful creations, born from all that is around her, the earth and folklore, in the museum shop.

The Museum commissioned this wassail bowl as a symbol of gratitude to the farmers, growers and land of Cornwall that feed and sustain us. Farmers and growers have always had to work with, and sometimes struggle against, the changing climate, weather, innovations and economics that affect food and drink production. This is never truer than today where farmers not just in Cornwall and Britain but across the world are protesting against government policies and forces that work against healthy food and drink production. Thankfully alongside, there is a growing diversity of farming methods, an interest in reviving ‘old ways’ of ensuring soil and livestock health and smarter ways to manage sustainable farming businesses from growing your own animal feed to returning to harnessing online commerce to sell direct to the consumer. Cornwall has some of the most wide-ranging and successful farm and orchard-based produce in the country.

Wassailing: the ancient way of saying thank you

The traditional start to Winter is Allantide, celebrated at the end of October or beginning of November. It was the end of the orchard harvests and apples in particular became symbols of abundance and fortune during these festivities. Allan is the Cornish word for apple, also spelled aval. It was at Allantide on 2 November 2024 that the we welcomed the new Wassail Bowl for Cornwall into the Museum in the company of Museum Supporters, volunteers, representatives from the Federation of Old Cornwall Societies (who have just published a book on wassailing in Cornwall also available in the Museum Shop) growers and farmers. After a joyous Cornish concert by Kara Hellys produced by MADE Cornwall the Wassail Bowl was blessed by the Priestess of Kernow, toasted with apple juice made from the rare Cornish apple orchards of Kestle Barton.

Wassailing is another wintertide tradition that takes place all over Britain and has variously fallen in and out of fashion but has never died out altogether. Descriptions of thanksgiving ceremonies for food and drink go back to the early medieval period and very likely before that. Traditionally wassailing took place any time during the 12 days of Christmas. Bodmin still holds its house-to-house wassailing whose tradition goes back a long way – the kind that involves a communal wassail bowl, singing to the health of their hosts and raising money or receiving gifts of cider or ale. Today wassailing in Cornwall takes many forms, from the Redruth Wassail of the end of November to the St Ives Wassail that coincides with their Feast Day on 1 or 2 February.

Well-wishing bowls

Folklorist Robert Hunt’s wonderful description of apple-tree wassailing was centred in the countryside around west Devon and east Cornwall. The role of the farmer in keeping up these traditions is clear.

In the eastern part of Cornwall, and in western Devonshire, it was the custom to take a milk-panful of cider, into which roasted apples had been broken, into the orchard. This was placed as near the centre of the orchard as possible, and each person, taking a “clomben” cup of the drink, goes to different apple-trees, and addresses them as follows:–

“Health to the good apple-tree;
Well to bear, pocketfuls, hatfuls,
Peckfuls, bushel-bagfuls.”

Two 17^th-century wassail bowls exist in the collections of Cornwall Museum and Art Gallery (formerly Royal Cornwall Museum) from Newlyn East and the Trelowarren Estate. Both were made from lignum vitae and came from the era of the Restoration of the monarchy when customs and feasts were again encouraged. Lignum vitae, like ebony, is a dense tropical hardwood from the Caribbean that could hold hot liquids. Unfortunately the demand for this wood for all sorts of purposes decimated these precious hardwood forests. Here we can start to see how British folk customs developed and adapted as a consequence of British colonialism. 

While cider and beer were tradition drinks offered in wassail bowl, many other beverages were used too such as milk and fruit punches. An advertisement in the Western Morning News of February 1885 promotes a non-alcoholic drink called Wassail. Marketed as “the pleasantest, jolliest, and healthiest drink during the cold evenings of the festive season” now drunk in notable places such as the diamond fields of South Africa and America, “the best drink” for Christmas and New Year parties without affecting the head, and “inexpensive.” It was sold through chemists, coffee taverns, grocers and confectioners across Cornwall.

In January 1932, the Cornishman reported that at Penzance OCS’s annual Christmas party, alongside dialect plays and singing, Mr Watson sang the Penryn version of the wassail song. In fact some of the earliest known editions of the ‘Wassail Song’ are based on a Cornish version. Around the new wassail bowl we have included two verses from the song, one in Kernewek, one in English. You can find out more about various versions and the tunes they were sung to on the Cornish National Music Archive. We chose This verse and the chorus in Cornish for the bowl:

I wish you a blessing and a long time to live
Because you’re so free and so willing to give.

Gans agan wassel 
Wassel, wassel, wassel
Ha bedhewgh hwi lowen 
Gans agan wassel.

Please enjoy this story of how the New Wassail Bowl for Cornwall was created. In the meantime if you want to organise a wassail for next Winter why not get in touch with your local Old Cornwall Society or a group of friends and neighbours? Will it be at an orchard, house to house and pub to pub or something a bit different? Here are some ideas to get you started.

Further reading:

Robert Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England (1865).