This is the website of the
CORNISH LANGUAGE
CLASS held in Heamoor,
Penzance, Cornwall, UK.
© 2018 S. Penhaligon, Klass An Hay
Dyskadoryon
Teachers
Steve Penhaligon
Born in Truro and brought up in Penzance, I spent my working life in the South East and only started to learn
Cornish when I returned to Cornwall in 2009. My first lesson was in Gulval Village Hall with the late John Parker,
who founded the class and passed it on to us.
I passed the four Cornish Language Board exams and was made a bard at Torpoint in 2014. I started teaching
as soon as I finished the exams and for several years I acted as class co-ordinator for our group before handing
over to Tony.
After graduating in French, I did a PGCE course but, instead of teaching, spent my working life in the Civil
Service and in the IT departments of various large companies in the Thames Valley.
As well as teaching Cornish, I sing in a couple of choirs including Keur Heb Hanow, which sings only in Cornish
and draws its membership largely from teachers and students in this class. Let me know if you’re interested!’
Roz Peskett
After spending a fair amount of her life travelling the globe, Roz came to rest in Penzance in early
retirement in 2006. Roz has a Geography MA from Cambridge, a PGCE from King’s College London and, as
a result of her varied contact with speakers of other languages, especially East Asian languages, a
TEFL/TESL Diploma as well. Roz started her teaching career in a newly formed comprehensive school on
Tyneside before working in Singapore with her husband for 20 years in a Christian training centre for
Asian Graduates where English was the common language of teaching and communication.
Roz started learning Cornish in 2009 in a class in Marazion. On her way to passing Grade 4 in 2014 she
attended classes in Heamoor, St Ives and Camborne and was barded in 2015 in St Austell. Along with
other Heamoor class members she has sung in the small choir, Keur Heb Hanow, (in Cornish only), giving
especially Cornish carol concerts, taking part in the Truro Music Festival and producing two CDs. She has
helped to run Cornish language activities for primary school students. Roz is also a reader for the
occasional Cornish language church services across West Cornwall.
Roz has been teaching at the Heamoor class for several years now as well as for classes at the annual
Penn-seythen Gernewek.
Wella Morris
Born in the English West Country, with Irish and Welsh ancestors, Wella moved to Penzance only in 2015. He
has taught French in the past, and has learned some Breton on the way, so he thought it only polite to learn
Cornish when he moved here.
He has felt so welcomed that he wants to give as much as he can to Cornwall, and that includes passing on
the excellent teaching he has received, mainly in Klass an Hay. He passed his fourth grade exams in the
summer of 2019, and has been part of the team reading the news in Cornish on BBC Radio Cornwall since
July of that year.
He’s a member of Kesva an Taves Kernewek, the Cornish Language Board, and is keen to get UK recognition
for our exams. He encourages as many students as possible to be in our class plays: when he was in his first
year, he found it a brilliant way of getting some of the language in his head.
Tony Phillips [Class Co-ordinator]
Tony was brought up bilingually in Montreal before returning, aged 9, to Cornwall. He was a fisherman, a
mechanic and a youth and community worker before gaining qualifications in ecology and teaching, from
the Universities of Plymouth and Exeter respectively, in his late twenties.
He has enjoyed 30 years of Primary teaching, half as a ‘teaching Head’, in village schools across west
Cornwall. He both leads and delivers Cornish language school and community activities, particularly on
trails and visits to heritage sites on the Penwith coast and moors, a place where he also completes weekly
butterfly transects as a UKBMS monitor. (Tony is also the Cornwall species champion for the ‘halik byghan’
or ‘small heath’ butterfly).
Currently, Tony is a Cornish Language and Culture Advisor for Keskowethyans Tirwedh Pennwydh
(Penwith Landscape Partnership), the Education Lead for Kowethas an Yeth Kernewek (Cornish Language
Fellowship) and sits on the Signage Panel of the Akademi Kernewek (Cornish Language Academy).
Johanna Harvey
A closet linguist from childhood, I encountered Cornish after marrying a Cornishman, and started learning the
language with Ray Edwards at KDL, passing the first grade exam in 1996.
Slow and steady has been my route to the exams. Whilst bringing up my family, I obtained a degree in French
and German with the Open University, followed by a PGCE, but decided to continue working as a Teaching
Assistant.
After so many years of studying alone using ‘Skeul an Yeth’, interspersed by sessions with KDL, it was a
blessing to me, living in Somerset, when lessons moved online and I was able to join Steve’s class at Klass an
Hay in 2020.
Having finally taken my Grade 4 exams in 2022, it is time to fulfil my long term ambition to teach Cornish.
Paul Tyreman
Born and brought up in Newlyn, Paul went off to study Chemistry in 1979 and, after a short spell as a scientific
civil servant, spent 26 years teaching in secondary schools in London and Cornwall.
He gave that up in 2012 and, after volunteering at PK Porthcurno, the Museum of Global Communication
(formerly known as the Telegraph Museum) for a few years, he drifted into part-time employment there as a
Learning Facilitator, so he still gets to do the fun bits of teaching Science and Technology.
He has done some volunteering at a couple of local schools that has involved teaching a bit of Cornish as well
as building and racing an electric car.
He plays a bouzouki in the Penzance-based Raffidy Dumitz band, which turns up at Cornish events throughout
the year - usually because people ask them to.
He started studying Cornish at Klass an Hay in 2018 and took three of the four Cornish Language Board exams
between then and 2022 (2nd grade would have been 2020 but Covid got in the way). Oh, and he’s a 6th Dan in
Ki Aikido as well, and will ramble on about any of these things for ages, if you ask about them!