This is the website of the

CORNISH LANGUAGE

CLASS held online and in

Penzance, Cornwall, UK.

© 2018  S. Penhaligon, Klass An Hay
Klass An Hay
Chun Quoit, Cornwall

The Heamoor Class

Dyskadoryon

Teachers

Steve Penhaligon

Born in Truro and brought up in Penzance, Steve spent his working life in the South East and only started to learn Cornish when he returned to Cornwall in 2009. His first lesson was in Gulval Village Hall with the late John Parker, who founded the class and passed it on to us. He passed the four Cornish Language Board exams and was made a bard at Torpoint in 2014. He started teaching as soon as he finished the exams and for several years he acted as class co-ordinator for our group before handing over to Tony. After graduating in French, he did a PGCE course but, instead of teaching, spent his working life in the Civil Service and in the IT departments of various large companies in the Thames Valley. As well as teaching Cornish, he is also part of the team that produces the weekly Cornish Language news bulletin, An Nowodhow, which currently goes out on Friday mornings on Radio Cornwall.

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!

Terry Moyle

With roots in St Keverne going back many centuries, Terry is proud to be a descendant of both smuggler John Carter, “King of Prussia”, and Thomas Flamank of 1497 fame and his St Keverne connection also links him with Mighal Josep an Gov. Following four years at university in London, Terry taught Geography and Sociology in secondary schools in Kent for 43 years. In more recent years and since retirement he has written nine books on various aspects of St Keverne parish resulting from his passion for both local and family history. He was made a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh in 2021 for service to the St Keverne community. Terry started learning Cornish in 2020 when courses went online as a result of the pandemic. He lives in Kent but spends as much time as possible in the family home in St Keverne and, when there, teaches a beginners’ class in the village pub. He is also heavily involved with the work of the St Keverne Local History Society using his research and collection of old photographs of people, places and events in the parish.

Alexandre Le Gall

Born and raised in Brittany, in the region of Kemper, Alexandre studied political science in Rennes, Salzburg and Strasbourt, before entering the French civil service in 2007. However, he had a deep interest in Breton and Celtic culture from early childhood, and began learning Breton in 2005. The language became a passion that led him to graduate in the Breton language in 2011. Having heard the Cornish language is a sister language to Breton, he decided to learn as much as he could about Kernewek and Kernow, although he has lived outside Cornwall, in France (Poitiers) and later in Spain (Santander). After a few years studying mainly Skeul an Yeth, the pandemic gave him the opportunity to learn Cornish properly, throught the medium of newly launched online classes. Alexandre felt so welcome and comfortable in the Cornish community that he kept on studying, attending classes with Klass an Hay in 2022/2023, and passing Grade 4 in the summer of 2023. Now, Alexandre is keen to give back to Cornwall as much as he can, and contribute by teaching the Cornish language. He also hopes to travel to Cornwall because he has never had the opportunity to visit the country yet, although the Breton town of Konk Kerne, where he took his A-levels, is twinned with Penzance!