Robert Morton Nance was born in Cardiff in 1873, but both his parents were Cornish; his mother having been born in St Ives. Many of his ancestors had been sea captains and shipbuilders. Nance spent many holidays in St Ives during his childhood, and he grew to have an abiding interest and love of Cornwall and all things Cornish. He studied art in Cardiff, and soon after his second marriage in 1906 he and his wife moved to Nancledra. Here he wrote a number of plays in the Cornish dialect for performance by the children of the village school.

In 1914 Nance moved to Carbis Bay where he lived until his death in 1959. He began to write articles in the journals of The Royal Institution of Cornwall and the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society. He and his friend Henry Jenner founded the Old Cornwall Society  in 1920. Its first branch was in St Ives. It had a Cornish motto:

            “Gather ye the fragments that are left that nothing be lost.”

Four years later there were enough Societies to make a Federation, and Nance would remain Recorder of the St Ives branch. In 1925 publication of the journal ‘Old Cornwall’ began, with Nance as its editor. He wrote copious articles for the journal throughout his life. A complete set of these journals is available in the St Ives Reference Library.

In August 1928 the first Cornish Gorsedd was held at Boscawen-un when the Archdruid of Wales installed Jenner as first Grand Bard of Cornwall. Nance succeeded him on Jenner’s death in 1934.

Nance did more than anyone to revive the Cornish language, and he produced a number of important works:

            Cornish-English Dictionary

            A Glossary of Cornish Sea-Words (1963)

            The Cledry Plays (1956)

            Cornish in Song and Ceremony 

Robert Morton Nance is buried at Zennor Church where his Celtic name ‘Mordon’ is inscribed on his gravestone.

(We are indebted to the late P A S Poole, whose excellent brief biography of Robert Morton Nance appears in A Glossary of Cornish Sea Words.)