THE COMMITTEE of the CORNWALL and DEVONSHIRE WRESTLING SOCIETY beg to announce that they will celebrate their usual ANNUAL SPORT in the Pleasure Garden attached to Mr Baum’s, the White Lion, Victoria Park Station, Hackney Wick, on Whit-Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, when a number of handsome money prizes will be given to be wrestled for […]
Wrestling.—The Cornwall and Devon Wrestling Society have resolved to divide the £100 to be given away on Friday, April 18, and at Easter, as follows:—Four money prizes for wrestling, open to all the world, for men under twelve stone, when several of the best men from the two counties have promised to come up and […]
WRESTLING. DEVON AND CORNWALL WRESTLING SOCIETY. This great annual carnival will take place at Hackney Wick Grounds (Victoria Park station). The committee have voted the liberal sum of £100, to be contended for by men under 12st, which will be apportioned in twenty money prizes. The committee have also secured the valuable services of R. […]
PEDESTRIANISM. METROPOLITAN RACE GROUNDS, HACKNEY WICK. THE CORNWALL AND DEVON WRESTLING SOCIETY’S ANNUAL MEETING. The customary annual meeting of the above-named society was held at the popular grounds of Mr. J. C. Baum, at the White Lion, Hackney Wick, on Whit-Monday and Tuesday; and terminated in a complete success, the enclosure being absolutely crammed with […]
A ‘Devon and Cornwall’ wrestling tournament at Hackney in London, reported in the Illustrated Sporting News of 1866.
Devon and Cornwall Wrestling Matches.—These annual matches took place on Good Friday, at Hackney Wick, in the open air. The custom of wrestling in boots was done away with, and all the men wrestled with stockinged feet. The value of the prizes was £60. R. Haywood (Devon) and Richard Dear (Cornwall)—After a dog throw, Haywood […]
CORNWALL AND DEVON WRESTLING SOCIETY. THE CHAMPIONSHIP. The annual meeting of this society commenced at Hackney Wick, on Good Friday. There were fully three thousand persons present, the visitors taking much interest in the wrestling, which was carried out strictly in the Cornwall and Devon style, the “fair back fall.” Although open to all counties, […]
An article written by Francis Edwards on 2nd August 2025 explores how Cornish wrestling became a popular spectator sport in 19th-century London, driven by urbanisation, media coverage, and organised promotion. At its centre is Joseph Menear, a Cornish miner turned wrestler who rose to dominate the London scene in the 1860s. Competing mainly at Hackney […]
The Devonshire Wrestling Society archive has been assembled over more than twelve years of systematic research into the history of Westcountry martial arts. When this work began, the documentary record was sparse and dispersed: sources were few, descriptions were thin, and access required navigating institutional barriers that most researchers would not have the time or resources to overcome. The archive now comprises 421 records — 322 newspaper articles (1778–1947), 35 manuscripts, 11 posters, 48 books, one letters patent, two cemetery inscriptions, and two memorials — spanning approximately one thousand years of history across five defined periods and three core disciplines: wrestling, cudgelling, and pugilism.
The material has been drawn from archives, museums, and libraries at both local and national level, as well as from diaspora communities. Access varied considerably: some holdings were straightforwardly available through public or gated online repositories; others required direct institutional inquiry, formal licensing, or payment. Licence fees for individual items have, in some cases, reached several hundred pounds. Items acquired under licence are retained for private research purposes only and are not published. A small number of items from private collections likewise remain unpublished, pending permission. All records for which publication rights have been secured are made freely and openly available.
The cost of the archive — in time and in money — has been substantial. It is offered without charge because the traditions it documents belong to the communities that produced them, and because those who come after should not be required to repeat the effort already expended.
Every record in the archive was acquired through a consistent five-stage process:
Identification. Awareness of potential sources was established through systematic searches of public and private institutional indexes worldwide, and through direct correspondence with subject specialists already engaged with relevant holdings.
Access. Depending on the institution, access was obtained through online repositories, direct application, or formal licensing. Correspondence was initiated with several hundred institutions over the course of the project. Where institutions confirmed the absence of relevant holdings, this was recorded. Where access was granted, the means of access was documented.
Storage. All acquired material is held in a single centralised repository, ensuring that research access is permanent and that no duplication of acquisition effort is necessary.
Preparation. Every record has been transcribed to render it fully searchable and taggable. Images have been assigned metadata recording provenance, licensing terms, and resolution specifications for publication purposes.
Publication. The publicly available inventory represents all records for which the requisite permissions have been obtained.
In order to ensure consistency and intellectual coherence across the archive, all prospective additions are evaluated against the following criteria, which are applied collectively and in sequence. A record should satisfy the majority of these criteria before inclusion is considered.
Relevance. The record must have a demonstrable and direct connection to the Six Shires (Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire, and Wiltshire) as the location of practice, the origin of practitioners, or the primary institutional context. Records concerning Westcountry practitioners competing elsewhere (in London, the United States, or South Africa, for example) are eligible where the practitioner’s regional identity is explicitly identified in the source. Records documenting the export of Westcountry martial arts beyond Britain are admissible and desirable, consistent with existing holdings relating to California, Japan, New Zealand, and South Africa. The record must concern one or more of the three disciplines in scope: Westcountry wrestling (Devonshire or Cornish style), cudgelling or single-stick as practised in the region, or pugilism and boxing with a demonstrable Westcountry connection. Records documenting the co-occurrence of two or more disciplines are particularly valuable and should be prioritised.
Integrity. The source must be primary or a reliable early secondary record. For newspaper sources, this means a contemporaneous report; for books, a first or early edition, or a verified transcription thereof. Secondary scholarship is admissible where it contains primary-source quotations not otherwise independently accessible, provided these are clearly identified as such.
Balanced representation. The curatorial target is approximate parity — not of record count, which will inevitably reflect the uneven survival of evidence — but of intellectual representation across the three core disciplines. Where any discipline is underrepresented relative to this target, acquisitions in that discipline should be prioritised accordingly.
Material culture. Physical objects — trophies, belts, equipment, and architectural features — are admissible where they carry inscriptions or documentary provenance that independently attest to the practice of a discipline in the region.
Verifiability. The source must be identifiable with sufficient bibliographic precision to be cited in APA format and, where possible, to be independently verified by a reader consulting the original. Oral tradition, undocumented folklore, and secondary paraphrases without citation do not meet this standard. Where a source is available online, a direct URL must be provided.
