I always got the idea that the West Country was culturally “Northern” being that it was less influenced by London and more Celtic, and pretty similar to Wales which is a lot like northern England. But I could be totally wrong, being I’ve never been to England.
I would imagine a poor person from Cornwall would have more in common with Cheryl Cole than they would with a Cockney.
“Like” in what sense? Culturally they’re very different, with different influences over time. For example, lots of Norse and Scottish influence on Northern England, where the West country was close to Brittany and Wales.
There’s also North and North - Newcastle and the North East are very different from Manchester and Liverpool. You might find some common ground if you think about socioeconomics, maybe - you can see both the North East and the West Country as relatively peripheral areas to a country that had London as a very strong pole. Even that is a generalization, though.
Not much in common with either. Cheryl Cole (actually Cheryl Fernandez-Versini these days!) is from Newcastle and is a big city lass from a council estate (think “projects”). Cornwall is a predominantly rural county heavily dependent on tourism so most poor people have a very different life experience.
On the wider question, I don’t think the West Country is at all culturally “Northern”. There are commonalities with north Wales and and some rural parts of northern England but also massive differences. Cornwall does have Celtic roots but, despite attempts to push Cornish nationalism, but they are a lot less prominent than in Wales. Northern England has been overwhelmingly shaped by its industrial past and the subsequent decline in manufacturing, an experience shared with parts of South Wales,but an experience that passed the West Country by. Cornwall had its tin mines but never the same culture as the coal mining areas of northern England, the south Wales valleys, and central Scotland. Nor did it develop the great industrial conurbations like Cardiff, Manchester, south Yorkshire, or Tyne and Wear.
Why?
I don’t know that they celebrate St. Piran’s Day (March 5th) in the North of England. 
Because Cockney culture is London culture and Cornwall and Newcastle, while on opposite ends on England, are probably the most immune to London’s pull of anywhere in England.
Like I said though, never been to England so I could be totally wrong.
Would you say Cornwall would be more similar to the rural Southeast, like places like Norfolk?
Not really. South east England is the richest part of the country by a mile. Just about everywhere in the south-east is influenced by its proximity to London. On the other hand Cornwall is basically a poor region with limited job opportunities for local people except in the tourist industry and that’s only from Easter to September. Cornwall is very quiet in the winter. For the locals the situation is not helped by the number of rich outsiders who have second homes in the area and have pushed house prices in some coastal areas up to nearly London levels while wages are way less.
Norfolk is different again (Norfolk is not normally thought of as “the south-east” - it is part of East Anglia which is a region on its own) there are some very rural bits but it is relatively close to London so gets a fair number of long distance commuters and weekenders. I guess there is also the difference that agriculturally the big flat fields make it is much more prosperous than the stony, hilly South West.
Attitude wise, I’d say yes (obviously I’m speaking in general terms), They are more likely to strike up a conversation with you than us lot in the South East.
The Cornish are fiercely independent and (from my experience, having worked for a Cornish demolition firm a few years back) wary of outsiders. A lot of this might come from the fact that local people have been priced out of homes by people buying secondary ‘holiday homes’. It used to be rich place, noted for it’s tin and the pickings from looting shipwrecks, but now there’s not too much going on apart from tourism and agriculture.
protoboard, I can see a similarity with Norfolk; although Norfolk is closer to London the transport links aren’t very good.
You coudl just as easily argue that Newcastle and London’s cultures are nearer each other due to the big city thing.
Basically, it is really stretching to find a link. It is pretty much defining the UK as two homogenous groups, London versus not London. I’d say the working classes are closer no matter where they live.
It should be noted that Cornwall is but a small part of the West Country, which includes some pretty affluent, if largely rural, areas - Gloucestershire and Dorset in particular.
True. Sandbanks in Dorset has the fourth highest expensive real estate in the world.
Now, Harry, about those taxes…
I’m fortunate enough to not only live in the area, but also to have a job which sees me driving around Cornwall on a daily basis. Here in the far southwest, I’d say we have more in common with rural Scotland than Newcastle. There’s no large cities here and, whilst there is a mining landscape (a UNESCO world heritage site, no less), there’s no real history or traditional of industrialisation.
I think this topic is a bit better fit for IMHO.
These observations help me to understand some of the attitudes, references and conversations in Doc Martin. He’s a Londoner that moved to Cornwall, and the culture conflict made for good scripts. But some of it was lost on me until now.
Maybe not a tradition from the Industrial Revolution, but Cornish tin was exported all over Europe (and possibly further afield) since before the Romans arrived.
How do you find the Cornish? I found them to be good lads to work with, but I never quite felt accepted.
I guess I wasn’t so much thinking of Newcastle since that’s more urban, but moreso County Durham and rural Northumberland. Northumberland even has a rhotic accent in some parts, something that’s pretty much disappeared in England everywhere besides the far north and southwest.
Cumbria might be an even better match. They still spoke a Celtic language as late as 1200 AD!
The North isn’t really all that Celtic, no more than the South-East. The South-West, Scotland and Wales managed to retain their Celticness (for want of a better word) or longer because they weren’t as accessible; the first trains didn’t arrive in Cornwall until decades after the rest of the country - including the North - had them. With Scotland and Wales the barrier was the mountains and with the Cornwall the barrier was Dartmoor.
Do you have a cite for the Celtic language in Cumbria in 1200AD? Given that even Cornish was struggling not long after that I find that very surprising.
I saw a documentary about folk dancing in Britain a while back and it had a bit on Cornwall. A local historian explained that back in the day Wales and Ireland were a day (I think) by boat away but London was two or more days, so the locals had more regular contact with other “Celtic” types on the periphery instead of the London/Southeast core.
I beg to differ about the North not being more Celtic than the Southeast. For one thing a ton of Irish, Cornish and Welsh people settled in the North for work during the 19th century so Northern English people are more likely than people in the Southeast (especially outside of London) to have Celtic roots. Northumbria was quite Celtic culturally even though they spoke a Germanic language. Northumbrian music sounds very similar to Irish and Scottish music. The Welsh even call northern England Hen Ogledd or the “Old North”. In fact Cumbric (which is basically an extinct dialect of Welsh) was spoken as far north as Scotland at one time!
People often go on about the “Viking” influence in North East England even though there’s hardly any place names in Durham or Northumberland with Viking roots. The Danes never had that much influence north of the Tees. The “Scandinavian” words in Geordie are just Anglian words, all English dialects have “Swedish” sounding words including West Country because English is already so closely related to Nordic languages as it is. Though Cumbria did have a lot of Norwegian influence (via Vikings from Ireland) and Yorkshire was part of the Danelaw.