Author: Hugh Miners
Alternate names: Den Toll
Born: 3/1915
Died: 2/2009
Dates: 2/27/2009
Bio: AN INFLUENTIAL figure in the Gorsedd of Cornwall for more than 50 years, a world traveller and unique personality in the movement, Hugh Miners, the senior past grand bard, has died aged 94.

Only a very few weeks ago, still strong in intellect and voice, he had spoken without notes for a half-hour on Gorsedd history and influence to the Rotary Club of Penzance.

The funeral service will be at Richmond Methodist Church, Penzance, where he worshipped for many years, on Monday, March 9 at 2pm. Donations will be for Cancer Research UK. He leaves two daughters, Susan and Wendy and a son Brian: another son David predeceased him.

With his legendary energy and zest for life, Hugh was driven by his passion for Cornwall and his interest in the revival of the Cornish language which he fostered, together with an enthusiasm for the environment. He traced and inaugurated, from mine to shore, the traditional old Tinners' Way in Cornwall by which the ancients had brought the ore to the coast and he made it a new walk for local people.

His vigorous independent mind and his view on how things could and should be done, allied to his questing and twinkling sense of humour, made him an entertaining and challenging figure. While working in Lagos he continued his amateur cricketing career. 
 
He remained true to the watchword of the Gorsedd, Bedhough Byntha Kernewek - Be for Ever Cornish. And, with others, extended its influence with the welcome as members to musicians and scholars, artists of international renown and many other 'top experts in their field' who displayed their 'outstanding manifestation of the Cornish spirit' and gave 'unstintingly of their time, skills and energy'. As The Times could say in 1974: "The Gorsedd, once widely ridiculed, now attracts interest and respect." The 35 years since then has seen the Gorsedd double in size and triple in influence and the language grow to a stage where it is now taught in Cornish schools.

He was an enthusiast for the Gorsedd's own Eisteddfod which became a reality and believed the years ahead for the movement were full of opportunities.

The present Grand Bard, Vanessa Beeman, said he contributed so much to the community. "He was a champion of the Cornish language and among his other interests was writer and poet, a doyen of Cornish cricket and a promoter of the needs of pedestrians, most recently in the 'Living Streets Initiative' in Penzance. He will be sadly missed."

Past grand bard, Ann Trevenen Jenkin, who was initiated as bard at the same Gorsedd as Hugh, at Predannack Cross, Mullion in 1957, remarked: "He was very proud of his Cornish language and history of Cornwall, a strong defender of all that these meant to him, in Cornwall, England and overseas. He was a man full of unbounded energy well into his 90s and a strong and determined leader."

Despite the inclement weather he attended the open-air Gorsedd ceremonies at Looe in September last year and in 2007 at the Penzance events he received a certificate marking his half-century as bard, together with Mrs Jenkin and the current Gorsedd Horner, Hazel Bennett. He chose the bardic name 'Den Toll', Revenue Man - with its images of the smuggling of past Cornish centuries - to mark his profession with customs and excise. He was elected deputy in 1976 and became only the seventh grand bard in 1982, at the medieval theatrical site, Plain an Gwarry, St Just, near his home.

In 1978, when also president of the Federation of Old Cornwall Societies, he wrote the story of the first 50 years of the Gorsedd and later published the complete list of bards from September 1928 with their year of initiation and bardic names, a huge task.

He wrote "Each grand bard has been actuated by a convinced belief in the Celtic spirit of Cornwall and the need to preserve intact both this and the Cornish people's unique heritage to forge and maintain strong links with the Gorsedds of Wales and Brittany." For more than 20 years Hugh lived at Clarence Place, Penzance, and more recently at Chypons Residential Home at Newlyn, where he died peacefully on Friday, February 27.