Methodism in Poldark

Samuel & Drake Carne, played by Tom York & Harry Richardson

The Poldark books by Winston Graham and the current TV adaptation demonstrate that you cannot tell the story of mining in Cornwall in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, without the story of Methodism in Cornwall. But how much of the current popular TV adaptation or the books reflect the truth of Methodism in the 1790s?

The story rotates around the dramatic lives and loves of the fictitious old Cornish Poldark family - in particular, Captain Ross Poldark, and his wife (and former kitchen maid), Demelza Carne. In the latest season of the TV series, Demelza Poldark's brothers, Samuel and Drake Carne, have taken up their father's death-bed charge to save the souls of Cornwall. In earlier seasons of the TV series, unlike in the books, it was not made clear that their previously hard-drinking, violent father had not just become zealously religious, but had become a 'Methodie'. So far Samuel is proving the more committed preacher among the local miners, drawing together a religious society from among the working people and meeting in one of Ross's barns to sing and pray, as well as attending the local Anglican church -- until they are barred.

To read on see: www.methodist.org.uk/who-we-are/history/methodism-in-poldark

See also Ellen Teague's review: ICN 7 August 2017 - Poldark- Quality television and a spiritual experience www.indcatholicnews.com/news/33133