Great Cornish Families: A History of the People and Their Houses is a book by Crispin Gill, published in 1995. A second edition was published in 2011 (). Crispin Gill, at the time of the book's publication, lived in Plymouth and was assistant editor of the Western Morning News. The book names many notable families that have featured prominently in Cornwall's history.
Gill chooses the following families:
In the introduction to Great families . . . , the following additional potentially great families are mentioned. They were not included in the list as they were deemed by him to have failed to "found a dynasty":
Bernard Deacon in his History of Cornwall (2007) suggests the following family names ("merchant bourgeois" who joined the "gentry" from the latter part of the 18th century): Williams, Bolitho, Fox, Davey of Redruth, Daniell of Truro, Harvey of Gwennap, Foster of Lostwithiel.
Table of Principal Cornish Landowners, mid-nineteenth century (ranked)
Source: Returns of owners of land in England & Wales â House of Commons Sessional papers 1872-3: paper No. 1874 lixxii, quoted in Edwin Jaggard Cornwall politics in the age of reform 1790âÂÂ1855, (1999).
*(Source: Who owns Britain ? by Kevin Cahill) (Based on Return of Owners of Land, 1873)