Well over 100 family members and friends have gathered this afternoon to bid a musical farewell to popular local photographer Keith Richards, who died last month.The funeral service celebrating the life of former West Briton and Helston Packet snapper Keith was held at Treswithian Downs Crematorium in Camborne at midday and it was a case of standing room only, a testimony to Keith's immense popularity in Helston and his home village of Porkellis.Keith, who suffered from Crohn's Disease from a...

The owner of a picturesque harbourside on the Lizard peninsula has been given a month to file the right highways application or remove his 'illegal' double yellow lines.Cornwall Council has written to the Harbour and Dock Company, owned by businessman Trevor Osborne asking him to follow the due process.It comes as the company has been in legal breach under Section 132 of the Highways Act 1980 over the painting of double-yellow lines in the centre of Porthleven last month.The move angered...

Hundreds of kilos of deadly ghost nets have been removed from a shipwreck off the coast of Cornwall. The James Eagan Layne sank in Whitsand Bay, South East Cornwall, during the Second World War. In the decades since, she had become wreathed in nets lost from fishing boats. They are called "ghost nets" because they carry on their silent killing of marine life and are a hazard for divers. Now divers have removed more than 100kg of deadly monofilament "ghost net" from...

A potentially lethal Japanese "superbug" which medics have said is "difficult to control" has not moved west to infect Cornish hospitals. A spokeswoman for the Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust (RCHT) confirmed there had been no cases of the Candida auris (C. auris) which is at the centre of major outbreaks elsewhere in the country. A number of NHS trusts have been ordered to carry out deep cleans of all affected areas after more than 200 patients were found to be infected or...

Launceston is due to see the return of bargain brand Peacocks just a few doors away from where the company had its former store.Peacocks had to cut more than 3,000 jobs in 2012, after the fashion chain was sold out of administration.A deal with Edinburgh Woollen Mill saved 388 shops and more than 6,000 jobs but administrators from KPMG said it had been forced to close 224 stores with immediate effect, leading to 3,100 redundancies.The units closed included Launceston's Hurdon Road store.A...

This is the staggering mess left behind at this year's Boardmasters as thousands of revellers head home from the music festival at Newquay.Hundreds of tents were left strewn across the fields by festival goers after the massive event at the weekend, which attracted thousands of people.The clean-up operation has already begun but many people have expressed fury on social media, branding it "absolutely disgusting".One person posted photos to Feeding Penzance Homeless Facebook page...

The volunteer crews who save lives on beaches and around the coastline in Cornwall will be featured on a new BBC TV series. Saving Lives at Sea showcases the lifesaving work of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and will be broadcast tomorrow at 8pm on BBC Two. Read next: Brothers aged 5 and 7 rescued from rip tide by lifeguard at Porth Beach, Newquay The 12-part documentary series features real rescues carried out by the charity's lifeboat crews and lifeguards around the UK and...

A Lidl representative has revealed what customers can expect to see when the bargain supermarket chain opens its new St Austell store later this week.After months of anticipation, the new supermarket at Daniels Lane will replace the town's current 16-year-old East Hill store, when it opens on Thursday (August 17).A spokesman for Lidl said previously that the existing store was no longer sufficient and staff have been redeployed to the new, much larger, supermarket just outside St Austell town...

Police were called to the scene of a crash in Penzance this morning where one motorist fled the scene. The collision is said to have taken place this morning near GMO cars in Jelbert Way, and an investigation is still ongoing. "Officers were notified just after 9am to reports of a two-car road traffic collision at Penzance", said a spokesman for Devon and Cornwall Police. Read more: This Cornish micropub has discovered a unique way of getting beer from the Isles of...

A train has derailed near London as rail passengers are being urged to not travel to or from Waterloo all day, with a signal fault causing additional problems.There was a "low speed, partial derailment" on a South West Trains service following a collision with a freight train this morning. The London Ambulance Service was called and paramedics "checked over" three patients following the derailment. We checked over three patients following the train derailment at...

Rumours of a glimpse of summer coming to Cornwall this weekend may have been dashed by the news that Hurricane Gert has formed in the Atlantic.The weather system, originally designated as a tropical storm, was upgraded overnight - and could spell more wet and windy weather for the UK.Forecasters had been suggesting a warm, dry and sunny weekend, but now those predictions are being revised.Latest updates from the US have revealed that Gert had strengthened to become the second hurricane of the...

Kathryn Price would have been 27 in February, but she never even got to celebrate her 16th birthday or go to prom after a horror crash on Penryn bypass in 2006.For her mum Alicia Watt the effects of that day will be forever etched on her mind and even 11 years on she still marks the occasion with a memorial balloon launch at her daughter's graveside.She said she gets "enormous comfort" from the fact that so many people still attend the memorial at Budock Church."Every year I get...

Welcome to our live coverage of all the day's biggest stories, traffic and travel from across Cornwall on Tuesday, August 15, 2017. We'll be looking at all the traffic from 7am until this evening, so keep checking back to make sure you get wherever you're going as quickly and safely as possible. We will of course also be breaking news as it happens and keeping an eye on the weather. It's Gareth here until 2.30pm when I hand over to the late team led today by Ginette. If you've seen...

One Cornish business has become a favourite with TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh.Gripsure helped create a sensory garden for a four-year-old girl with severely limited vision.Now the garden has featured on the popular ITV show Love Your Garden with Alan Titchmarsh.Bugle-based Gripsure provided its innovative non slip decking for the garden, which was created by the Love Your Garden team for Isabelle Cooper, from Hythe in Southampton.The four-year-old has a rare degenerative eye disease called LCA...

Dreams of a new boom time for Cornwall have taken a step closer to reality after a £1million investment was unveiled to explore for a precious metal dubbed White Petroleum. The firm Cornish Lithium has revealed the substantial cash injection which will help locate the best drill sites for the metal which is a vital component in rechargeable batteries used in everything from mobile phones to cars. Chief executive and founder, Camborne School of Mines graduate Jeremy Wrathall, said it...

A new website pulling together news, data and social conversations based on your postcode has just launched the first geographical map view of realtime news as it unfolds across the UK. InYourArea.co.uk detects when any city, town, hamlet or village in Cornwall is mentioned in a news article, aggregating stories from every regional and national news website and blog in the UK, and instantly plotting it on the map.When zoomed out, the map groups stories in clusters and provides a heat-map like...

Emmets. The literal translation is ants. Red ants. Red ants that swarm everywhere, particularly when it's hot. It's an apt description for the hordes of slightly pink tourists who descend on Cornwall in August.In Devon they're grockles – possibly deriving from a clown called Grock in the early 20th century, because of their clownish and boorish behaviour and handkerchiefs on their heads, and popularised in the film The System (1964) which was made in Torquay. Don't get me wrong, I...

The thought of a child being at risk from a sex offender is every parent's worst nightmare. For most mums and dads this is a thought which they don't wish to worry about too often, but did you know that, as a parent, you are allowed to ask the police for information related to convicted sex offenders? reports the Bristol Post. Paedophiles are required to sign the Sex Offenders' Register for a good reason. This isn't about persecuting criminals after they have served their sentences –...

Release date:  Mon, 14/08/2017 (All day) Main image:  Summary:  Vine House Farm, the home of pioneering wildlife-friendly farmer Nicolas Watts and his family, grows 400 acres of bird seed, including 100 acres of sunflowers, and is a haven for a host of wildlife.

This month The Wildlife Trusts are celebrating a flourishing 10-year partnership with Vine House Farm, working together for wildlife. By donating up to 5% of its sales to The Wildlife Trusts, Vine House Farm has raised over £1,250,000 to support wildlife conservation across the country, and inspire people to experience wildlife first-hand.

Jan Pentreath, President of Cornwall Wildlife Trust said,

“Vine House Farm is a great example of an innovative company that puts environmental growth at the heart of its business. It's incredible track record of annual donations has given an invaluable boost to our conservation work across the county, helping us to ensure that Cornwall’s wildlife and wild places are now thriving and have a brighter future. On behalf of everyone here at Cornwall Wildlife Trust I would like to thank Nicholas Watts and his family for their fantastic generosity and support.”

Stephanie Hilborne, CEO of The Wildlife Trusts said,

“Ten years ago, we chose to partner with Vine House Farm not just because they produce great birdseed but because of the amazing things they were doing for wildlife on their own farm and their very real commitment to our work. People taking action in the places that are closest and most important to them is a powerful force for change. The thousands of people who buy the birdseed are doing just this, and so too are Nicholas and his daughter Lucy. We’re very proud to be working with Vine House Farm to bring about nature’s recovery and to bring the joy of wildlife into more people’s lives.”

Fourth-generation farmer Nicholas has been working the land at Vine House Farm in Deeping St Nicholas, Lincolnshire since he was a boy. His bird watching hobby became part of his work in 1992, leading to an MBE for his wildlife conservation work and wildlife-friendly farm management, and many other awards.

Nicholas Watts MBE said,

“Farming this way is a way of life for us and it brings about great pleasure to see wildlife thriving. I have always enjoyed feeding birds and now I am feeding more than I could ever have imagined with the help of our customers!”
Over the last 20 years, thanks to wildlife-friendly measures put in place at the farm, barn owl and whitethroat numbers have quadrupled, and tree sparrow and lapwing numbers have increased ten-fold.
 

A motorcyclist escaped with minor injuries after an accident which saw the A388 Carkeel closed for an hour this afternoon.Police and ambulance were called to the scene just before 3pm near Ryelands and Dirty Lane to reports of a single vehicle road traffic accident.A police spokesman said: "The motorcyclist had collided with the barrier. There was a full road closure put in place as there was potential for serious injuries."However, after being assessed by paramedics, the driver was...