Huge thanks to Grace Fox Films with Grace and Rob Moth. Huge thanks also to those who either appear in the film or helped make it happen!
🪿Although now very much a clay village, St Dennis was once a collection of rural hamlets making up the Parish of St Dennis. One of the rural events of the year was St Dennis Goose Fair which was at it's height in the 1880's.
🪿Thousands of geese would be reared down on the Goss Moor, where they would enjoy the pools left from the days of tin steaming (a long established practice in that area).
🪿In October the geese would all be marched across fields, up the steep granite lined paths to the top of St Dennis, and then down through the village to Olver's field, next to the Old Rectory at the bottom of St Dennis. People would come to buy their goose and take it home to fatten it up ready for Christmas.
🪿I have mixed this history with a story closer to home. My Great Auntie Gladys was born in 1914 down at Carne at the Trethewey family's small holding on the Goss Moor. They family had many animals but none more troublesome than the Goose!
🪿I like to imagine Gladys and the Goose had a hate-hate relationship, but that my Great Grandmother Blanche Trethewey dearly loved this Goose.
🪿In real life, Gladys was chased by the Goose, and running scared she picked up a stone and threw it behind her, hitting the Goose square on the head and killing it - a story I found very funny as a child!
🪿In this song, Gladys has the idea to ship 'Goosey' off to St Dennis Goose Fair with the other Geese passing their house, but Goosey has other ideas and gives chase! Gladys does indeed run scared and throws a rock which kills Goosey! In the song, Gladys tells her mother that Goosey sadly died of old age and her family then decide not to waste a good opportunity and celebrate Christmas early - with Roast Goose! The song imagines that every year since then down on the Goss Moor there is a family celebrating Christmas in October in old Goosey's memory.
Where does the name Goss Moor come from? Adrian Wilson, eminent St Dennis historian, wrote: "Nearby Tregoss means 'Fen Farm', so Goss may be an anglicisation of the Cornish 'Cors' meaning fen or marshy ground. But there is a chance that it may mean 'Goose Moor'. Gosmour was mentioned in 1502 and Geese were indeed kept by St Dennis people in the pools created by tin streamers on the moor." - Adrian Wilson, 2020