Some neat research keep-it wheal but if I may make a couple of observations.

Although the token system was widespread it had little relevance to the food riots between 1737 and 1847.

The weakest point in Cornwall was the preference of farmers for selling their corn in larger quantities to factors rather than undergo the chore and risks of selling piecemeal in the local markets. The seriousness from the point of view of the poor consumer was not just that middlemen enhanced prices, but that all too often corn disposed of to dealers never reached the local markets, but was transported to more profitable distant ones. Factors were especially active in the county in times of general bad harvest. London merchants appointed agents to buy up Cornish corn. A letter from a Falmouth factor to London merchants in 1757, mentioned three others besides himself as being so engaged and revealed that he had stored grain at Padstow and Helston ready for trans-shipment to London. Perhaps it was only in grimmer years that London merchants would seek as far as Cornwall for corn, but even if that pull was infrequently exerted it was at the very times when local supply was at its most precarious. Cornish farmers were naturally tempted to sell in large quantities to factors, and have the grain removed from their hands without the risk of it turning bad, or the prospect of a good harvest to come substantially lowering the price as the summer drew on. Thus, in years of short supply, a paradox would arise from an increase in both exports from, and imports to the county. The latter because of the efforts of the mineral lords and the mine adventurers to import supplies for their workers, and the former due to the increasing demand from London and elsewhere. Such was the situation in 1795 when extensive supplies had to be imported at a time when farmers were refusing to sell in small quantities to the poor.

Regarding hanging in all the years mentioned above there were two hangings and two shootings. It also has to be remembered that in the context of 1796 Britain was at war with France.

Source.

John Rule, “Cornish Cases; Essays in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Social History”.

Is there and ongoing debate concerning the monument? I must have missed the illumination.

Carn Brea Monument, one of the most well-known landmarks in Cornwall’s mining heartland has been returned to the stewardship of the local parish Council.
Cornwall Council has agreed to transfer the stewardship of the monument to the parish council following two years of discussions.
The formal handover ceremony will be held at 6pm on Thursday, June 21.
The chairman of Carn Brea Parish Council, Malcolm Moyle, said: “The parish has long awaited this moment when the most well-known landmark in Cornwall’s mining heartland is passed to the local council for safekeeping for many generations to come. A big thank you is due to Cornwall Council for making this happen and to Peter Sheppard for his help and guidance over the past year”.

http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/9774139.Carn_Brea_Monument_handed_back_to_parish_council/?ref=rss 

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I should also have mentioned that in 1796 there was industrial action involving Boulton and Watt.

The problem on this occasion was their use of patent rights to obtain an injunction against the important Poldice mine completing the installation of a major steam engine designed by the Cornish engineer Bull which was needed to keep the promising deep levels of the mine free of water. With the injunction in place, the mine stopped its pumps causing ferment among the miners.

A large body marched to Redruth. They forced William Murdock, who was then Boulton and Watt's agent in Cornwall, to accompany them back to the mine where, believing that he had copied the plans of the Bull engine and sent them to his employers, made him publicly promise never to come near the mine again.

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"Is there an ongoing debate concerning the monument? I must have missed the illumination."

When I was growing up in its shadow, many people thought it was an eyesore! Too chunky, heavy, grey, rather grotesque & non-utilitarian.
This was a Methodist area & generally speaking Methodists don't do conspicuous obeisance.
Does anyone think it was an accident the wooden spiral staircase went up in flames? Or more contemporaneously that the copper lightning conductor keeps falling off into the laps of scrap metal dealers?
You might like the Monument. I might. The emmets might. But universally? I don't think so...
Speak up, critics!

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I think ones personal opinion of the grade 11 listed monument is irrelevant. It symbalises an era of Cornish mining history whether people like it or not.

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THAT DARN MONUMENT!
I am still a little amazed that the Bassets themselves were not immensely proud of this landmark. Here, for example, is a quote from one of his current desendents

"Francis (de Dunstanville & Basset) is buried at Illogan Churchyard in the Basset vault and is remembered by that darned monument on Carn Brea!"

{http://www.past-lives.moonfruit.com/#/biography-of-francis/4530246348}

This is my question: does anyone know if the Carn Brea monument is visible from Tehidy?

🅱

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If you mean the old Tehidy house, if the trees were a little lower, it would have been visible. However some of those trees are rather old, so I suspect it would have only been properly visible when leaving the house along the south drive.

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Keep it Wheal, that site is not by one of his current desencants at all. It is by someone claiming that they were Francis Bassett in a previous life.

I have a photo of the house c. 1870 taken from a distance with the hunt gathered above. It's just a guess but the monument may well have been visible, certainly from the top of the house.

The grandson of the last Basset at Tehidy, Bryan Basset, died last year. He is survived by his wife and two children.

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CARN BREA MONUMENT

Ninety feet of granite
Cut from granite
Dragged in slabs
Across granite ground
Grounded in granite
Hoisted on hoists
Slab on slab
On a granite mound
Ninety feet tops,
Block atop block
Foisted on hoists
Deadweight down
Fused with mortar,
Like a monolith
But not a monolith,
Like a beacon
But not a beacon,
Or a spire or a cross
Or obelisk but
A hexagonal column
Crowned by a diamond
Inside a polygon,
Fifty blocks beneath,
A horizontal platform
Buttressed by pyramids
Beside an Egyptian inscription
To Francis de Dunstanville & Bassett
On top of a great granite oblong
Block, four by ten by twenty,
Through an archway
Along a passageway
To a circular sanctum
Under the giddying vortex
Of a ninety foot totem
Whose Horus eye oversees
This grim tree-less desolation
Disowned by chieftains & Romans
Un-oaked by Parliamentarians
Deboned by fiefs like the Bassetts
Leaving next to nothing but this blunt stump & granite.

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