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Porthoustock Cottage
Memories of Billy Moyle
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With the sale just recently of the
old thatched cottage on the left hand side of
Porthoustock Cove, a chapter has ended and a new
one begun in the history of the village. The
owner for many years, Mrs Kay Lory of
Langleybury, Hertfordshire, has within the last
few weeks sold the cottage. Situated along the
road that leads to the now redundant Porthoustock
side quarry, it is one of the finest thatched
houses in the area.
During the years of the First World War, it was
the home of two nurses, Miss Beckwith and Miss
Williams. They were the Sunday School teachers at
St Keverne Parish Church and, with no facilities
for a separate Sunday-School building for the
Church Hall had not yet been built, they held
their classes in the Vicarage study.
In my boyhood days, I can remember my sisters,
Ethel and Edna, taking all the church Sunday
School scholars down to the cottage to practice
the items for St Keverne Feast Sunday and for the
concert on Feast Tuesday.
Later Misses Beckwith and Williams left
Porthoustock and purchased a cottage at Carne
near Manaccan.
Even earlier in the village history and
following a succession of shipwrecks on the
nearby Manacles in the nineteenth century, the
cottage had been used as a coastguard house.
Although it is difficult to be sure about the
occupants of the cottage, there were coastguards
stationed at Porthoustock from, at least, as
early as 1840. In the early days coastguards were
often retired naval men and at Porthoustock this
was certainly true. Names appearing in this
category on the census returns include John
Matthews, William Searle and Stephen Old.
However, by about the 1860s there were "full
time" coastguards stationed at Porthoustock
- James Connor in 1861, Edward Ward twenty years
later and William Fisher in 1891. Possibly some
of these lived in the thatched cottage.
Probably as a result of the loss of the SS
Mohegan in 1898 it was decided to build a
coastguard station at Porthoustock as soon as
possible. A coastguard look-out
building("the watch-house") was
constructed by Edwin Nicholls at Manacle Point, a
position overlooking the Manacles and the
Lowlands. With the station in operation, it was
necessary to build coastguard houses and these
were duly built at the top of Porthoustock Hill.
In the 1901 census three coastguard families
lived in these new purpose - built houses - Fred
Hooper, Thomas Preston and William Leigh. Later
names include Frederick Webb, William Morshead,
Joseph Mowlem, Albert Scorey, James Dodd, Stanley
Thomas, Jack Humphries and ------ Rowland.
For many years the thatched cottage was the home
of the Tonkin family - Norman and Ethel Tonkin
and their children, Lilian and Sylvia. The family
was closely connected with Porthoustock chapel
and Norman was a local preacher for many years,
as well as holding many offices within the
Methodist church locally. He was also employed
for many years by the St Keverne/Porthoustock
and, later, the West of England, Stone Companies
and worked in the Quarry office. I have a
postcard, dated 2 June 1928, signed by F.N.Tonkin
on behalf of the St Keverne Stone Company for the
shipment of 60 tons of dust on the barge Silex
from Porthoustock to J.C.Annear and Company,
Penryn. Mr and Mrs Tonkin lived in the cottage
until Norman retired in the 1960s and then they
moved to Constantine to be nearer their daughter.
Since then the cottage has been privately owned.
Billy Moyle March
2004 |
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