Polzeath Walks

04/02/2025

Of all the wrecks in our area this one of 1939 can still be visited. Probably not for very much longer as there's very little left but the rusted remains are easy to reach from off the footpath at Trebetherick Point.

The HMS Medea was being towed from Portsmouth to a breaker's yard at Newport, Gwent when it broke its tow-rope in a gale off Trevose Head and drifted into the mouth of the Camel Estuary and grounded on Greenaway rocks.
Searchlights from the Trebetherick and Port Isaac coastguard teams lit up the scene, where the crew of the Medea were huddled on the bridge. The teams fired six rockets with lines towards the Medea with the sixth being successful and the crew of four were taken off by breeches buoy.
A fifth member of the crew had previously been lost overboard.
HMS Medea was built in 1915 as HMS M22, a M15-class Monitor warship with a crew of 69. It was converted and renamed around 1925 as a minelayer, and then in 1937 as a training ship

The wonderful "photoshopped" image of the ship and presentation can be found at Kresen Kernow, the home of Cornwall's archives. The glass negatives reference number is GE/2/CG/641A

'Outstanding heroism rewarded: Captain V S Rashleigh presenting the Board of Trade Shield for the most meritorious service of 1939 by any Rocket Life-Saving Apparatus Company, to Coastguard Macdonald, of Port Isaac, and Volunteer R S Male, of Trebetherick, for the rescue of three lives from the SS Medea on Greenaway Rocks on January 2nd, 1939. In the background are the LSA crews, and police officers who assisted at the rescue. The presentation is superimposed on a photo of the wreck as it still appears on the Greenaway Rocks at the estuary of the River Camel' (Cornish Guardian newspaper, Thursday 7 March 1940, page 7).

31/01/2025

I was asked a couple of days ago by a family friend’s son what the place name Polzeath actually meant. He’s a Roman winemaker and "Zider" maker in Somerset, of all things, so I lamely trotted out the usual mumble of “Pol” being a pool of some sort and maybe “zeath” was a reference to it being dried up! Thus Polzeath was a place where there was sometimes a dried up creek or bay.
So far so good because I suspect not many people really know the answer!
Anyhow, I had just been in the churchyard at St Enodoc and like many of you had started to notice that the spelling of Polzeath did a bit of a sea change around 1900. Same with the old postcards as shown here. It moved from being written as "Polseath" with an "s" to "Polzeath" with the now normal "z". Anyone from Somerset will appreciate how they pronounce their county and cider!
You may be old enough to remember the song "Liza with a "Z"" which in 1972 was the very first concert ever filmed for TV and starred Liza Minnelli. That aside, at least this highlights the importance of having a Z, or Zee as the Americans say, in their name.
As anyone who has been made to read Shakespeare will know, “What’s in a name” and spelling was not as fixed as it is now. Words were often written phonetically and this led to variations in how places and names were recorded.
The spelling of "Polseath" is likely how the name was pronounced and understood when there was no standardised spelling. Added to this you’ll appreciate that in rural and mining areas like Polseath literacy rates were probably lower than that recorded for the whole of the UK, which in 1820 was reflected in a statistic that only half the population could read. Thus as long as the name sounded correct its exact spelling wasn’t a major cause of concern.
It is probably correct to say that the spelling "Polseath" might be a closer representation of the original Cornish pronunciation as the letter "s" represented a "z" sound as in places like Sennen, pronounced Zennen. Therefore, "Polseath" may have been pronounced with a "z" sound despite the "s" spelling.
“Pol" is anyhow for certain a common Cornish prefix referring to a body of water if that helps!
If language is your thing then you probably already know that the Cornish language was reformed in the 21st century to the Standard Written Form and if you check the Akademi Kernewek website you might find that the Cornish for Polzeath is actually "Pollsygh". Not sure how you might pronounce that!
As a final end note though, it was as late as 1942 that Enid Blyton published “Five on a Treasure Island” and wrote in the very first page how disappointed the children were at not going on their usual family holiday to “Polseath”.

30/01/2025

HESP OUT WEST
Midwinter breaks can offer the best of Cornwall

Martin Hesp spends a weekend of luxury in a Cornish coastal beauty spot rich in scenery

There'll be plenty of people reading this newspaper who live in older houses - which, in the mainly rural South West, might well mean homes with thick walls, smaller windows, and so on. Before modern wonders like double glazing and thermal insulation came along, dwelling spaces had to keep folk warm and dry any way they could, which basically meant shutting out the great outdoors. What the builders of yesteryear swapped to gain cosiness, was light. Especially in the depths of winter... I live in such a place. The downstairs interior of our old cottage does a good job of pretending to be a cave! So imagine how delighted my wife and I were to spend a few days last week in a house crammed with natural light. The upper half of Pendeenah, an ultra-modern house in Polzeath, acted like a prism for winter sunshine. Indeed, the upper storey was designed to capture as much light as possible as well as offer stunning coastal views from its wall-to-ceiling windows. If you've got it, flaunt it. Pendeenah certainly does that mainly by being an upside down property. It seems an obvious question: if the upper half of a place enjoys spectacular views, why dedicate that space to the art of lying in bed and being unconscious? Turn the house upside-down! Stick the bedrooms and bathrooms downstairs and put living room and dining places where you spend your waking hours - up in the part of the property where life will be enhanced by oceans of natural light and oceanic panoramas. Pendeenah does this better than any other house I have ever stayed in. But then, it is part of an impressive stable of holiday homes marketed by a Cornish company called Latitude50, renown for letting fantastic self-catering properties on the North Cornwall coast. The locally-based team operates in just one small geographic zone, around the rather exclusive and beautiful Rock, Daymer Bay, Polzeath and Port Isaac area. "For 20 years, we've represented some of the most impressive properties in our local area," I was told by a member of the team. "Originally founded as DB Holidays in 1996, we've grown from a start-up business to a premium brand. In 2007, we became Latitude50; our name (referencing Cornwall's geographic coordinates) reflects our love for, and dedication to, this most beautiful of regions." Not then, the kind of properties which could otherwise be bought by local first-time buyers. Many of us have concerns when we see what could otherwise be affordable local homes taken out of the first-time buyer market for use as holiday accommodation. But the glitzy homes in the area outlined above sell for millions. It's simply a fact of modern life that certain honeypot areas are priced outside the remit of most local buyers of any description, let alone first-timers. However, many of us can afford a stay in one of these luxury homes, especially at this time of year. Pendeenah, for example, sleeps up to 10 people - and a short break in winter is affordable. The three nights we booked costs from £1360 at this time of the year, which means that if you fill it and share the cost, the mini-break comes to just 136 quid each, or £45 a night. The property really can accommodate 10 adults, although you'd be more comfortable with, say, three couples and some children who could share the smaller bedrooms. And three nights for three couples would cost a reasonable £75 each per night - which is not exactly a fortune when you think of the quality of the accommodation and compare the it with other holiday prices. A similar house located just a few hundred metres down the road, by the way, is presently on sale for over £3 million. So I, for one, am happy to pretend to be a millionaire at £75 a night - certainly when the views are this good and the levels of comfort (walk-in showers, massive Victorian bath tubs, superb kitchen facilities, Sonos speakers in every room, etc) are set to exceed even a rich man's expectations. So much for the house, but what do you do in a place like Polzeath in the middle of winter? You probably don't need me to tell you the area is rich in fabulous walks, the very best of these being the amazing hike around Pentire Point and The Rumps... Pentire Point is the massive headland which guards the mouth of the River Camel - and which you can view from the windows of Pendeenah. With its easterly neighbour, The Rumps, this two-pronged promontory makes an ideal area for coastal walking because it lends itself to a perfectly sensible circular hike, which is rare by the seaside. From the lofty tip of Pentire Point you are treated to spectacular elevated views of the seaborne Camel and Padstow Bay. Between Pentire and Stepper Point on the other side of the estuary, there is naught but current, turbulence and waves and these three merry maidens like nothing better than to create the watery hell of the infamous Doom Bar. Just about all the walk is on National Trust land. The organisation owns large stretches of coastal Cornwall. Thank God because, in 1936, the entire headland was divided into building plots and up for sale. Some people, though, couldn't bear the idea of one of Cornwall's most handsome headlands being covered with bungalows - protestors organised themselves at both local and national level and raised enough money to buy the entire estate and give it to the nation. When you know this story and walk the walk, you almost feel like weeping with gratitude.
You might also feel like shedding a tear when you see the memorial to Lawrence Binyon up at the top of the headland. The plaque is there to mark the place where he wrote For The Fallen ("They shall not grow old, as we that are left to grow old...") - a poem that has sunk deep into the nation's consciousness and recited at every Remembrance Day event. Read the words on the plaque and you'll also admire the backdrop of The Rumps, a sort of twin headland located a mile north-east of Pentire. The people of the Iron Age recognised this peninsula's excellent defensive potential and built a great fort with all sorts of ramparts and ditches, some of which can still be seen. Having explored the area and admired the neighbouring rocky, conical island called The Mouls, we rejoined the coast path to head east along the cliff edge - past Com Head - to a junction of tracks above Pengirt Cove. From there a turn to the right took us down through the fields past the National Trust farm to the beach, which we were able to access direct from the coast path thanks to the fact the tide was out. Which is relevent because the low tide allowed me to meet a most remarkable man. Bill Bartlett is a Polzeath historian and a "Jungian Beach Artist" who creates intricate and ephemeral beach mandalas on a vast scale. He happened to be working on one of his intricate designs as we finished our walk, so I stopped for what turned out to be a pleasant and interesting chat. A website (www.jungbythesea.co.uk) explains that the "immersive approach to beach art involves the practice of drawing within the coastal landscape, working with the tide, light and weather' Bill has a particular interest in the potential of beach-art to unlock personal insights and enhance self-awareness... "I believe there's immense value in exploring the unconscious mind through the simple act of drawing on the beach." I found it all fascinating and was certainly impressed by the design Bill had created that morning - a beautiful motif that was about to be eaten up by the incoming tide. Which is just about as ephemeral as it gets - the whole lot was gone in half-hour - but you can see examples of his work on Instagram - search for billys_beachart. On another day last week, we walked up the estuary to the Rock ferry, which took us across to Padstow for a spot of lunch. This is a lovely gentle hike which you can do by following the South West Coast Path (located just 100 metres from Pendeenah) all the way to Rock if the tide is in, or by walking across the wide acres of sand direct from Daymer Bay if it's out. The advantage of the former is that you can make a small detour to see John Betjeman's grave at St Enodoc Church, just up at Trebetherick, tucked under the golf course. The advantage of the low tide route is that it's a lot shorter and you don't have to worry about flying golf balls. I found Padstow much more digestible in January than, say, July or August when you can barely move in the place. Last week only a handful of visitors were milling around and some of the eateries (notably those run by the Stein family and also Paul Ainsworth) were staging amazing value mid-winter luncheon offers (£26 for three-courses anyone?). A midwinter break can represent some of the best vacation value around, especially if, like us, you get lucky with the weather. But even if a storm, like the one predicted for this weekend, had hit during our stay, we'd have been quite happy sitting in a comfy chair up in Pendeenah's room full of light admiring the coastal drama of it all. Latitude50 - With houses across Daymer Bay, Polzeath, Port Isaac and Rock ranging from one-beds room boltholes to 10-bedroom dream houses - there is something to suit all. www.latitude50.co.uk/

29/01/2025

If you are wondering how the sands are shifting around the coast then these guys from https://southwest.coastalmonitoring.org were here today to measure them. Very accurately!
They do a snapshot survey from Sennen to Bude twice a year but as I pointed out to them sands shift fast here. Consider the steps at Daymer had all the sand taken away from them last time I walked there. Now storm shifted sand is up to them and covering most of the old forest again. The next storm may take it all away again in a week.
They now use drones and quad bikes to carry high tech surveying equipment across the sands. So much faster than the heavily equipment the guy plodding up and down the beach in wellies used to carry.
The small team from Bristol aim to: provide standard, repeatable, long term and cost-effective monitoring of the South West coast to support FCERM (Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management) decision makers.
They are something to do with Plymouth Uni and you should be able to see their maps online at their website or go to their page https://www.facebook.com/PlymouthCoastalObservatory

29/01/2025

I've been researching the Polzeath "FATAL BATHING ACCIDENT" story for a few days now. The story has connections that of course extend all over the place and you may be able to fill some bits in too. Please feel free to add your comments and corrections!
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The Times Sept 6, 1912
FATAL BATHING ACCIDENT
Mr. George Herbert Grosvenor, a demonstrator in the Department of Comparative Anatomy at Oxford University Museum, and eldest son of Mr. Grosvenor, a carpet manufacturer of Kidderminster, and Mr. Ralph Evers, a master at Haileybury, were drowned while bathing on Wednesday evening at Polzeath, on the north coast of Cornwall.
A party of six were bathing. The current was very strong, and the two men were carried away in spite of the efforts of the others and of Canon Waterfield, of Cheltenham, to rescue them. Mr. Grosvenor was an expert swimmer.
Mr. Grosvenor, who was a member of New College, took first-class honours in natural science in 1902. In the same year he won the University biological scholarship, and in 1904 he won the Rolleston prize, which is given for original research work. Mr. Evers, who took his degree last year, was a scholar of Queen's College, Oxford.
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The newspaper article very much focuses on George Herbert Grosvenor, also known as Bertie, who was 32 and a brilliant research student at Oxford. Although the story doesn't directly say that it was his brother-in-law's fault for their drowning, Bertie is credited with being a strong swimmer and trying to save him.
Ralph Evers was a master at Haileybury and his death, while a tragedy in its own right, is reported in the context of his brother-in-law’s attempt to rescue him.
In the swimming party of six we get a mention of Canon Waterfield who was the headmaster of Cheltenham College and the father of Reginald Waterfield (1900-1986), a notable astronomer, who as a 12 year old, may well have been swimming that fateful day.
Bertie's father, although not mentioned as being in Polzeath at the time, was George William Grosvenor and head of Woodward Grosvenor & Co which was the famous family run carpet business established by Benjamin Grosvenor in 1790. Today it's known as Grosvenor Wilton and the family company still makes carpets for stately homes, commercial venues and private residences. George was made the High Sheriff of Worcestershire in 1897 and had four children who grew up at Broome House in Broome not far from Kidderminster from 1875 to 1899.
Now there is also a Broome House on Atlantic Terrace in New Polzeath and I had been told last year by Nick, a grandson of the Rev Joseph Bourne who first owned it, that it was named after the village of Broome where his grandfather and great grandfather had their parish.
This just happens to be five miles from Broome House where the Grosvenors lived!
The Rev Joseph Bourne by all accounts was a very good swimmer and discovered Polzeath by swimming across the Camel Estuary from Padstow while he was out walking and well before the area was discovered by tourists. So this was at a time even before the Pentireglaze Estate was established and he ended up renting one of the first houses and naming it, as mentioned, after his parish.
Given this coincidence I suspect that there may be another story here and the Bourne's and the Grosvenors must have known each other.
Rev. Joseph Handforth Bourne, to give him his full name, married in 1888 and had six children. One, Kathleen married Jack C. Adkins, a teacher at Uppingham and they had six children including twins. One of the twins, Mary Adkins, is shown on the 1924 map of Pentireglaze as renting Tristram, the big blue house a few houses down from Broome House. The other twin was Joyce Adkins who married Raymond Croft who was also a teacher at Uppingham. Yet another of the children, Evelyn Adkins, married John Hardie, who was the headmaster of Canford! So as Nick Bourne mentioned in his letter to me: "there was a strong bent towards education" in the early days of Polzeath. I think we know that and although it has been somewhat diluted by other professions discovering the delights of summer family holidays in Polzeath and school teachers now unable to afford the house prices here, although that is a modern story for another time.

Finally, as an end note, the Times article also mentions a prize that was named after a George Rolleston who was a Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Oxford, a post he held from 1860 until his early death in 1881. His research included comparative anatomy, physiology, zoology, archaeology and anthropology and, as a colleague and friend of Thomas Huxley, played a key role in promoting evolutionary biology in the UK. It would have been interesting to see which way Bertie's life went, or indeed if he would have survived WW1, which was just around the corner in time.

27/01/2025

I was trying to date an old photo of St Enodoc to get an idea of when they were still mining in Trebetherick. You can just see the chimney of an engine house to the left of St Enodoc's spire. It is referenced in "Mines and Miners of Cornwall" by A. K. Hamilton Jenkin, as a small lead mine called Trewiston. Not much is known of it except that in 1875 a sett was granted of three fields called Lower, Inner and Middle Hobby-house numbered 640-642 on the St Minver tithe map.
Visiting the graves the other day I realised that the grave in the bottom left is that of one of the crew from The Peace and Plenty that sunk in 1900. The story is much sadder than the single grave that helps date the engine house. Indeed its impact on the local community must have been felt for many years.
On the evening of April 11, 1900, the Peace and Plenty of Lowestoft struck the Greenaway Rocks. Five of her crew were rescued by the Trebetherick Rocket Brigade, but three drowned.
The Padstow pulling lifeboat, Arab, was launched at about 8:30 pm. This was a self-righting boat rowed with oars but it was struck by a massive wave that completely submerged it and washed eight of the crew overboard and broke or washed away all ten oars. The crew managed to get back aboard, but without oars, the Arab was helpless and adrift.
After remaining at anchor for about an hour and using handlights to signal their distress, the crew of the Arab decided to try to reach the shore because no help came. By keeping the boat head to the sea and using the anchor cable to control their movement, they managed to get beyond the heaviest breakers and jump ashore as the Arab was wrecked on the Greenaway rocks.
As this drama was unfolding the Padstow steam lifeboat, James Stevens No. 4, was launched at about 9:30 p.m. but was hit by another massive wave and completely turned over. The second coxswain, Oscar French, had no idea the boat had turned over, but thought they were passing through the sea but when he came to the surface, he found the lifeboat upside down with the propeller still turning.
He was one of only three who survived and eight crew drowned.
After the disaster the Arab was replaced by another larger self-righting lifeboat with the same name. And a second, larger self-righting lifeboat, the Edmund Harvey, replaced the wrecked steam lifeboat.
Operating systems were of course changed and a tug built to tow the pulling and sailing lifeboats out to sea to save on long rows or sails from the lifeboat station.

23/01/2025

It's funny what turns up when you are researching something completely different. In this case I have been trying to find out the history of Bishops Hill in New Polzeath and which Bishop of Truro it is related to.
So far I haven't got much further than my last post!
However, Mark, whose mother owns one of the flats at Bishops Hill, very kindly gave me this wonderful story and photos from his uncle, whose father camped as a boy in the field below Pentire Farmhouse in 1930. Not much seems to have changed since the "Seven Star Caravanners" were here!
The group dedicated the entire month of August from 1930 to 1939 to travel and adventure around the UK.
The first three years spent caravanning, in the caravan and cars you can see here in their inaugural journey at Pentire, and then from 1934 in a converted working longboat.
As Mark told me: "They had an ethos of camping, walking as far as they could see on the first day and as far as they could see in the other direction on the second day and then move on the following day. Must have been quite blissful back then!"

23/01/2025

When I first started writing this page in 2015 a 64 foot whale washed up at Wanson Mouth, near Widemouth.
Fast forward to today and I'm just adding to my Polzeath Timeline that in 1796 a 65 foot whale washed up on Polzeath beach.
The Polzeath whale was carted away by locals for manure. Some of the enormous bones were also used for a Whale House shed of some sort in St Minver.
Gardeners and farmers will probably know that the remains of a whale are good for the soil but I didn't!
I'm not saying it did, but the Polzeath whale might have made its way inland to Bokelly, near St Kew, where today (Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy) have their Cornish base. They're currently co-curating an exhibition at Somerset house all about soil which they know a lot about. I was interested to read that Bokelly's history of creating good soil goes back a long way:
"William Carnsew of Bokelly, in St Kew, recorded in early June 1576 that he had set his labourers to begin a ‘sandryge’ (sand ridge; a heap in which sea sand was mixed with other manures in the field), adding a week later that they had begun ‘to carye donge 30 lood a daye to my sande ryge’ (Pounds 1978, 42–3). In September he noted ‘my men were at the sande ryge’, probably spreading the resulting compost across the field prior to the autumn ploughing which commenced the following month."
Cornish soil was also improved with pilchards, if they had them spare, and of course seaweed and Doom Bar sand. Dressing the land was often written into the contracts on field leases with one of 1835 for a holding at Trebetherick ordered that each acre broken up for tillage be dressed with 12 carts of sea sand well mixed on the premises with earth and dung.

Ref: Cornish Archaeology 59, 2020, 77–110 Recycling the past: monuments, manuring, masons, improvers, antiquaries and landscape change in post-medieval Cornwall GRAEME KIRKHAM

19/01/2025

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the death of Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, a remarkable local figure born just three miles from Polzeath in Treator.
After attending Truro Grammar School from the age of 11, Gurney began his career as a 19-year-old surgeon in Wadebridge, where he developed his interests in science and mechanics alongside his medical practice. He even built his own (rather large) piano connected to a pipe organ, got married and had a daughter.
2025 also marks 200 years since he invented a steam-driven carriage, a groundbreaking achievement. Even if it didn't go very fast between London and Bath (and back) in 1829 it was the longest journey made by a mechanical vehicle at the time.
When I was an opening the Bude Climate Festival last year, held in the home he built on sand, I was reminded of his significant contributions to lighting too.
The Bude Light memorial outside, created by Carol Vincent (my mother's art teacher!), celebrates his inventions, and especially his light ones.
Gurney's oxy-hydrogen blowpipe system, which produced a brilliant flame, revolutionized stage lighting with the invention of limelight. This innovation was quickly adopted by theaters and music halls and even illuminated the Houses of Parliament and Trafalgar Square. Building on this, he developed the Bude Light, a brighter and more efficient alternative, which eventually evolved into the "Atmospheric Bude-Lamp."
Gurney's light inventions had significant impacts on maritime safety. His advancements in lighting technology playing a crucial role in improving the visibility and safety of lighthouses, guiding ships safely round headlands like Trevose. And he introduced the idea of using specific flashing patterns that enabled those at sea to identify which lighthouse they were seeing.
So the next time you count the seconds of darkness between each flash from Trevose lighthouse, remember that the boy from Treator had something to do with those 7.5 seconds and the brightness of the light you are seeing.

18/01/2025

Can anyone help me with the story behind Bishop’s Hill? The house is of some importance because of its link to the Bishop of Truro, being one of the first houses built on the hill and its prominent position on the road named after it. But which Bishop was it? My research so far has taken me down some fascinating dead ends but I am still struggling to get a firm confirmation of the Bishop (no pun intended) or an exact building date. Any help would be appreciated!

Bishop’s Hill perhaps built 1907 by a Bishop of Truro. Converted into 4 flats in 1957. One of the oldest houses on the hill

15/01/2025

After the low cloud cleared it seemed like a summer's beach art day without the crowds.
The big dry patch in the middle of the beach I always put down to the 1819 sinking of a lead ore boat out of Pentire Haven with the loss of six men.
I just wanted to fit one bird in and then do something else. I've had fun with people helping fill in their own designs but this one just got a solid rake and some freestyle underlay from a little boy!
The circles line up with Medla's 1906 house sign and I had those numbers in mind when the hexagonal circle lattice with the 13 circles of the Fruit of Life highlighted went in. The centre is based on a design I did a couple of days ago. So it goes.
As usual it was interesting to chat about sacred geometry and particularly to the journalist Martin Hesp who came to say hello.

15/01/2025

Polzeath in the clouds this morning.
If you are interested in a unique aerial photo of your home, or building site, please message me!

14/01/2025

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES 1923.
Given the seasonal nature of work in North Cornwall you might find this letter below to The Times interesting and relevant a century later.
The post WW1 situation was that there was high unemployment particularly among returning soldiers and unemployment benefits were there to provide temporary relief.
The Geddes Axe refers to the 1921-1922 Geddes Committee, established to identify areas for government spending cuts.
So while Emily Macmillan's letter focuses on the perceived abuse of unemployment benefits, challenges today, such as the cost of local accommodation and the need for adequate social safety nets remain relevant.
Only yesterday I was discussing with a friend how far some of the staff at The Atlantic Polzeath have to travel to get to work.

If you were wondering, up until 1971 there were 20 shillings in a £1 and 12 pence in a shilling!


TAXPAYERS' MONEY FOR DOLES.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES 1923.
Sir,-Last summer I was obliged to part with my head waitress. Before doing so I obtained for her the offer of three months' employment at £1 a week. This, however, she declined to accept, and in a few weeks I received the usual unemployment claim for me to fill up. In reply to one of the questions it contained I gave the facts stated above, but no notice was taken of them, and this work-shy domestic duly received the 12s. a week she demanded. Can nothing be done by the aid of the Geddes axe to make such an occurrence impossible?
I may add that in the present unemployment claim the query referred to no longer appears. Apparently the Government desires, in the case of unemployed domestic servants, to distribute the taxpayers' money as indiscriminately as possible.
Yours faithfully,
EMILY MACMILLAN. Atlantic House, Polzeath, N. Cornwall.

End note to this piece: The hotel opened 1903 and on a map of 1924 is shown to have been probably rented by Mrs Macmillan and Mr T Williams.