© Anne L. Le Maistre, 1995, 1999, All rights reserved. (A photograph accompanied the article)
It was the spring of 1988 and my entire future happiness was on the line. I was making my first visit to Cadgwith with my soon-to-be-husband. His family had been holidaying there for over 30 years and I was convinced that if I didn't instantly fall in love with the place, the engagement was off!
I'd borrowed my future father-in-law's red BMW and, with very little instruction in the art of driving on the "wrong" side of the road, set off early in the morning from Birmingham in the Midlands. (Years later, my father-in-law would say he couldn't decide if I was very brave or very stupid!) Over the course of five hours, the roads became narrower and narrower, changing from easy motorways, to more challenging A-roads, to "normal" main roads. We passed Helston and skirted the edge of Goonhilly Downs, famous for ancient Celtic ruins, native ponies, and, incongruously, a large British Telecom satellite tracking station. And then we made the turnoff for Cadgwith...and the road became little more than an alleyway between high hedges.
Cadgwith is nestled in a rocky cove on the east coast of the Lizard Peninsula, just above The Lizard, the southernmost point in England. The flat moors of the peninsula fall off dramatically at the coast, creating spectacular cliffs and coves. And, except for the main road I'd just turned off, almost all the roads are only one car wide. At this stage, I had "forwards" pretty much under control but "reverse" was well outside my range. I was gripping the steering wheel too tightly to cross my fingers and hope that no one came the other way.
It didn't seem too bad at first, although I noticed that the downward slope was getting more and more severe. But just after we passed the public car park, the last possible turnaround point, the road did a sudden nose-dive, bearing a strong resemblance to a ski jump that would send us sailing off the side of the cliff. This was an optical illusion -- at the cliff edge, the road made a sharp hairpin turn to the left and plunged down among the cottages. I caught glimpses of solid, low, white houses sheltering under thatched roofs and heard the screeching of seagulls as they wheeled across the sky. The road briefly leveled out at the fishing beach, and then began climbing again in front of the pub.
Disaster loomed. We were aiming straight for a cottage's front door! But, with another sharp turn to the left, we began the long climb back up the valley on the final alpine-like incline. As the road bore right towards the village of Ruan Minor, a steep mile further inland, the gate to our private car park came into view and I gratefully steered into its safe haven.
Cadgwith has an unusual feature -- the cove is divided in two by a long rock outcropping called the Todden. On one side is the swimming beach which, like many in Cornwall, is more pebble than sand. On the other is the fishing beach from which a number of "crabbers", 15-20 foot fishing boats, still go out for crab, lobster and other bounty.
There are several cottages built right on the Todden itself, including one called Wee Todden. A photo of one of these from the turn of the century suggests that a family of 10 lived there!
Most of the cottages around the cove date back five hundred years or more. They were there long before the paved road evolved from a muddy cart track -- many of them face the public footpaths and can only be reached on foot. The traditional construction is four foot-thick stone walls faced with cob, a mixture of clay and straw, and topped with thatched roofs. But each cottage has its own distinct personality: Ship's Cottage faces the beach proudly wearing the mural that gave it its name; The Cot, which was originally three one-up-one-down cottages alongside the road, has a 6 foot drop in vertical height from its front door to its back door (and, like others, has a hidden press gang door with an escape route to the cliff); the aptly named Rose Cottage is covered in deep red blooms during the summer; Kiddleywink always has a bright display of color in its front garden; Chy-War-Dinas stands tall as the only three-story cottage in the valley (the bottom floor, built back into the hill, was originally a dairy); and Tamarisk hides in the trees on a stone ledge just above the fishing beach.
Cadgwith doesn't have a traditional stone parish church, although there is St Mary's, a somewhat dilapidated church-of-ease on the path into the village. Historically, the villagers either worshipped at the church in Ruan Minor just up the hill (St. Ruan or St. Rumon was very active in the area and also gave his name to Ruan Major which is now just a farm amid the ruins of a church) or at the lovely church of St. Grade which stands alone in the fields overlooking the sea.
Cadgwith does have that true center of village life, a pub, and the Cadgwith Cove Inn has become internationally renowned for its Friday night singalongs of folk songs and sea shanties. This is popular with the fishermen -- when it was temporarily suspended a few years back because of new management at the pub, they would take their pints and go sit on the beach to sing. A lot of the fishermen have colorful nicknames, including one fine old gentleman who was answering to "Rambo" long before Sylvester Stallone was born. Other names include Sharkey, Bunny, Doctor Cook, Buller, and Cap'n Salt.
In the old days, the villagers used to fish for pilchards, a small sardine, as well as for crab. At the base of the cliffs not far from Cadgwith are the foundations of an old pilchard "factory" which would take the catch directly from the boats and process it for export. And on Man-O-War, the mighty northern cliff overlooking the cove, there's still a small brown huer's hut where a watchman would sit looking for the tell-tale glint of a school of pilchards out at sea. He'd then set up a hue and cry that would bring the men from the fields to launch the boats with the special seine net to corral the fish.
On calm nights, as the sea murmurs to itself in the cove, you can understand something of what has kept people here for centuries carving out a hard life on the coast. You can see the warmth of the community in the glow of hearth fires through the cottage windows. You can marvel at the beauty of nature as the Milky Way glows above unhindered by street lights. And you are reminded of nature's raw power as the warning beam from the Lizard lighthouse sweeps across the cliffs.
Yes, I did fall in love with Cadgwith -- although I don't think it was at first sight (I was too busy concentrating on the road). It must have been at second sight when we stood on Man-O-War and looked down at the Todden and the beaches. Otherwise, how do you explain how Lloyd had the confidence to take me tramping across the fields until my sneakers got stuck in a particularly nasty mud patch!
| Cadgwith Corner Postcard from Cadgwith |
© Lloyd Alan
Fletcher & Anne L. Le Maistre, 1995–2004
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