Pier Aggro: ‘Welcome To Toytown’ – But Not For The Planning Chief
Planning officers, inevitably, tend not to be the most popular of people. A visit to the Prince of Wales Pier in the early 1980s turned ugly for Carrick planning chief Stephen Watson - and his children. This and the mysterious appearance of a large banner saying “Welcome To Toytown” were among the shots fired in a continuing war of words over the £60,000 revamping of the pier entrance.
Mr Watson said he went to the pier with his children to see the work being carried out, only for one of the boatmen there to become very aggressive and abusive. “He threatened me with physical violence because, I assume, of what has been happening at the pier,” he said.
Much of the concern had centred around the creation of mushroom-shaped boatmen’s huts and public seating stands, which Carrick regarded as a great improvement. However, the previous broad, paved aspect of the pier entrance had found favour with many local people, who liked the wide open view from Market Strand.
Mr Watson felt a lot of the criticism received was “not valid,” adding: “I accept that no matter what you do you will not please everybody.” He acknowledged that emergency vehicles could not access the pier now, but if the services made very strong representations to the council they would reconsider the point.
He would not be taking up boat operator George Pill’s call for him to resign over the row. “Almost every planning officer is called on to resign with boring repetition,” he said. “On every scheme, you upset somebody.”
Of the “Toy Town” sign, mysteriously put up in the early hours, Mr Watson said: “We have had it described as Toy Town and as Disneyland. If it brings as much to Falmouth as Disneyland brings in, then Falmouth will be very lucky.”
A petition mounted by Mr Pill accused Mr Watson and Carrick architect Harry Grant of throwing away cash on the monstrosity at the pier and quickly gathered around a thousand signatures.
Branch Line Rescued By New Generation Trains
The Falmouth-Truro branch railway line, for so long the subject of closure speculation, had probably been saved with the introduction of the new generation “bus on rails” trains, it was reported in 1984. Faster, more comfortable and much cheaper to run, they were due to be phased in over the next two years. Without them, said Peter Foot, British Rail’s traffic manager for Truro and east Cornwall, it was “virtually certain” the line would have gone.
The new units, part of a £4.5 million investment plan by BR for branch lines in Cornwall and Devon, were expected to achieve at least a 50 per cent reduction in fuel consumption and to reduce maintenance costs. The South West region would be the first in the country to use the Class 142 train – an advanced version of the Class 141. The new class had a Leyland bus body on a rail underframe and seating arrangements and interior design similar to those of modern single-deck buses.
The units they would replace had been operating on the Falmouth-Truro line for more than a quarter of a century – for as long as the line had gone over to diesel from steam – and had never been intended for such long service, said Mr Foot. He added: “What determines the future of the line is the amount of public service grant aid that the Government is prepared to give. The point is that, once the capital cost has been provided for, the running cost will be considerably lower and therefore the line will be much more likely to be retained by the Government grant.”
The local line had been a loss-maker for many years and was repeatedly rumoured to have been on the verge of closure. It had long been regarded as one of the most vulnerable in the country and in 1979 it was revealed that its running costs were three times higher than its receipts. This had remained the case since, BR confirmed.
Roffs’ New Owners Pledge To Keep It Local
A management buyout at Roffs Print Ltd, Falmouth’s second largest employer, ensured that the operation would stay in the town, managing director Cliff Brown declared. “It was the owners’ intention to sell the business, but by taking over we are ensuring that the operation stays local,” he said. He and production director Ken Wells acquired a controlling shareholding in the business from its previous controlling shareholders, Pat Wybrow and Jack Lightfoot.
The new owners planned to continue expansion of the company, whose workforce had risen to 80. It benefitted from a very low turnover of labour and was a market leader in production of continuous stationery, security printing and personalised payment books, with shift work maintaining 24-hour output for five days a week. Mr Brown commented: “We felt we could make a better job of running the company ourselves than doing so for a large group. We know the workforce, we know our industry and we know our business.”
The Lady Who Said ‘No,’ Again And Again, To Free National Exposure
If you were running a business and you were offered a free plug on national TV, chances are you would jump at it, yes? Even if it meant a departure from routine and some special arrangements. But not so one proud lady in Falmouth’s High Street in March, 1984. BBC TV producer Chris Tandy was astounded when Sue Jackson, joint owner of Cabaret, repeatedly said “no thank you” to a spot on Saturday Superstore. He first contacted Mrs Jackson seven weeks earlier after Cabaret – described as “that weird and wonderful array of performing automatons and highly original bric-a-brac” – had been featured on the Taje Hart programme.
“He asked me if I would like to go along and wind the handles of some of our exhibits for the Saturday Superstore programme at its Grove Place headquarters,” she said. “I refused. He could not believe it and I told him I had also refused a fortnight earlier to go up to Birmingham for Pebble Mill At One. I explained that they should come and see us on our premises. Then they would realise that Cabaret is very much a whole event. To film just a few of the exhibits in isolation would not really show what it’s all about.” Or, as the Cabaret brochure put it, “It’s so unique, we can’t describe it.”
Mrs Jackson told Mr Tandy: “You read the articles on us in Illustrated London News and She and Craft magazines; then you will see what I mean.” Several more phone conversations produced a compromise. Rather than have her “winding her handles” live on the programme, the two agreed on a pre-recorded three-minute session at Grove Place. So the BBC laid on a Range Rover to transport a number of items from the shop to Grove Place on the afternoon before the show was broadcast, when Mrs Jackson was able to have more of a say in things. Viewers may also have noticed a 7ft clown complete with balloons at the back of the stage. This, too, was the work of Cabaret, specially constructed for the programme.
The Gardens Venture That Hit The Jackpot
Today it would be called “going viral” and your email inbox would be full to overflowing. The 1980s equivalent – for a marketing exercise hitting the jackpot – was a mountain of physical post lying on your front door mat, making it almost impossible to open that door. This was the experience of Pamela Long, secretary/organiser of the Falmouth Spring Garden Holidays scheme in the autumn of 1982, when she was met one morning with 290 letters that threatened to surge forward into the corridor of her home in Melvill Road. The experience was repeated over several more days.
The scheme was financed and promoted by a consortium of nine Falmouth hotels offering fully-inclusive spring holidays with free coach travel and admission to Cornwall’s most beautiful gardens. The consortium decided to invest more than a thousand pounds on a press launch weekend, inviting a hundred gardening writers and correspondents from various newspapers and magazines. Seven took up the offer to be wined, dined and shown Cornwall’s horticultural delights. Results – leading on to that mountain of mail – included major articles in the Daily Telegraph, Practical Gardening, Amateur Gardening and Popular Gardening, along with the Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times, The Observer, Woman’s Weekly and Home And Countrycoming on board later. Consequently, there were nearly 1,300 enquiries from the Telegraph alone, resulting in 650 holidaymakers taking a spring holiday in Falmouth in 1983 and pumping around £100,000 into the area in the process.
Altogether, the hotels concerned had put £32,000 into the scheme in its first five years, with Mrs Long commenting: “I think this is a most important factor in marketing Falmouth and making it a resort for all seasons. No-one can rely any more on people just coming to Falmouth for a holiday; you have got to go out and get them.”
Peter Calls Time On Love Affair With Football
After a lifetime of being actively involved in football up and down the country, Peter Thorpe finally called it a day. His passionate love affair with the game began in the mid-1940s, when he played for St Columb, but he was soon to move to Bristol, where he turned out for the Fire Brigade until a run of injuries forced him to quit playing. He decided to take up refereeing and at the end of his first season in 1965 was promoted to Class II. It was the beginning of a long and distinguished career that over the years earned him many honours on and off the afield. After obtaining his Class I status in 1973 he refereed the Somerset County Youth Final. The following season he returned to Falmouth, where his no-nonsense style of refereeing quickly earned him the respect of players and thus ensured even more honours including many more cup finals, both locally and further afield.
His insatiable appetite for involvement in soccer eventually took him into the administrative side of the sport, where he became a councillor on the Falmouth-Helston League and represented local referees on the Cornwall County Referees Association (CCRA) executive committee. The pinnacle of his career was his appointment as chairman of the CCRA, where he strove to achieve an efficient working relationship with the Cornwall County Football Association.
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