I found myself with a wee bit of time to kill the other day before Falmouth Reference Library opened for one of my favourite pastimes, immersing myself in old Falmouth Packets in pursuit of material for my blog.
(Whisper it, but the really funny thing is when I occasionally come across a big page one splash with my name on it from 50-odd years ago which I just can’t remember at all!!)
Anyway, I decided to fill in that time by taking a roundabout route, which turned into a veritable Memory Lane job – with the sort of observations and thoughts that only come about from a lazy stroll rather than a fast dash from A to B.
First, it was up Quarry Hill, which I’d not traversed, slowly or quickly, for quite a while.
Once upon a time, starting off in my early teens, I was there every Saturday to collect their to-die-for fish and chips for lunch, for myself and Mum and Dad.
Would it still be there – same name, same business - some 60 years later?
Absolutely yes, albeit sporting a bigger, more sophisticated menu.
Cue thought: what other businesses are there in Falmouth today which have existed for as long as the Gem and whose name, location and basic service have remained unchanged? (The business was actually established in 1933, I later noticed in an advertisement.)
Next, I was walking along Harbour Terrace prior to heading back down towards the top of High Street.
First, I looked across the inner harbour towards the Greenbank Hotel and couldn’t help noticing that its name in those big white letters along its quayside still has a discernible gap between Green and Bank, making it two words rather than the now more familiar one.
That’s how it started out – two words – but at some point in the mists of time it was decided to join them up, and it’s been that way for as long as I can remember. Except on that quayside, it seems.
Along the left of the road down to that hotel – again way back in my childhood – my Mum would take me to my first dentist, Captain Norman Black.
A dentist’s drill in those days was truly something to fear – or at least it was for me – but I nonetheless remember Captain Black as a charming, kind gentleman.
I also seem to recall – and I’m talking purely from memory here, long before the Google era – that Captain Black was an accomplished fencer. Anyone elaborate?
Between his premises and the top of High Street - where the open green space and benches are now – there was for many years a “boot and repair” shop owned and operated by Richard Martin.
Hard to imagine now, but there was a time when you could have chosen from TWENTY shoe repair shops in Falmouth!
Next on my stroll it was High Street itself, and towards the bottom there was the John Miles photography shop for many years.
And this was the scene for one of my favourite jobs in my early trainee reporter’s days on the Packet.
That was in the late 1960s, when everything was still physical and manual, and it was my role late on a Monday afternoon to call in at that shop and collect John’s weekend photos – mostly weddings – for publication in the paper’s next issue.
As well as John, there were three lovely young ladies who always greeted me with big smiles and a lovely bit o’ chat – Jackie Dominic and her colleagues who I believe were Diane and Hilary, although I may have got those wrong.
It was all quite a contrast to today’s instant “send” email option, although not quite as stark as that outlined in my recent piece here – “The Overnight Challenge That ‘Terrified’ Sally”, blog post September 25.
And so to the bottom of High Street, with the Reference Library just round the corner. I walked past The Baker’s Oven (now The Natural Store) where Mum used to take me in for a scrummy cake treat before strolling out, hand in hand, to the Prince of Wales Pier.
In those days you had to pay to get onto the pier, and just before the entrance Mum would take me into the long-gone aquarium to the left.
Notalotta people remember that one now. Indeed, a year or three ago, a local newspaper reported the opening of “Falmouth’s first aquarium” in, I believe, Church Street – but it was NOT the town’s first!
With about five minutes still to library opening time, I sat down on the pier and gazed upriver.
But right in front of me was a more immediate memory, of something else long gone, and that was the sight of the old coasters that used to come right in alongside and discharge their cargo into the old Harris’s coal yard, literally a stone’s throw from the pier.
Boy, how this boy marvelled, wide-eyed, at the site of these ships so close up, doing their thing, with their cargoes being grabbed from deep in their holds and swung over to be sent crashing into that yard.
It’s just possible, I guess, that this was the beginning of my lifelong love of shipping – both personal and professional.
In fact, it very probably was!
In closing here, feast on these four lovely shots of the way it used to look with those coasters so close to the town, courtesy of the DAVID BARNICOAT COLLECTION.
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