How are things down Maggie Burleigh way?
The Tamar Belle nosed out of its moorings at the Barbican, Plymouth, with my wife and me aboard, bound for Cotehele Quay. Our skipper told us about Drake's Island, Plymouth Breakwater, German frigates and atomic submarines berthed in the Hamoaze. We chugged north under the two Tamar bridges, past the mouth of the Tavy to the east and Car Green on the Cornish bank, looking inviting in the summer sunshine. In the great meander between Weir and Halton quays we saw two herons, one flying majestically above the water reed, the other perched on a buoy.
Cotehele Quay is a charming place to disembark with its welcoming grey-stone buildings inviting you to explore the house and grounds at Cotehele, ancient second home to the Edgcumbe family. But our objective was to walk through the terraced Cotehele gardens, around the bend in the Tamar to Calstock, which we did, pausing for a picnic lunch on a seat overlooking the river in the shadow of the magnificent viaduct. We returned by train on that lovely stretch of track which takes you across the viaduct, through Bere Alston and Bere Ferrers, over the Tavy Bridge and back to Plymouth.
I love the Tamar valley. Geographers call the river's southern stretch a drowned valley where the moderating influence of the sea produces a mild micro-climate and few frosts. Flowers, fruit, strawberries and rhododendrons all flourish. But the area has great nostalgic interest for me as well.
If we had caught the northbound train at Calstock, the next stop would have been Gunnislake where my mother was born in 1906. My grandfather, Emmanuel Andrews, owned a butcher's shop in the straggling village which hugs the Cornish bank of the river and is sheltered from the westerly winds by Kithill, well-known for its stack on the top - a reminder of the once-prosperous South Kithill tin and copper mine.
My mother was born in the shop. Many years ago, on route to a family holiday on the Cornish coast, we stopped in Gunnislake and my mother went into the shop and announced that this was where she had taken her first breath. Waiting in the car, I was surprised to see her quickly re-emerge with the news that she had received a short and dusty answer. I suspect that the shop's owners were foreigners from up-country.
I never knew my grandfather. He either died before I was born, or when I was too young to remember him. His chief claim to fame in family gossip was that he had once lent a sum of money to Isaac Foot, a contemporary of his who went on to become the Liberal MP for Bodmin and the father of Michael, Dingle, Hugh and John. As far as I know, Isaac duly paid the money back.
The butcher's shop in Gunnislake must have prospered, because the day came when my grandfather sold it and bought from one of his suppliers a farmhouse with seventy acres of land. Though a small farm, the soil, aspect and climate were good supporting a mixture of arable and dairy produce. The white-painted farmhouse - Treleigh - was in an idyllic setting, a mile or so from the banks of the Tamar but on the Devon side a few miles north of Gunnislake and close to the village of Sydenham Damerel. Although the house was old, it wasn't as ancient as the farm itself, which I am told is mentioned in Domesday Book.
My mother and her brother and sister grew up on the farm and my grandfather must have managed it well, for until the second world war he employed a live-in maid. In the late 1940s and 50s I spent every Christmas and a few summers on the farm. My uncle always cut a holly tree rather than a fir for Christmas, I imagine because holly was readily available on the farm. As I look at the map today, the names of villages in the area remind me of Andrews family chatter from those days: Horsebridge, Hampt, Luckett, Stoke Climsland and Lamerton.
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