Courtenay Park Salcombe

Park 1890
Enlarge photo |  More about this photo

This view of Courtenay Park is quite poignant for me.  It shows houses at the lower end of Devon Road and also the land on which Egremont Terrace was later built.

My parents lived in no. 10 Egremont Terrace from the late 1930s until they moved to St Dunstan's Road in 1970. We had a splendid view over the estuary from the balcony of no. 10 and sitting out there in the summer was like having an extra room. Courtenay Park could be reached by a long flight of some 50 wide steps from Devon Road. I tripped over a cat rushing down them one day and still bear the scar on my right knee.

The Park was a delightful place in which to play and I have wonderful memories of rolling in the freshly-cut grass with the Tucker family who were great friends and climbing the trees playing games and travelling the world in our young and impressionable imaginations. We used a pebble to bang on the old bomb-shell at the bottom of the Park. Every summer we would have a great time catching cabbage white butterflies in jam jars and sometimes my cousin David would lean over Daisy Brooking's garden wall to nick some very sour gooseberries with an old tennis racquet for us all to share. Great times!