My Years In St Merryn At Towan Farm House

A Memory of St Merryn.

My father was in the Fleet Air Arm during the war and in about 1949 he was stationed at the camp in St Merryn, my parents lived at Towan Farm House where I was brought back to from the hospital after I was born at Redruth hospital. My maiden name was Wells. The couple that owned the farm was called Mr and Mrs Old, they did not have any children of their own.  I was calling them auntie and uncle as we had become very close, so much so that when my dad left the Navy and got a job on British Rail at Padstow and then a council house up at  Trevithick, I stayed most of my time at the farm with auntie and uncle visiting their friends and relatives with them and going to market with them in the school holidays. I went St Merryn School and three years later my brother joined me but I will never forget his first day, because he thought he was going home for dinner and was waiting at the school gates for his mummy to arrive, when Charlie Harvey came out and picked David up to carry him inside screaming and kicking to have his dinner and then old Charlie Harvey brought me down off the top table to sit with him.
  Those days were the happiest of my life.  At Christmas and in the summer we would come up to Greenford, Middlesex to visit our grandparents then we would be taken up to London so I thought I had the best of both worlds, but I always loved it when we got on the train at Waterloo and I knew I was going home to Cornwall.   But all that changed when the station was closed at Padstow and my parents decided to move up to Hayes, Middlesex.  We moved in March 1960 but  the day after we broke up from school mum and dad would put me on the train for Padstow while it was still open and I would stay for the whole six weeks not leaving till the day before I was due back to school. I still met up with my friend Pamela Bennett.
In 1962 auntie and uncle sold the farm and had a bungalow built on some land that belonged to them.   They called it Higher Towan, Towan.  Auntie Lilly died in 1963, uncle Ernest remarried but he died in 1968 and the bungalow is now the doctors. I will always regard Cornwall and St Merryn as my home.  I have been back a few times, in fact when my children where small we used to spend our holidays down there and I know it sounds silly but every time I come away I cry.  The last time I was down there was in 1990 when I took my second husband down and we visited Edward  Prynn who was our neighbour at Trevithick. I would love to know what happened to Pamela Bennett we lost touch years ago.

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