My Grandfsther's Home

A Memory of Watchet.

My grandfather, John Henry Penny (Jack), built a house in Donniford Road. He called it The House Jack Built; it is still there today and is just before the lane going to Hellwell Bay. It was designed by Charles Royle Penny, one of my mother's cousins. Another of her cousins was Bromley Penny. I must have been 3 years old when I first visited my grandfather and stayed in the house. I have a photo somewhere of me taken with my grandfather and a Mr Jack Poole who I believe was his brother in law taken in the garden. One day we were in Swain Street and I ran across the road to look at a toy shop; my mother screamed as a car narrowly missed me. Sometimes we would go to the Memorial ground behind the house. I remember sitting with a group of soldiers there one day and looking at the tatoos on their arms. Another time I visited I was 8 years old (1941), I had been evacuated from Birmingham to live with an aunt in Devon. My brother was born in 1940 and I did not see him until he was one year old at a time when my mother was living with grandad. I remember him taking me to a cinema down at the harbour and leaving me there. I can't remember in what year he died but he fell off the harbour wall and on to the pavement. Bromley Penny asked Mr Danby to be town crier; I met him and his wife when he came to Maryborough, Queensland, Australia in 2005 for a Town Criers Competition. I last visited Watchet at the end of March 2013 and visited Mrs Betty Penny and her friend, Ginny. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to do much more, but we did take a short ride along the Donniford Road to view my grandfather's house.

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