A Lost Community.
A Memory of Fowey.
I was born and grew up in Fowey 1930 - 1948. It was a small tight community in those days but often visited by "outsiders " who came on holiday. I went to Fowey Girls and Infants School first, and then having "passed the Scholarship " went on to Fowey Grammar School, which my father had attended before me, journeying to Fowey by train on the old direct line from Par to Fowey in the earlier years of the century.
The Second World War brought many changes to the town , not least the influx of Americans who were based there before D-Day. My family befriended one American who came to spend Christmas day with us. "Gee," he said " no turkey ?!!!" and went back to base to return with a large quantity which filled the ancient family meat plate. ( most things were rationed during the war, and this was a bounty.]
Sadly we learned later that he had been killed in France somewhere.
Bathrooms were luxuries for most of us. Few families had cars. Most houses only heated by coal fires. No TV but "The Wireless " which my father took up as his career creating The Fowey Radio Company to sell radio sets. Many people even had no electricity and radios were powered by accumulators which had to be re- charged frequently in the cellars below our house in Trafalgar Square.
I could go on, and on - anyone else out there who remembers these things ?
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Comments & Feedback
I have many happy memories of staying above the shop every summer in the 1960s with my sister, Rebecca. Particularly the Fowey carnival, which used to pass below the windows of the first floor flat.
At the back was a flat roof balcony and a cherry tree - not that we got to eat them before the birds did! There were also 6 alms (?) houses off a small alley leading to the river.
I remember daily trips to the Troy dairy off the square, and the treat of visiting the aquarium, all dark and cool. The Baker's shop, two doors up for daily bread, white and warm, and the treat of a saffron bun. There was a hairdresser with a mural of a mermaid also on the same street. At the top of the hill was Varco's supermarket, as you turned left to head towards the beaches along the Esplanade.
The Carnival also saw the window competition to find the out-of-place object in all the shops in the high street. There was a small cinema at the end, where we watched films like 101 Dalmatians, and, my favourite, That Darned Cat (we had a Siamese cat at the time).
Mary Freeman