Polzeath In The Second World War.

A Memory of Polzeath.

We lived at "Caradon" during the Second World War. I was young when we moved there and we left soon after the war ended.

I remember Dr Thames' pre-school, and the nursery school on the Terrace in New Polzeath - and their big rocking horse that I always wanted to ride, and also Holiday House, where I started when I was five. Mr Edwards was the headmaster, and his daughter Jill started school the same time that I did. I remember the kids dividing into teams and building rival sand castles during lunch recess, and then each "team" attacking the other team's castle when it was time to head back to school
Other memories:- Mr Couch's grocery store - his son Francis was about my age. The Barnardo homes just below my house on the hill, and the way they used to yell at me when I went past - I was scared of them. The Brownie troop.
Mr Baine's farm behind us, and how mad my mum used to get when his sheep broke into our garden and ate the cabbages! Shilla Mill and the little stream and bridge where we used to play "pooh sticks" and collect frogspawn to watch the eggs turn into tadpoles and the tadpoles into frogs. The other farm up the hill away from Trebetherick, and the daughter who injured her back going under a tractor to try to rescue a mouse. The times the water used to run out and we had to go down the hill to the spring in the cliffs on the beach and carry water back up the hill, each of us with a container as big as we could carry.
All a long, long time ago.
It bothers me to read on the internet of the young kids calling it "Polzie" and referring it just as a place to go to get drunk at weekends.