Fascinating memories of Old Looe ‘I could not help but love living at the cottage’


‘Oh, what a lovely day we had, but time goes on and I had to leave school when I was 13 years and a half because my sister Leta was ill and I had to go to Plymouth to help look after her.’ Eileen returned to Looe for a short while but then lived in Plymouth with relatives until she married.


Because of bomb damage during the Second World War, Eileen and some of her relatives had to return to Looe, to stay at Trenant Point where her parents were living. She said: ‘There was my sister Leta with her three girls, her dog and cats, my sister Stella, her two boys, myself and my girl Diana. We had to walk all the way from Plymouth to Looe, over the ferry at Torpoint. We had a big pram for our things and pushchairs for the kids.


Air raid


‘I can remember we left Plymouth very early in the morning but did not get to Looe until late at night. Then we all had to go up the river in a boat. We all slept in one room, some in beds, some on the floor. I often think what we must have looked like coming along the road. No-one knows what the poor little kids went through but they all kept going.’ Eileen’s parents had gone to live at Trenant Point in the early 1930s. Eileen recalled: ‘I can remember the first time I saw Trenant Point, it was on a cold winter’s day. I had come down from Plymouth for a few days to see my mother and father. I did not


think much of it then, there were cats everywhere and dogs, even Father had a donkey. ‘It was so quiet there and when my mother had to light up oil lamps to see by, I was only too pleased to go back to Plymouth. But what a job that was. Father had to take me across the river in a rowing boat, then we had to walk along Millpond wall. It was just a little pathway, river one side and millpond the other.’ Eileen’s stay at the stone cottage during the Second World War changed her view of the place.


She stayed there longer than her sisters, who returned to Plymouth, because her husband was a prisoner of war. Eileen said: ‘We had lost our home in Plymouth in an air raid so my sisters and I and our children came home to Looe. ‘I did not think I would ever love Trenant Point then, but believe me, after you had lived there you could not help but love it. ‘Mother put all her best things in the front room and shut the door on it all. No kids went in there.


‘My sisters Leta, Stella, Queenie and me and our kids slept in one bedroom, some on the floor and some in the bed. We would take turns in the bed. Fireplace


‘Mother and Father had the other bedroom. We had a big living room; in front of the window there was a big farmhouse table. The kids would sit inside on the window seat, Father had his big carver chair at the end of the table and the rest of us had wood chairs


EILEEN Webb wrote: ‘Father had to take me across the river in a rowing boat, then we had to walk along Millpond wall. It was just a little pathway, river one side and millpond the other.’


to sit on. ‘There was a small window in the room as well. Mother used to keep her wireless there and we could see the train coming into Looe Station from that window. ‘We had a very big fireplace. Father would put in a big log, almost as big as a small tree and then put small bits of wood around it, and then oil and then a match, and away it would go. Then we would put the big iron kettle on, out would come the iron frying pan and Mother would fry bacon, eggs and spuds. It was lovely.


‘Mother would put a pillow in the window seat in the afternoon then any of the babies could go in there for a nap. ‘We had a big corner cupboard and Father would keep his gun on top of the cupboard. Next part down was for the china and the next part down was for the food. The bottom was for anything that anybody wanted to put in there. Many’s the time we would look and find a mother cat there with her kittens. ‘Out from the living room, up over a stone step, there was a back room, it was called a liney. It had stone walls, a sloping ceiling, a black coal fire, an oven to cook by but we only had wood to burn.


Trenant Point, opposite the Millpool, as it is today


‘It would be a busy day on Sunday doing all the cooking. We had a big farm table out there as well. We did not have any water laid on. We had to go out in the woods to a spring for all our drinking water. But we did have a rainwater tank in there. The rain would run off the


Eileen wrote that the family could watch trains coming into Looe Station from a window in the cottage


roof, down a pipe and into the tank under the roof. We had a tap on it and a small sink under that.


‘Father would let the water run in there for the dogs to drink. ‘Father would go out rabbiting, so we would have rabbit pies, rabbit stew, you name it, we had it, even rabbit pasties. And we would all go blackberry picking and Mother would make jars of blackberry jam.


‘The kids all loved the life there. In the summer, when the weather was nice, the big table would go out the back in the woods and we would have our food there. ‘We would have to go out in the woods to do our washing at the spring if the weather had been hot and no rain because we did not have any water left in the tank. We would put clothes in an old pram and carry a tin bath, light a fire and boil and wash our things, then take it all back to the house and hang it all up to dry. It was hard work but we used to enjoy ourselves and there was always something to do. It was lovely being there (at Trenant Point) and having nice family to be with.’


LOOE NEWS MAY JUNE 2018 31


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