The book is Newlyn's Water: Wells Shoots And Pumps - yet such water sources were always known to anyone who lived in the village and had to fetch water from them as "shoats". Only the "grand" or "furriners" and those lucky enough not to have to fetch their own water ever called them "shoots".

However, that aside, it is a useful and valuable supplement to the existing Newlyn Trail and has been compiled by Ruth Simpson, Helen Burnham, Ron Hogg, Pam Lomax, Ann Pilcher, Judith Porter and Claude Wilson - all members of the environment group of Newlyn Fish Industries Forum.

Among other things, it tells of how "towards the end of the 19th century the water 'shoots' were romanticised by Newlyn School artists and by the emergent tourist industry keen to encourage visitors with depictions of village life". Indeed, many paintings of the Newlyn School and many contemporary photographs depict pitchers and other containers.

Obviously neither the painters nor the photographers in question had to carry water from well shoat or pump to home. If they had, they would have realised very quickly how heavy water can be and would have painted and photographed the carriers of water and their containers with a greater depth of feeling than they did. One of the water sources I remember - neither well, shoat nor pump, but one which only rates a mention in the appendix devoted to standpipes - was the tap in the Fradgan.

One of the many photographs in the book shows Gwavas Slip and Quay, where my great grandparents lived. Sadly, nothing now remains of the Gwavas shoat, which was an important water supply.

An extract from the diary of one Blanche Brown begins: "If the boys were old enough to fetch in the water before they went to school, they had to fill all the baths and buckets, so mother could start the washing."

Although we were more fortunate than some in the Fradgan, in that our grandparents had a pump just across the street from us, it was the daily job of my brother and I to carry water from that pump or from the tap at the bottom of the street to home.

Happily, it was not all hard labour. Often there would be an artist with his easel near the tap and we would enjoy watching him at work. And when there was no one there we would have even greater enjoyment, "skeeting" one another and anyone else who happened to be passing by with water.

With this book in hand, Newlyn's water trail is well worth following. But, while it helps keep alive something of the past, be prepared to shed a tear for all that has disappeared in Newlyn, people as well as places.

Edited and designed by Pam Lomax, printed by Headland and published by Penzance Town Council, Newlyn's Water: Wells, Shoots And Pumps is available from bookshops.

article copyright WESTERN MORNING NEWS 

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