Descriptions of Newlyn appear in books written by novelists, travellers, historians, artist and others. The novels I have read and which best portrait Newlyn and its people are ‘The Widow Woman’ by Charles Lee and Eden Philpotts ‘Lying Prophets’. The former is the better known of the two books but ‘Lying Prophets’ starts with an evocative description of the village as it appeared to the writer when he wrote the book, which was published in 1897. Many of Eden Philpotts books are set in his native Devon but he obviously knew West Penwith well, other places in the area are equally well described. There were a large number of orchards in Newlyn, between Newlyn Town and Street-an-Nowan and, as you left Newlyn for Mousehole on the cliff road, the orchard described here. Carn Gwavas Terrace was built on one of these.
…Away beyond the village stands a white cottage, with the sea lapping at low cliffs beneath it. Plum and apple orchards slope upwards behind this building and already upon the former trees there trembles a snowy gauze where blossoms buds are breaking. Higher yet, dark ploughed fields, with hedges whereon grow straight elms, cover the undulations of a great hill even to its windy crescent; and below, at the water line, lies Newlyn – a village of grey stone and blue, with slate roofs now shining silver-bright under morning sunlight and easterly wind. Smoke softens every outline; red-red brick walls and tanned sails bring warmth and colour through the blue vapour of many a chimney; a sun-flash glitters at this point and that, denoting here a conservatory, there a studio. Enter this hive, and you shall find a network of narrow stone streets; a flutter of flannel underwear, of blue stockings and tawny garments drying upon lines; little windows, some with rows of oranges and ginger-beer bottles in them; little shops; little doors, at which cluster little children and many cats, the latter mostly tortoiseshell and white. Infants watch their elders playing marbles in the roadway, and the cats stretch lazy bodies on the mats, made of old fishing-net, which lie at numerous cottage doors.
Newlyn stands on slight elevations above the sea-level, and at one point the road bends downwards, breaks and fringes the tide, leading over sand, amongst broken iron, rusty anchors, and dismantled fishing boats, past an ancient buoy whose sides now serve the purpose of advertisement, and tell of prayer meetings, cheap tea, and so forth. Hard by the mighty blocks of the old breakwater stand, their fabric dating from the reign of James I, and taking the place of one still older. But the old breakwater is no more than a rialto for ancient gossip now; and far beyond its new piers stretch encircling arms of granite round a new harbour, southward of which the lighthouse stands and winks its sleepless golden eye from dusk to dawn. Within this harbour when the fishing fleet is at home lies jungles of stout masts, row upon row, with here and there a sail, carrying on the colour of the ploughed fields above the village, and elsewhere scraps of flaming bunting flashing like flowers in a reed bed. Behind the mast, along the barbican, the cottages stand close and thick, then clamber and struggle up the acclivities behind, decreasing in their numbers as they ascend.
Both of the books mentioned can be borrowed from the Public Library, copies can sometime be found in second-hand bookshops.
Rondeau
On Newlyn Hill the gorse is bright;
Upon the hedgerows left and right
Song-dizzy birds the Spring-time greet;
The bluebells weave a purple sheet;
Primroses star the lanes’green night.
Across the Bay each moorland height
Glows golden in the evening light,
And Dusk walks violet-eyed and sweet
On Newlyn Hill.
A swarm of lights, pearl-soft and white,
A fairy-lamp-land exquisite,
Opens its star-eyes at the feet
Of hills where shore and wavelets meet;
Then dreams come, mystic, infinite,
On Newlyn Hill.
Crosbie Garstin
Published in ‘Vagabond Verses’ (London: Sidgwich and Jackson, Ltd) 1917
Margaret E.Perry
