A PLAQUE on the Seamen's Mission in Newlyn not only reminds one that it was in 1930 that "electric light" was installed in the building "in grateful remembrance of Miss Nora Bolitho", but also that the building owes its existence to her generosity.
It was just a century ago, in 1911, that she "built the Institute and, until her death in 1929, ever sought the welfare of all fishermen sailing out of Newlyn".
One of the several events to mark the centenary of the opening of "The Ship Institute", or "The Mish" as the building is more informally known in Newlyn, is an exhibition of paintings by Sennen- based David Langsworthy.
Opening there tomorrow, comprising 30 or so paintings, mainly of fishing boats and harbours, the exhibition could not be more apt or, in a sense, more surprising.
From Seascape and French Connection to Day's End and Re-Fit, his studies of fishing boats and those who earn their livings on them, plus the various activities of those who work on and around the harbours, are at once so accurate and accomplished it is hard to believe that this is David Langsworthy's first solo show.
Although he has been a creative artist for a long while, it was a course he took at St Ives School of Painting a few years ago which, as it were, steered him in the right direction.
Quick to acknowledge the help and encouragement he received there from the staff, particularly from artist Alice Mumford – "a wonderful teacher" – he has been drawing and painting ever since.
Born in Hayle but brought up in St Just, as he says "father was a Scillonian and mother a San-Juster", one of a family of carpenters, although he had no wish to follow the family line and describes himself as "the odd man out".
A wood carving of his in his home at Sennen which reads "When Friends Meet, Hearts Are Warm" demonstrates that he could well have been a wood carver of note, when a youngster he attended drawing classes at Penzance School of Art.
He later went to the West Midlands where he trained as a furnace glass blower which enabled him to go to St Mary's on the Isles of Scilly where in his studio, opened by Harold Wilson MP, he soon made a considerable reputation for his glass ware.
Then, in the early 1990s, he returned to live and work on the mainland where for a further decade, and prior to his attendance at the St Ives School of Painting, he continued designing and making his glass ware in his Trevescan studio.
Having spent most of his life by the sea – when on St Mary's he had his own small boat and every day from his home at Sennen he sees fishing boats passing by – it is not surprising that boats and harbours should provide him with the subject matter for his paintings.
Pictures that reflect David Langsworthy's knowledge of and enthusiasm for all things maritime, they can be seen in "The Mish" at Newlyn during normal opening hours. Well worth seeing, while the building's donor Miss Nora Bolitho, would surely be delighted with this show if only she could be here, at the same time she would be also be dismayed at the news that, in the present economic climate, its future is uncertain.
Newlyn without "The Mish" is unthinkable. One can but hope that Superintendent Keith Dickson is right in his declared hope that a solution can be found to the problem and that the building, which Miss Nora Bolitho "handed over to the Royal Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen with the greatest possible pleasure in 1911", will still be in the hands of the community a century from now.
article copyright THE CORNISHMAN