A Snapshot Of Life in Trebetherick

• Brian Oaten - Born and Lived In Trebetherick 1939 to Today

THE HAVEN - 1906

In 1906 The Haven was built in Trebetherick as an 8 bedroom guest house, near the top of Worthy Hill, to provide accommodation primarily for golfers to visit the new St Enodoc golf course.

No road between Trebetherick and Polzeath - No road across Polzeath Beach

At this time there was no road between Trebetherick and Polzeath only a pedestrian/pony track through the six fields between the two villages. The main way in and out of Polzeath was via Dunder Hill. An elderly gentleman visiting us at The Haven could remember using the track to walk from Trebetherick to Polzeath and having to open and close the six field gates to get there.

See more about this tythe maps and details in LOCAL AREA chapter, HISTORY section

BRIAN’S GREAT GRANDPARENTS CAUGHT IN THE 1891 GREAT BLIZZARD between Wadebridge and St Kew

Brian’s great grandparents were returning on their pony/cart from Wadebridge market in 1891 with a quantity of supplies and meat when it started to snow. It soon became a blizzard and they could go no further. They had to unhitch the pony and leave the cart where it was stuck in the snow drifts. They led the pony and just managed to struggle home telling of the snow drifts being so deep that sometimes they had to walk on the tops of the hedges. It was two weeks before the freeze thawed enough for them to return to fetch the cart. They were delighted to find all their meat had frozen and none was spoiled!!

This photo is of Bude in the same 1891 Blizzard

Richard Tellam-Hocking’s First Trebetherick Shop (please contact me if you have a photo of this little shop I would love to have one)

At the top of Polzeath Hill was a purpose built shop, double fronted with door in the middle, run by Ralph Tellem-Hocking’s father, Richard. In the summer they made ice-cream which his wife sold on the beach. When she needed more she waved a flag as a signal to her husband to bring down more supplies. At a later date this little building was re-purposed as the Polzeath doctors surgery.

THE HAVEN IN THE 1920s

Ernest Betjeman, (Sir John Betjeman’s father), brought his family to holiday in Trebetherick and stayed at The Haven which was run as a guest house. Their pony and trap were kept in a stable at the rear and used to collect guests from Wadebridge train station or from Rock. As a boy, John Betjeman remembered being collected from the train station by The Haven owners in their pony and trap/cart. However, John recounted that sometimes if the weather was favourable they could stay on the train past Wadebridge and all the way to Padstow, crossing the estuary on the rowed/sailed ferry to Rock where they would be collected for the shorter journey to The Haven. A family and all their luggage would have been quite a load for the pony but I’m sure the children would have delighted in walking alongside to lighten the load on the hills. We wonder which route they took from Rock to Trebetherick? If the tide was right they may well have taken the shorter and flatter beach option along the firm sand of the high tide line and up only the one hill of Daymer Lane? We hardly notice it now in our cars but the journey from Rock to Trebetherick up Rock Road, TREWINT Lane, TREWINT Hill and WORTHY Hill consists of several steep hills. In 1928 Ernest Betjeman built his own house in Daymer Lane, Lower Trebetherick and called it Undertown.

Before 1928 Trebetherick Had No Mains Water and so The Haven was Self Sufficiant

Water Mains laid to Polzeath 1928, to Trebetherick also at the same time I think.

1941 WW2 Brian Oaten remembers as a child of two and a half being woken by his mother to be held up to the window to see the glow in the eastern sky which was Plymouth on fire during the WW2 blitz. It must have been particularly distressing for Mabyn as her husband Lewis, like many carpenters and shipwrights were working in Plymouth. In 1938 Lewis Oaten sensed that Hitler’s actions were becoming increasingly menacing and that things were changing in the building trade. He looked for alternative work and took a job in Looe as a shipwright making wooden launches for the Admiralty. Soon those with shipwright skills like Lewis and his colleagues were all required to go to Devonport and work in the Admiralty Dockyard which he did for the rest of the war.

1925 TREBETHERICK DUCK PONDS

Brian remembers, as a boy in the very cold winter of 1946, sliding on the several frozen Trebetherick duck ponds. They were on the road side of Higher Farm, close to the hedge, another was next to Elm Cottage. The one above Worthy House in the photo below was drained in the 1940s for road improvements.

Collage of duck pond 1925 and today 2021

1927 - Telephone came to Trebetherick with Manual Exchange in Post Office

1931 - Duck pond drained, Road built to Polzeath.

Just above the Daymer Bay Garage was one of the village duck ponds ​which served as a watering spot for working horses, it was drained in 1931 after mains water was installed, making way for a ​new and larger road from Trebetherick to Polzeath. On the right is the gate into Ham Field, so called as it was the triangular shape of a ham.

1938 - Electricity came to Trebetherick.

1941

• 1941 - Brian Oaten age 2, inside the gate at the first Trelawney, Trebetherick, (built by his father Lewis Oaten and now renamed Pen-y-Bryn) having ridden with Brian’s grandfather John Oaten, from grandparent’s home ‘Kitts Hill’, St Kew.

• Lewis Oaten and his mother Mary (Polly) Oaten outside the house where they both were born, Kitts Hill, St Kew, with his son Brian Oaten.

The Two Hills in and out of Polzeath. NE is DUNDER HILL : SW is TREBETHERICK HILL

The older locals use these names. Sadly through not knowing, new comers and recent arrivals have invented other names which is confusing especially for the emergency services.

• The photo below could be Brian’s Grandfather, John Oaten, travelling from Kitts Hill, St Kew, to Trebetherick sometime before 1932 on his pony and trap going down Dunder Hill and through Polzeath. The original Tin Tabernacle still in place at Chapel Corner till 1932 before being replaced in its present day position so the road’s steep and sharp corner could be widened.

THE HAVEN - 1950s

• The Haven was bought by Mr Harrison but remained unoccupied for 3 or 4 years. In the mid 1950s it was bought by Brian’s parents, Mabyn and Lewis Oaten. Lewis was a qualified carpenter and builder employing several local people, using the stables as a storeroom and garage. Mabyn did bed and breakfast, taking overflow sleepers from St Moritz. One group of those guests was the Gill family. William T Gill was a financial director at Rolls Royce in Derby. The following year they brought down their friends and Mabyn was delighted to recount how she looked down from The Haven balcony at four Rolls Royces parked in the garden. ( see photo).

• 1943 Brian went to St Minver Primary School. His mother, Mabyn, took him on the back of her bycicle until he was old enough to walk there and back.

• This is Brian’s pre-school letter to his grandmother Alice Jane Burne living at Southleigh, St Mabyn

• Brian loved school and was full of admiration for the wonderful head teacher Mr Russel Lanxon and class teacher Miss Buse. Mr Lanxon was still the headmaster 30 years later who employed Brian as a teacher in about 1975.

• In 1951 Brian went to Bodmin Grammar school. Transport was a taxi to Rock, bus to Wadebridge then the train to Bodmin.

• As a teenager, he took the summer holiday job of assistant postman at Trebetherick Post Office. The postmaster was George Harris. Brian used George’s 1934 black Austen 7 van to deliver mail and papers around the village and out onto Greenaway. The post office, Worthy House, also housed the old original manual telephone exchange, installed when the telephone lines first came to Trebetherick in 1927. George was full of fun with a wicked sense of humour and Brian remembers him operating the phone lines saying to the callers “rubber knees” for ‘number please’ and “trying to forget you” for ‘trying to connect you’.

1957 - The new automated Telephone Exchange was built.

• During the next 20 years Mabyn and Lewis continued to improve to The Haven, including adding a sun lounge and installing central heating.

• Brian’s parents, Mabyn and Lewis Oaten, were founder members and organisers of the new Polzeath Chapel in the early 1930s. Mabyn kept the minutes and ledgers for over 50 years, from its inauguration until the 1980s when she became too ill to continue. There was no Chapel in Trebetherick.

• Please read more of Polzeath Chapel in the section “Old Trebetherick”

The Haven - 1970s

In the mid 1970s Mabyn and Lewis retired and built a bungalow on their south field next to The Haven, calling it Trelawney. They sold The Haven to their son Brian Oaten and his wife Jenny, teachers at St Minver Primary School and Port Isaac Primary School. We remember the old wooden tennis net posts with brass winders still lying up in the garage loft. MABYN AND LEWIS OATEN 1911-1990 Mabyn was born in St Mabyn and Lewis Oaten was born in St Kew, both in 1911.  Lewis Oaten had trained as a carpenter with the Wadebridge builder, Lewis Brown. They built some of the early Greenaway estate houses before the Second World War. Lewis Oaten bought a small piece of land in Trebetherick from Harry Mail, and built his own bungalow which they named Trelawney. Basil’s father, Harry had bought Higher Farm of 180 acres and built a new farmhouse in 1930. The old farmhouse with sitting tenant was renamed Old Farm. Lewis and Mabyn Oaten married in 1938 and lived at Trelawney till the mid 1950s when they sold that bungalow and moved to The Haven, the bungalow was renamed Pen-y-bryn.

• The Haven 1960

• The Haven 1965

• 1967 Daymer Beach and Trebetherick Point from Brea

• 1965 Trebetherick from Brea

• On the main road through Trebetherick 1965 looking towards Brea,telephone exchange on left and the bus shelter which was moved to the other side of the road to allow for road straightening

• The Haven, Trebetherick, as it was when first bought by Lewis and Mabyn Oaten in the mid 1950s with first floor west-facing balcony. Mabyn did bed and breakfasts while Lewis, a carpenter, ran a small carpentry/joinery and general repairs business.

• This postcard was taken sometime 1930-1950. Note The Haven top right and the car on the beach.

1963 Aerial View of The Haven - showing Lewis Oaten’s newly constructed mahogany sunlounge

sheltered from north and east by mature Cornish elm trees - all died of the Dutch elm disease in 1970/80s.

1970s BILL TUCKER’S COACH TRIPS

Bill Tucker from Trewornan Farm, was a horse and coaching enthusiast and he used to conduct pleasure trips that passed by The Haven, sounding a long, shining copper coaching horn at corners and other suitable points along the route.

• The Haven itself was rendered ​on the outside using sand and shingle containing small shells, which were brought up from the beach by pony and cart. ​With one of these loads, the Trebetherick Point defense cannon was brought up for safe​keeping. It was mounted in the front garden until 1999, when Naval historian ​Tim Parr, who was researching Henrician Cannons, visited. He was instrumental in arranging for its preservation and subsequent display at Prideaux Place, where its sister cannon from the Padstow side is also located.

THE TREBETHERICK CANNON - circa 16th centuary

This 3 pounder gun was mounted in the Trebetherick Battery at Greenaway, 20 feet above the High Water Mark, on the East side of the Camel Estuary, as part of the defences of Padstow. It is very badly corroded as it was exposed to salt spray in every gale in the prevailing South West wind for at least 200 years.​ It is thought that the guns on their wheeled carriage may have been kept in St Enodoc Church to be rolled out and up onto Greenaway when needed.

The gun was brought up from the Battery in the early 1900’s, by a farmer Mr.​ Barton, with his last load of shingle from Greenaway beach​. The gun was set on a concrete plinth ​at the ​south west corner of The Haven in Trebetherick​ in 1906.

​Brian Oaten kindly arranged with Tim Parr naval historian, for the gun​s safekeeping to be displayed ​at Prideaux Place, where it has been conserved and has now been mounted on a ​1600 replica “bed and bracket” carriage​, for display.

While the degree of corrosion makes it difficult to be precise about its date, or its history, based on its proportions and the shape of its trunnions it is considered likely that it was cast in the 16th century, and is therefore another early cast iron gun.

This gun, with the three “Finbankers, which lay in Pentire Farm, formed the Trebetherick battery, which was a part of the defences of the “Safe Haven” which was established in Padstow, in 1780, to shelter British ships being pursued by American Privateers, as described in the panel on the War of American Independence.

Unknown lady with Lewis and Mabyn Oaten in the front garden of The Haven by the Trebetherick Point cannon in the mid 1950s