November 30th Compton Mackenzie (Death)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hartlepool – born, but of Scottish heritage, the famous novelist Sir Edward Montague Compton Mackenzie, (1883 – 1972), now most famous for ‘Whisky Galore!’ and ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ and his wife, Faith, spent three years living in the Cury and Gunwalloe villages. 

Mackenzie had met Father Sandys Wason (October 2nd) at Alton Abbey when Wason was a deacon.  In 1908, seeking somewhere quiet to live to write his first novel, ‘The Passionate Elopement’,  Mackenzie and his wife came to live, originally for one year, at the Cury Vicarage as paying guests of Wason.  Faith, an established actress and travel writer in her own right, not having realised that Wason expected her to act as housekeeper,  left the vicarage for a couple of months.  On her return she moved to Toy Cottage in the village of Gunwalloe where her husband joined her.

Mackenzie was licensed as a reader at Cury Church and started a  Sunday School which essentially amounted to taking the children for a walk and telling them tales of nature rather than Bible stories.

Mackenzie’s character, Father Oliver Dorward in his trilogy, ‘The Altar Steps’ (1922), ‘Parson’s Progress’ (1923) and ‘The Heavenly Ladder’ (1924) is allegedly based on Wason and Toy Cottage now has a  ceremonial plaque recording the period (1908 – 1909) of the residence of the Mackenzies who were married for fifty four years until Faith’s death in 1960, aged eighty two.

In 1954, Mackenzie wrote about Halzephron ‘Dollar’ Cove next to the sandy beach of Gunwalloe Cove:-

Between Porthleven and the bar of the Loe Pool on the west side of the Lizard Peninsula great square coins bearing the golden arms of Spain, worth £8 10s. then, used to be found on the beach at very rare intervals some forty or fifty years ago. A little further south in the year 1801 a ship carrying a million Portuguese dollars was wrecked in the narrow cove behind Gunwalloe Church. Several attempts were made to salvage this cargo, the last one in 1907.

The curious visitor may probably still see the remains of the stanchions fixed into the rocks to support the pumping apparatus which was always washed away by the equinoctial gales before it had time to get properly to work. One day in 1908 while walking along the beach of Gunwalloe Cove I was telling a friend that I had looked many a time for a silver dollar on this beach without success.

Well, here's one,' he said, stooping down to pick it up. About the same time as the dollar ship was wrecked the Susan and Rebecca transport with men of the 4th Light Dragoons returning from the Peninsula was driven ashore under Helzephron cliffs. The men had put their pay for safety in their helmets, and they were all drowned, their bodies being buried on the top of the cliff.

Legend said that their money was buried with them, and some of the more daring young men decided to dig in the low mounds which marked the graves of those Light Dragoons buried over a century ago. So with picks and Cornish spades they set to work one dark night after posting a look out on the road beyond. Unfortunately the two watchmen thought they saw a ghost approaching and flinging away their lanterns bolted with a yell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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