The Favells of Penberth

Almost a century ago, within a month of the Armistice at the end of the Great War, a young mother with three children under five years old and married into one of the most distinguished medical families in Sheffield made the momentous decision to move to remotest West Cornwall.

The young mother was Alice Favell; and this is her story.

Widowed when she was not yet 50, Alice Favell was the sheet anchor for her family until her death in 1954. Throughout the Second World War, she provided a home for her two daughters and their families while their husbands were away in the army.

One of her sons was one of very few submarine commanders to survive; and her second son was killed shortly after the airborne landings on the eve of D-Day in 1944. After the war, her eleven grandchildren often spent all summer long at the home in Penberth that she created.

This book has been produced by her grandchildren to introduce Granny Favell, as she was universally known, and her immediate family to her descendants.

The Favell century has left Penberth and the surrounding coastline protected from development ‘for everyone, for ever’ since it has been made over to the National Trust. Yet Granny Favell’s greatest legacy is the shared friendships and memories of her grandchildren that this book records.

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The Favells of Penberth

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD 7

1: THE FIRST FAVELLS AT PENBERTH 9Dr Vernon Favell 11Alice Favell 16Richard Favell 21Edward (Teddy) Favell 27Margaret Pinsent 31Mary Briggs 36

2: THE HOUSE, GARDENS AND ESTATE 41

3: THE COUSINS 53Anne 54Mary Jane 59Favell 65Mary 69Frances 74Jenny 81Bridget 85Libs 90David 92Julia 97Teds 103

EPILOGUE: PENBERTH 90 YEARS ON 107

REFERENCES 110

FAMILY TREES 111

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 118

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FOREWORDShortly before the First World War, two sisters from Liverpool first visited west

Cornwall. Annie and Mary (May) Cohan stayed at Porthcurno1; and at some stage during their holidays they would undoubtedly have visited Penberth Cove, where there was a tea shop at Jeffrey’s Cottage overlooking the river and attached to the fish cellars which remain today.

At that time, the freehold of Penberth Cove belonged to the Tregothnan Estate of the Falmouth family and was subject to a lease for his life granted to ‘Pusser’ (Purser) James who lived at Burnewhall , about a mile away on the road to Lamorna. Mr James’ lease would terminate on his death; and photographs taken in about 1918, show that the various buildings in the cove had fallen into considerable disrepair.

At some stage before the outbreak of the Great War in August 1914, the two Cohan sisters must have been joined on their holidays by their sister Alice who had married Vernon Favell, a practising physician from Sheffield, in 1910.

Despite the run-down state of the buildings and the lack of any services for local people - there were no utility services and drinking water was extracted from local maintained springs - Annie Cohan took a tenancy of Briar Cotttage in Penberth in 1913.

Thus began the century of Favells at Penberth.

After the Great War ended and Vernon Favell had returned from service in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), the family which by now included four children – Richard, Edward (Teddy) and Margaret (who were twins) and Mary - moved to Penberth from Sheffield.

Alice was , no doubt, influenced by her (only) two elder sisters ; family history also suggests that Teddy Favell suffered from asthma , which the climate in the steel city of Sheffield can have done little to alleviate.

At any event, starting in late 1918, Alice Favell began to acquire land and property around Penberth. All the conveyances are in her sole name; and the details are set out in chapter two. By the time of the final purchases in late 1933, the Favell family holdings in and around Penberth amounted to some 300 acres and a number of farm houses and buildings in the Penberth Valley and nearby village of Treen.

This history has been produced to introduce the direct descendants of Alice

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and Vernon Favell and their immediate family to these remarkable people.

No-one now living can remember what kind of person Vernon Favell was; and those who have fond memories of his wife are themselves growing very old.

Five generations on, their great great grand-children cannot be expected to have any real understanding of the people that helped mould them: what sort of people were they? what interested them?

While, as the years pass, the great grand-children of Richard Favell, Margaret Pinsent and Mary Briggs can be expected to have only the haziest of recollections of them.

There has been only minimal sub-editing of the texts provided by the Cousins.

However, in some quarters ‘being a Favell’ is shorthand for excessive self-effacement. In some cases, therefore, spouses have intervened to provide a complete account for future generations of the family, for whom this book has been written.

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1: THE FIRST FAVELLS AT PENBERTHThe Favell (or Fauvell) settled in very early times in North Yorkshire; and

in 1665 the Arms were claimed by a Christopher Favell in 1665 at the Herald’s Yorkshire Visitation, shortly after the Restoration. The family motto was stated as En Dieu Ma Foi (My Faith is in God).

By the early 1800s, a branch of the family was established as one of the leading medical families in Sheffield. John Favell (1767-1840) was “one of the early medical men of Sheffield” and was appointed surgeon to the Sheffield Royal Infirmary, which opened in 1797, in 1819.

He is described by one of his contemporaries as “a fellow of infinite humour of most excellent fancy; how often has he set the table in a roar; how much oftener has he blest with his kindness and relieved with his skill the children of sorrow and affliction...”2

John Favell married Anne Fisher in 1797, and they had five children. Their eldest son , William (1798-1871), was the father of William Fisher Favell who served as a Trustee of the Infirmary for 35 years.

On his retirement in early 1894, well over £1,000 (£50,000 in today’s money) was raised for a testimonial from which was provided a portrait, a gold chronometer watch and a “service of silver plate [that] affords the Weekly Board and Medical Staff a fitting opportunity of expressing in complete and unanimous form our affectionate regard for yourself and our high appreciation of your unwearying exertions…. As Surgeon to the Infirmary”.3

William Fisher Favell’s son, Vernon Richard Favell (known as Richard), followed his father into medicine.After qualifying at St Bartholemew’s in London, he was a Professor of Obstetrics at the Medical School in Sheffield and Surgeon to the Jessop Hospital for Women, contributing extensively to medical journals.

Richard Favell’s oldest son, Richard Vernon (known as Vernon) elected to follow his father to St Batholemew’s and thence into the practice of surgery in Sheffield.

The story of the Favells of Penberth begins with a question: what (or who) could possibly have induced the proud inheritor of a centuries-old tradition of medical practice in Sheffield and move his young family to the far south west?

This momentous decision was to have wonderful consequences, which he could not possibly have foreseen at the time.

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THE COUSINS

THE FAVELLS OF PENBERTH

Richard Vernon Favell = Alice Molyneux Cohan

Richard = Barbara Talbot Edward (Teddy) Margaret = Jock Pinsent Mary = Aidan Briggs

Frances Bridget Julia Anne Mary Jenny Libs Teds Mary Jane Favell David

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RICHARD VERNON FAVELL MRCSRichard Vernon (Vernon) Favell was born on 6 March 1881. He was the oldest

child of Dr Vernon Richard Favell and Ada Rickards who had married a year earlier. [Ada Rickards’ portrait, painted well before her marriage, now hangs in Frances’ drawing room]. Vernon Favell eventually had a brother (William) and two sisters, Edith Winifred (Winnie) and Ada Constance (Connie).

On leaving school, Vernon Favell followed his father to one of the nation’s leading medical schools, St Batholemew’s in London. He was obviously a talented student because he was offered a highly prized post as junior house surgeon when he first qualified, on the nomination of Mr D’Arcy Power who was a lecturer in surgery at the School 4. D’Arcy Power is best known for his work on the histories of great British hospitals and he would have known of Vernon Favell’s distinguished medical antecedents. This appointment was followed by a further six months as senior house surgeon until October 1908, when he joined the family surgical practice in Sheffield.

By the end of 1910, Vernon Favell was newly married to Alice Molyneux Cohan from Liverpool and was established in medical practice in Sheffield where his family had an esteemed position among the medical profession and within the city - at the time one of the leading steel-makers in the world. With such a family history, it must have taken a great deal to persuade the newly-married Dr Favell to leave Sheffield. But the Great War was to change him, as it did so many of his contemporaries.

Vernon Favell served in the Royal Army Medical Corps on the Western Front in France, attached to the 247 (West Riding) Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery. The military records5 show that he first arrived in France in April 1915 and served to the end of the Great War, by which time he was a Major. The brigade to which he was attached was involved in the major battles at Ypres, when poison gas was first used, and the Somme. In his book about George Mallory and the Great War6, Wade Davis provides a harrowing description of the conditions under which Vernon Favell would have worked:

“The stress on the medical officers at a Casualty Clearing Station was intense and unrelenting. They were encouraged by social convention, decency and military orders to do all possible to maintain good cheer. At the same time, as surgeons they had to deal with an endless flow of carnage, working through the night as guns roared and flares and star shells lit up the sky, silhouetting the ghostly figures in khaki, wrapped in bloody blankets, labels dangling from limp bodies carried into tents where the flicker of acetylene torches cast barely enough light for the doctors to determine the nature of the

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wounds. Their smocks drenched in blood, with the nauseating scent of sepsis and cordite and human excrement fouling the operating theatre, they cut and sliced and sawed and cauterised wounds of a sort they would never have known in ordinary practice.”

By the time of the Armistice, Vernon Favell’s only brother had died in France (in 1916). His young wife had lost her nearest brother (Edward Molyneux), who was only a year younger than her, in a riding accident during pre-embarkation manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain in 1914; and her father had died in 1916. Alice was to lose a second brother (Henry Molyneux), who died in Ceylon in 1919, having been on active service1.

Perhaps most significantly, Vernon’s father Richard Favell had himself died just before the war ended, on 2 November 1918. An obituary in his grandson’s papers7 describes Vernon’s father in the following terms:

“He loved his work, and gave the best years of a fruitful and faithful life to a career that can become second to none in doing good. He combined with more than ordinary skill the office of faithful and honourable friend and adviser to many of his patients. Trusted implicitly, welcomed always,never taking advantage of a unique position, caring alike for the poorest as the riches...he was a true patriot in years when the nation called every man to give his best.

Richard Favell gave one son, lent another [Vernon], and then through advancing years at great cost, did double duty for five years cheerfully , ungrudgingly and without rest for the love he bore his fellows.He probably hastened his end in doing this work for his country’s sake...”

It is therefore small wonder that, like so many of those who survived the trauma and carnage of the Great War, Alice and Vernon Favell did not return to their former life in Sheffield, but decided on a new beginning in West Cornwall. They may have been encouraged by the fact that their second son (Edward Molyneux) born in 1917, suffered from asthma.

At any event, by the end of 1920, Alice and Vernon Favell were living at Penberth with their family of four children: Richard (6), Edward (Teddy) and Margaret who were twins (3), and Mary who was born earlier that year.

For the next 15 years Vernon Favell threw himself into a completely new life, although he maintained his medical links with Sheffield to the benefit of many local families. He created the gardens at Penberth and is recorded as one of the Great Gardeners of Cornwall in the annals of the Cornwall Garden Society, of which one of his grand-daughters was to become president.

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He must have devoted a great deal of time to the landscaping and planting of the garden at his new home; what is now the rock garden, as well as the water garden beside the gatehouse, were created at this time.

Vernon Favell became a noted breeder of daffodils; and his contribution to this important field of work was recognised in a special daffodil exhibit at the Cornwall Garden Society Spring Show in 2013.The exhibit credited seven pioneers for the creation of what is now an important national horticultural industry, with 23,000 different cultivars registered with the Royal Horticultural Society; among the seven were PD Williams and Vernon Favell who are pictured below.

Plate 2: Two daffodil pioneers, PD Williams and Vernon Favell in the 1920s.

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Plate 3: The High Sheriff of Cornwall, 1933.

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Many of the daffodils he raised were not recognised for decades after his death. The current International Daffodil Register and Classified List identifies many of his daffodils, including Porthgwarra, Chyvarton, Penberth, Pengornin, Logan Rock, Sweetness, Chmoy, Suzy, Trenance and Victorious. Many received awards from the Royal Horticultural Society and from a number of overseas daffodil societies8.

Vernon Favell had a lifelong interest in archaeology and was an active founder-member of the West Cornwall Field Club, now the Cornwall Archaeological Association. He played an important role in excavating a number of local sites including Carn Euny and the steps leading to St Levan’s Well - from which the water used at the baptisms of many of his grandchildren and their children has been drawn.

When treasure trove was found at Towednack, he furnished the Coroner with information on the age of the find; this was claimed by the Duchy of Cornwall and is now in the British Museum.

He was also a recognised authority on flints, and spent several weeks every summer excavating the Stone Age flint mines at Grimes Graves in Norfolk with other experts (some of his grandchildren have recently had to devote considerable time and effort to protecting the Site of Special Historic and Scientific Interest on the seaward edge of Treen that he must have helped to identify).

He was president of the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society, having a large collection of antiquarian books9 on many subjects but particularly on botany, archaeology and the history of Cornwall.

Vernon Favell played an active role in the public life of his adopted county. At various times he was chairman of the Governors of Penzance Secondary School for Girls, Chairman of the Western Horticultural Spring Show and of the St Ives Divisional Unionist Association.

He was a licensed lay reader and represented Cornwall at the General Assembly of the Church of England. He served as High Sheriff of Cornwall in 1933.

Vernon Favell died, suddenly, at his home in Penberth on 4 February 1936, when he was only 55; his death must have come as a shattering blow to his family. He is buried at St Levan Church.

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ALICE MOLYNEUX FAVELLAlice Favell, in so many ways the reason this story can be written, was born on

24 July, 1886.

She was the third daughter and fifth child of Edward Ashar Cohan and Martha Alice Molyneux who had been married in 1876. She was to have two younger brothers, Michael who was born a year after her and Charles born in 1893.

Edward Ashar Cohan was an extremely wealthy Liverpool ship-broker; at the time of his death, in 1916, his estate was valued at around £30 million in today’s terms1. Alice Cohan had an interest in this estate under a trust created by her father’s Will, which included shares in the family shipping concern HE Moss; no doubt, her three surviving brothers and two sisters were also beneficiaries.

Plate 4: Alice Molyneux Cohan, in 1909.

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In 1910, Alice Cohan chose to marry someone from a very different background: the oldest son of one of the most respected medical families in Yorkshire, Vernon Favell. For over 35 years until her death on 20 September 1954, Alice Favell (referred to hereafter as Granny Favell) devoted herself to her family and to creating a new home for them at Penberth. She invested a large part of her fortune in improving the condition of the homes and farms that she purchased in and around Penberth. Although she played her part in local public life, her main interests were her family and her dogs and horses. Her legacy is the friendships shared by her eleven grandchildren and their fond memories of her role in golden summers at Penberth and the home that she created.

As has already been explained, two of Alice Favell’s older sisters had visited Penberth before the outbreak of the Great War; and the elder of them, Annie, had taken a tenancy of Briar Cottage.

Even though she had only been married for less than five years at the outbreak of the Great War and had three children under five years old, within a month of the death of her father-in-law and before her husband had even been demobilised from the Royal Army Medical Corps, Alice Favell was making significant land purchases in Penberth:

“All those pieces or parcels of land situate at Penberth, in the parish of St Buryan in the said county of Cornwall containing in the whole 2.39 acres and all that part of the orchard and cultivated land and the strip of land adjoining on the West, formerly part of Tretheene (or Treen) Common, together with the Southern moiety of the stream...together with the messuage or dwellinghouse [recently] erected thereon or on some part thereof and known as Foxstones1”.

The purchase was completed in early December 1918, for a consideration of £2,000 (around £90,000 in today’s money) for which she received the house together with the gatehouse and bridge over the stream, which remain to this day. She was just 32 years old at the time.

The building works at Foxstones, described further in the next chapter, seem to have been carried out in two main phases, judging by the dating of the architects’ drawings for the work10. There may well have been a third phase of building to include the outhouses - kennels, stables and a large loft above for hay and feed, cow shed and tackroom, and the present garage. At any event, by the end of 1920 Alice and Vernon Favell had moved their family to Penberth. They brought a full household of five indoor staff with them from Sheffield including a chauffeur, nursery maid, sewing maid and a cook; and they immediately employed local men as outdoor help .

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There was a pause in Alice Favell’s puchases of land until late 1923, presumably while Phase One of the building work was being completed and the garden (including the present rock-garden) was being purchased, landscaped and planted.

She then purchased Boscean Farm and the disused Boscean Mill in the Penberth Valley, a total of some 47 acres, for a total consideration of £4,000 - twice the price that she had paid for Foxstones and its land four years earlier. It is well to remember that the building work at Penberth and the improvements to Granny Favell’s properties (eventually amounting to 26 cottages, four farms and the Logan Rock Inn in Treen ) were carried out at a time of social and economic turmoil. The General Strike in 1926, and the depression of the early 1930s, would have impacted West Cornwall as they did the rest of the United Kingdom.

The wages paid to local craftsmen, building and then maintaining this estate must have come as a welcome investment in the struggling local economy: Granny Favell must have kept many of the local builders, carpenters and decorators busy repairing and re-roofing, maintaining and improving her properties by electrification and installation of in-door bathrooms.

Doubtless, the willingness of substantial Cornish landowners like the Falmouths and Vyvyans to sell to the wealthy ‘incomer’ owed something to the competing priorities for their own funds. But there is plenty of evidence that

Plate 5: The Young Favells, 1920s.

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Granny Favell was very well-liked and respected by local people. She played a full part in local public life, serving as a Magistrate and school governor; and she was instrumental in setting up the Womens’ Institute branch in St Buryan, in January 1933; the branch is still going strong and celebrated its 80th birthday on 20 January 2013.

By the beginning of the Second World War, Granny Favell had been a widow for three years. Her eldest son was serving in the Royal Navy , her second son had just taken his degree at Cambridge and her two daughters were living at home having (doubtless reluctantly) both done a Season in London where their mother retained a flat in Chelsea. By the end of 1940, Richard, Margaret and Mary were all married; but because neither Margaret or Mary had permanent homes, since their husbands had been called up for military service, they continued to live with their mother throughout the war years - along with two evacuees from the bombings in London and Plymouth who went to school in St Buryan. By the end of the War there were five grandchildren living with their granny: Anne, Mary, Jenny, Mary Jane and Favell; a sixth, Frances, must have been a frequent visitor.

After the end of the war, as is described in the epilogue, Granny Favell sold off all the farmhouses and agricultural land at Treen to the sitting agricultural tenants. The prices she received would have been quite modest since by the early 1950s, there was security of tenure for the next generation and rental income per acre would have been small (after her death in September 1954, Granny Favell’s executors agreed to the sale of three cottages in Treen to the sitting tenants for £200 each).

Alice Favell was an accomplished horsewoman, regularly following the Western

Plate 6: The Favells in the late 1920s.

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Hunt (riding side-saddle). She was a generous and welcoming hostess. Many people have told her grand-children of their fond memories of carol-singing at Foxstones at Christmas time or of being invited to tea after a cricket match at the St Levan playing fields. An acquaintance of one her grandsons stationed at Porthcurno during the Second World War, when access to the Cable and Wireless site was restricted for security reasons, recalls being invited by Granny Favell every Friday for the luxury of a hot bath followed by several gin and tonics served before dinner1. 40 years after the event, relatives of contemporaries of her sons at Lockers Park from Argentina recounted [to Frances while visiting in Washington DC and to Julia when visiting their Estancia during her gap year] their fondest memories of school holidays spent at Penberth.

Above all, she is remembered by all her eleven grand-children with love and respect as the sheet anchor of her family during the Second World War and afterwards. Widowed when she was no more than 50, she survived the subsequent loss of a beloved son to create a wonderful legacy in the friendships and memories of golden summers shared by her grandchildren. Often, there were five grandchildren sleeping in a single room.

Her grandchildren can still recall:

A real story-book granny figure, quite short and round. She was much loved and respected, so you did what you were told. Summers were spent playing in her garden, fishing in the rock pools at the Cove, rowing trips in the Penguin, fishing in the Puffin and taking picnics to Pedn, enjoying picnics on the beach, at the Cove or in the Briar Cottage garden after exhausting games on the lawn.

There was fishing for trout in the river, expeditions in her huge station wagon to Lamorna and Sennen where the car park then took only 10 vehicles - she often had difficulties navigating the difficult exit through the gatehouse! She maintained a supply of three-penny pieces, to be spent on ice cream cones from John Daniel’s van which seemed to be outside the gatehouse every afternoon.

There were huge, delicious joints of beef for Sunday lunch ; fresh milk from the Guernsey cows, Buttercup and Daisy and clotted cream made in huge bowls by Mrs Angwin. Bob the parrot was in the servants’ hall , squawking St Buryan 208 [the house telephone number] , whistling for the dogs, and imitating the Runnelstone [buoy] moaning noise when the wind was blowing from the South West.

The various cousins’ early memories, recorded in chapter three, all show that Granny Favell was a key figure in their lives and remains a source of inspiration to this day. She is buried beside her husband in the churchyard at St Levan.

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RICHARD MOLYNEUX FAVELL DSCRichard Favell was the eldest child of Alice and Vernon Favell and was born in

Sheffield on 12 March 1914.

He spent 20 years in the Royal Navy and was one of the very few submarine commanders to survive the entire Second World War. He retired as a Commander in December 1949, to take over the running of the family shipping firm HE Moss which was sold to Cunard in 1965. He moved his family to Penberth in 1955, following the death of his mother.

He married Barbara Bridget Talbot on 21 December 1940; she was the only sister of one of his closest friends from Dartmouth (who was subsequently lost in HMS Thames, the flagship of the Royal Navy’s submarines) and the daughter of Vice-Admiral Sir Cecil Talbot a former Flag Officer Submarines11.

Richard Favell was sent to Lockers Park preparatory school in Hertfordshire, in the expectation that he would go on to Winchester. Notwithstanding an outstanding academic record (he was expected to win a scholarship), he persuaded his reluctant father to let him go into the Royal Navy as a cadet at the Britannia Naval College at Dartmouth. Here he won the King’s Dirk and was commissioned a Midshipman in January 1932. He later claimed that his potential Winchester housemaster’s ill-concealed disappointment at his football abilities played a part in this crucial decision which was to determine his future!

Richard Favell’s first appointment was in the battleship HMS Resolution until the beginning of 1934. During a visit to Hong Kong, the young Lieutenant Favell called on the admiral then commanding the China station at the suggestion of one of his closest friends from Dartmouth. It was here that he met the young Barbara Talbot, the admiral’s only daughter. On being told some years later that she proposed to marry the young submariner, Cecil Talbot is reported to have said “You can’t go wrong with Favell”.

So it was to prove. Richard Favell was selected for a series of command training courses and in February 1939, he was appointed First Lieutenant in HM Submarine H33.Having passed the submarine commanders’ course (the dreaded Perisher) in 1940, he was appointed captain successively of H33, Otus, Trespasser and Talent. He was almost continuously at sea from the beginning of the Second World War until July 1945. There are said to have been only two Royal Navy submarine commanders at the beginning of the war who survived. Despite these terrible losses, Richard Favell told one of his sons-in-law that “It never occurred to us that we might lose the War”.

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Typically, Richard Favell seldom spoke of his wartime service to his family. However, his time in command of HMS Trespasser for two years to July 1944 is one of the most celebrated in the history of the submarine service. The present captain of HMS Raleigh, where Perisher is currently based, was instantly familiar with the role played by Trespasser in supplying the Resistance to the German occupation of Crete - who kidnapped the general commanding the German troops on the Island and paraded him as a trophy through Alexandria during one of the darkest periods for Britain of the Second World War 12.

Plate 7: Lieutentant Favell RN in 1938.

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HMS Trespasser was initially deployed in the North Sea and off Norway, where the German battleship Scharnhorst and her escorts were based. During November 1942, she was assigned to help defend convoys of supplies to Russia - often described as “the worst journey in the world” - from attacks by the German Navy. On 31 December 1942, the Battle of the Barents Sea took place, in which the Russian Convoy JW51B was successfully defended south of Spitzbergen from attacks by the German battleship Lutzow, cruiser Hipper and a strong escort of destroyers. The captain of the Royal Navy destroyers escorting the convoy was awarded the Victoria Cross. All the merchantmen duly arrived in Mermansk.13

Trespasser was then transferred to the Mediterranean and was involved in a number of secret missions in Sicily, Crete and the Aegean. She was sent to the Far East at the beginning of 1944, and was involved in eight separate operational patrols, often involving the Special Operations Executive (SOE), off Burma and Siam and in the Melacca Straits14.

Richard Favell was promoted Lieutenant Commander in July 1943 and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in November 1944. He was promoted Commander in December 1947, and retired from the navy two years later, at his mother’s request to take over the running of the family shipping line, HE Moss and Co. Ernest Moss had started as a coal merchant in Liverpool in the 1850s; and by 1950 HE Moss & Co owned six oil tankers and had offices in London (at the Baltic Exchange), Liverpool and Newcastle. Richard Favell took over responsibility for running the company from his maternal uncle, Charles Molyneux Cohan and successfully navigated the shoals of the Suez Crisis and other challenges before selling the company to Cunard in 1964, when he finally retired from the sea.

Alice Favell died in July 1954; and her surviving son was left the land and estate at Penberth in her will. He was initially reluctant to move his young family yet again, recognising the need for weekly train journeys from Penzance to London, Liverpool and Newcastle which would make him one of the most travelled people in the former British Rail western region. Family legend has it that he came down to Penberth to tell his late mother’s employees that he would not be taking over from her. But, in the event he found that he could not get the words out; and he returned to his family in Woking to tell his delighted daughters that their dream of living at Penberth was to come true. In a lifetime of good deeds, this momentous and difficult decision was to bring untold happiness to his family.

For the rest of his life, Richard Favell devoted his energies and talent to caring for his family, Penberth and the county of Cornwall (in that order).

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He improved the garden which had, inevitably, been neglected during the war years, opening up long walk. He made major improvements to Shell Cottage (to which he eventually retired) and to Chmoy Mill, which had been a working mill in living memory. He negotiated an agreement with the National Trust, which has preserved the cove and the surrounding cliff-tops as far as Porthcurno “for everyone, for ever”. This was one of the first gifts to Enterprise Neptune, a National Trust initiative to preserve and protect the nation’s coastline from development.

Plate 8: Richard and Barbara Favell and the ship’s bell of HMS Tresspasser.

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As his father had done before him, Richard Favell played an active part in local public life.

He served as a Trustee of the National Trust Devon and Cornwall branch. He served as High Sheriff of Cornwall in 1963; and he was the last High Sheriff in England to have to witness a hanging, before the abolition of capital punishment.

After all that he had been through during the war, he found this responsibility for witnessing further loss of life deeply distressing.

He was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for the county of Cornwall in 1959. He served as a magistrate for over 20 years, as his mother had before him.

He was also a Council Member of the Western Division of the Woodard Foundation, which then included St Clare’s (now the Bolitho) School in Penzance as well as a number of other schools in the South-West.

Richard Favell was very involved in the Church of England at every level. He was the first Lay Chairman of the Penwith Deanery and served as a member of the Truro Diocesan Synod and of the General Synod.

He was one of the founding trustees of the Cornwall Historic Churches Trust and was a generous benefactor of St Levan Church in particular.

At one time he held the record for the amount of money raised in a BBC Radio Charity Appeal, for St Buryan church tower which is a leading mark for seafarers entering the English Channel telling returning British sailors that they are ‘almost home’.

Richard Favell inherited from his mother a love of the countryside and enjoyed riding to hounds and rough shooting - until dissuaded by one of his daughters. He loved horses and, particularly, dogs - he was thought to treat the latter more leniently than he did his daughters.

Despite his remarkable accomplishments and ability, he was an extraordinarily modest person- but with that streak of determination and integrity that characterised all four of Alice and Vernon Favell’s children.

Richard Favell died after a short illness in November 1995; and his ashes are interred in the churchyard at St Levan, where he served as a churchwarden for over 30 years.

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Plate 9 : The ‘Commander’ at sea in 1972, with his grandson Mark.

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EDWARD VERNON

MOLYNEUX (TEDDY) FAVELLTeddy Favell and his twin sister Margaret were born in Sheffield on 6

November 1917. He followed his brother to Lockers Park preparatory school in Hertfordshire shortly after the family moved to Penberth from Sheffield. In May 1931, he arrived at Du Boulay’s (usually known as Cook’s) at Winchester.

Plate 10: Teddy Favell circa 1928.

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The college record 15 states that: “He took a cheerful part in all school games and in addition to his success in running and on the river was a beautiful gymnast, winning the bronze medal. Leaving, a school prefect in May 1936, he went to study modern languages in Germany and France and in October to Trinity College, Cambridge. Teddy was loved by his friends for his childlike charm and simplicity of character, qualities that derive in part from his devotion to the country and its simple pleasures: dogs, sailing a boat and fishing.The rocks in his beautiful home in Cornwall were a never-failing source of joy to him. He faced life trustfully and serenely”.

Teddy shared with his brother and sisters a love of dogs, horses and country pursuits as well as fly fishing. As the Winchester College record implies, he was adored by his family and loved by his many friends.

His future brother-in-law and Cambridge friend, Jock Pinsent, recalled Teddy’s insistence that he should join the family for tea at their hotel in St Moritz (and meet his twin sister) when he was staying in rather less salubrious accommodation near the ski slopes.

Teddy Favell graduated from Cambridge in May 1939 and joined the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry as a Lieutenant in June of that year, just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

He saw service in India with the 8th Battalion (the former 43rd Regiment of Foot) and returned to England in 1943 to join the 2nd Battalion (the former 52nd

Regiment of Foot), part of the 6th Airlanding Brigade which led the airborne assault on the Normandy beaches, recorded in detail by Chester Wilmot (who accompanied the airborne troops) in his book The Assault on Europe16 and in the film The Longest Day. He was the major in command of S (for Support) Company.

Teddy Favell’s battalion set off on the night of 5 June 1944 in gliders to “captureand hold until relieved” two vital bridges on the flanks of the British and Canadian landing beaches, at Benouville crossing the Caen Canal between Caen and Ouistreham (Pegasus) and at Ranville over the River Orne (Horsa).

Their objective was to prevent German armour from crossing the bridges and attacking the eastern flank of the landings on Sword beach.

Five of the gliders landed within 50 metres of their objectives shortly after midnight.

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Plate 11: Captain Favell in 1943.

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The attackers poured out of their shattered gliders, made of plywood, completely surprising the German defenders; they took the two vital bridges within 10 minutes of landing losing only two men in the process - including Lieutenant Brotheridge who was killed crossing Pegasus Bridge and was the first member of the invading Allied armies to die as a result of enemy fire on D-Day.

The glider-borne coup de main operation to capture these vital bridges was later described by the Commander of the Allied air forces on D-Day as “theairmanship feat of the war17”.

The battalion was reinforced 30 minutes after the initial assault at 0300 hrs on 6 June by the 7th Parachute Battalion and linked up with the beach landing forces with the arrival of Lord Lovat’s Commandos, famously led by his personal piper playing Highland Laddie on his bagpipes.

The German counter-attack then began in earnest and the Battalion War Diary details over two weeks of heavy fighting18.

On the afternoon of 17 June, following the wounding of their company commander, Teddy Favell was ordered to take over command of B Company. While introducing himself to his new company and inspecting their positions he was hit by German mortar fire and killed.

Teddy Favell’s service to his country is recorded on a pew end in St Levan Church commissioned by his widowed mother, and on the war memorials at St Buryan Church and at Trinity College, Cambridge.

In the war memorial cloisters at Winchester College there is a selection of the narcissi bred by his father, donated by a niece who was also his god-daughter.

These flowers serve as an annual reminder of someone who, throughout his all-too-short life, remained devoted to Penberth; and he never forgot the things that most mattered to him: friendships and love and concern for others, especially his family.

On his embarkation leave before D-Day, he went for a pint and pasty with one of his local friends, then serving as an able seaman in the Royal Navy. It turned out that Teddy had left his money at home and relied on Ted George to treat him.

To the end of his long and happy life, Ted enjoyed recalling that shortly after Teddy’s return from his last leave he received a postal order from his friend and namesake repaying his debt.

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MARGARET MOLYNEUX PINSENTMargaret Favell was born in Sheffield on 6 November 1917, twin to her brother

Teddy. While she and Teddy were quite young (they were three years old at the time) the family moved to Penberth where they spent a very happy childhood and Margaret developed what were to become lifelong passions for dogs, horses, gardening and rural places and people.

She took a keen interest in everything connected with Penberth to the very end of her long and happy life.

When Frances visited her in hospital shortly before she died, Margaret first enquired about the effect of a recent spell of cold weather on the tree ferns at Penberth before they moved on to less important matters.

Despite her small stature, she became a formidable and accomplished horsewomen and could command respect and trust from even the most wayward and spirited horses and their riders.

She and Richard, Teddy and Mary hunted regularly with the Western and Four Burrow Hunts during her childhood.

Plate 12: The Master of the Modbury Harriers 1964-1979.

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Occasionally they would travel to more distant meets, with their horses, by train. Margaret was sent to boarding school at Westonbirt and then spent a year at a school in France. Although her family find it hard to imagine that it was high on her list of priorities, she also did the London Season as a debutante.

While on a family skiing holiday in Switzerland in the late 1930s, Teddy bumped into a friend he had known at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge. Jock Pinsent was staying at rather less grand surroundings than the Favells; so Teddy invited his friend for tea and to meet his mother and twin sister.

It must have been an interesting introduction and was the beginning of a life-long partnership. At the end of the evening, Jock invited Margaret to join him for a ride in a horse-drawn sleigh.

They were married at Chelsea Old Church on 6 February 1940.

Plate 13: Margaret Favell in 1936.

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At the outbreak of the Second World War, with her husband in the Royal Artillery, Margaret moved back to Penberth.

Jock was in the anti-aircraft division of the artillery, stationed around the United Kingdom; so he was able to spend his leaves at Penberth and Anne, Mary and Jenny were all born in Penzance. Margaret joined Jock when he was stationed at Tenby in South Wales and in the Orkneys; but she was at Penberth when the terrible news of Teddy’s death in the aftermath of the D-Day airbourne assault became known.

Following the end of the war, Margaret and Jock returned to Birmingham where Jock resumed his training as a solicitor. He was articled to his uncle Roy Pinsent of Pinsent’s, still a leading provincial law firm. They lived at Little Wick, close to Selly Wick where Jock’s grandfather lived.

However, at some stage, Jock must have become disenchanted with his chosen career. Doubtless with Margaret’s enthusiastic support, he decided to enter a completely new world: farming. Margaret and her four children moved back to Penberth while Jock was working as a farm student at Trengwainton. Teds was born at this time in Penzance in early 1950.

In March 1950, Margaret and Jock moved to farm at Higher Ludbrook in South Devon. Margaret was an active participant in all aspects of life on the farm.She helped with the dairy herd (initially of South Devons) and sheep; she revived many a hypothermic lamb in the bottom of the Aga.

She is remembered as working extremely hard and making a very happy, loving family home for her five children - as well as dogs, cats, chickens, ducks, geese and so many horses and ponies that Jock probably avoided counting them. Frances still recalls staying at Ludbrook while her family was living in Woking; finding warm kittens in her bed and riding all over the local countryside were special delights.

Margaret encouraged all her children to share her passion for riding - with varying degrees of success! She hunted regularly, at first with the Dartmoor and East Cornwall Hunts and then, following her appointment as Master in 1964 with the Modbury Harriers.

She filled the master’s role with distinction for 15 seasons, barely missing a day all that time. She was also district commissioner of the Dartmoor Pony Club for many years and much enjoyed passing on her enthusiasm and experience to a younger generation.

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Margaret was also a dog-lover, breeding at least eight generations of golden retrievers and providing puppies and faithful companions to many. She was also a distinguished gardener.

Plate 14: The Pinsent grandchildren in the early 2000s.

Plate 15: Margaret and Jock gardening in the Walled Garden at Ludbrook.

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When she moved to Warren Cottage with Jock and Libs, so that Teds and Sue could move in to the farm house, they extended the cottage and took in part of a field to create a new garden.Within a few years, the garden was open to the public as part of the National Garden Scheme.

Notwithstanding her many responsibilities, Margaret still found time to be a Governor of Ermington Primary School; and for many years she organised the horse section at Yealmpton Show.

Yet above all, Margaret was a family person. Her numerous grandchildren and nephews and nieces always found a warm welcome awaiting them - often arriving to find Margaret asleep in front of the Aga, probably the only warm room in the house in winter; she was something of a night owl.

She was able to walk her dogs around the farm until well into her 90th year. She died on 11 March 2010, shortly after she and Jock had celebrated their 70th

wedding anniversary.

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ALICE MARY MOLYNEUX BRIGGSAlice Mary Molyneux Favell (always known as Mary) was born on 9 May, 1920,

in Sheffield where the family was living at 6 Shearwood Road.

When the Favells finally moved to Penberth she was just five months old. So she was brought up in the country and was very much a country girl with a love of dogs and horses that lasted a life-time. Her photograph albums are full of family pictures, riding, boating, beaching and always dogs: Brandy, Soda, Punch etc.

Plate 16: Mary Favell in 1938.

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When Mary was 12 years old, she followed her sister to boarding school at Westonbirt; she and Margaret always said that the main reason why they were sent to Westonbirt was so that their father could enjoy the world-renowned arboretum.

After leaving school in 1938, Mary Favell did the London season as a debutante and spent the summer in France.

The following year, Mary met Aidan Briggs in Cambridge, at the Trinity College May Ball - her brother had just gone down from Trinity and was about to join the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry; in all probability it was Teddy or his friend Jock Pinsent who arranged the introduction.

After a whirlwind romance, they were married just after war was declared on 3 November 1939, at Chelsea Old Church in London - where her older sister was to be married three months later.

Plate 17: The wedding of Mary and Aidan Briggs in December 1939.

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Mary’s new husband had recently qualified as a solicitor and was already serving as a gunnery officer in the Hertfordshire Yeomanry. When Aidan and his regiment were sent to India in 1941 and subsequently to Singapore, Mary returned to live at Penberth until the end of the war; and both Mary Jane (who was born in June 1941) and Favell were born in Penzance.

Margaret was also living at Penberth at the time and the two sisters were called Aunt Mummy by the four children in the house.

After the war and Aidan’s safe return from a prisoner-of-war camp (he had been captured in in North Africa in June 1942 when his regiment was en route to Singapore) Mary and her husband had a long period of leave at Penberth.

Bearing in mind that Mary was only 19 when she was married, that she had been separated from her husband for over three years and had suffered the tragedy of Teddy’s death, this must have been a very important time for her. The terrible conditions that Aidan had narrowly avoided were illustrated in the film Bridge On The River Kwai.

[His commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey, was the senior Allied officer in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp where the men who built the bridge were incarcerated19.]

Eventually, Aidan returned to work at the family business, Benskins Brewery in Watford. Mary and Aidan and their two children lived at Waterdale House near Watford, where David was born in February 1947 - during one of the coldest winters on record.

In 1956, Mary and Aidan purchased Blackwell Farm near Chesham. This gave Mary the opportunity to return to the country life that she had always enjoyed. But, like all the Favells, she had a streak of determination and competitiveness.

Within a few years, on what was originally a hobby farm she was owning and managing a herd of pedigree Hereford cattle which became a life-long passion - and, in due course, would lead to her being called Granny Bull by all her grandchildren. Her cattle won numerous awards, including championships at the Royal Show.

Despite a busy life on the farm and the strain of having to deal with threatened outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease, Mary was always happy to welcome her many nephews and nieces exiled in London to spend weekends at Blackwell; at least one love affair (and probably more) blossomed during Sunday morning walks in her woods.

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In the 1960s, she regularly took her family skiing; even after an interval of 25 years, she was able to show that she had lost none of her flair. Like her sister, Mary was a lover of horses and hunted regularly with the Old Berkeley serving a term as chairman of the Hunt.

She was involved with numerous charities, particularly the RNLI who presented her with a life-time achievement award for her tireless fundraising efforts on their behalf.

While Mary Jane, Favell and David were growing up, summer holidays were always spent at Penberth. After her mother and Aunt May had died, the family stayed at Briar Cottage, which had been left to the two Favell sisters. Mary and Aidan were both first-class fly fishermen, a passion of Teddy’s as well; they enjoyed many fishing holidays both in Britain and abroad - in Alaska, Canada, Iceland and Norway.

They were also fanatical and knowledgeable race-goers; and many weekends were taken up with their wide circle of friends at race meetings. Aidan was also a keen and capable game shot and he and Mary enjoyed several holidays on the grouse moors.

Plate 18: Granny Bull and her immediate family in the 1990s.

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This happy life came to an end in 1963, when Aidan was diagnosed with cancer. The treatment he received in St Thomas’s Hospital in London had very painful side-effects which Frances, who was doing her physiotherapy training at the hospital at the time, remembers Aidan bearing with great courage.

Sadly, Aidan’s health continued to deteriorate and he died in 1969 at the age of 56 the same tragically early age as Mary’s father. Like her mother before her, Mary was left widowed after 25 happy years of marriage when she was not even 50.

After Aidan’s death, Mary continued to run the farm at Blackwell. In 1973 she married Aidan’s first cousin, Ronald Briggs who was a retired Royal Navy Commander. Mary shared a love of fly fishing and racing with Ronald and they continued to live happily at Blackwell celebrating her second Silver Wedding anniversary without changing her name.

She died, very suddenly, a year later in November 1999. Like all the Favells, Mary would have been amazed at the many tributes paid to her at her funeral and in the fond stories of her children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces and their friends who crowded out the church.

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2: THE HOUSE, GARDEN AND ESTATEJust as the debate still rages over the influence on children of ‘nature or

nurture’, so it is impossible to separate the impact on their children and grandchildren of their parents and the beautiful environment in which they were brought up.

So no history of the Favells of Penberth would be complete without an account of how the house and garden at Foxstones and the family’s landholdings evolved from 1918.

In his researches into the various conveyances related to the Favell landholdings in and around Penberth1, Favell Briggs describes the first purchase by Granny Favell on 5 December 1918 from Charles Thursby as “all those pieces or parcels of land situate at Penberth in the parish of St Buryan in the said County of Cornwall containing in the whole 2.39 acres or thereabouts and all that part of the orchard and cultivated land and the strip of land adjoining on the West formerly part of Treen Common together with the Southern moiety [half] part of the stream…….. together with the messuage or dwellinghouse erected thereon or on some part thereof and known as Foxstones.”

The plans attached to the conveyance show that the area purchased included what is now the house, water-garden, the main lawn up to (but not including) the rock garden and behind the house down the existing stone wall to the stream opposite Chmoy Mill.

The plans also make clear that the purchase included a small strip between the road and the river, about level with the Gatehouse, and half of the bed of the stream at the wider part (now a pond where the coxswain of the Sennen Cove lifeboat claims to have had his early lessons in seamanship) described as “drinking place for cattle”.

As Favell Briggs observes, the measurements in the conveyance are very precise, in feet. The clear inference is that this was the only available place in the valley where cattle could be watered.

Thus, at the time of the purchase in the aftermath of the Great War and within a month of the death of her father-in-law and before her husband had even been demobilised, Granny Favell had purchased the Gatehouse and small house in the Penberth valley.

These had been built during the war years by the previous owner, who was apparently regarded with some suspicion: he is described as “a bit of an artist,

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flamboyant; he had manservants [but] there were never any women in the house, which was quite small”.

There were even rumours that he was a spy, being observed looking out to sea with a telescope! After the sale, Thursby moved to what was to become the Irish Republic.

From these small and fairly non-descript beginnings, Granny Favell was to create the home for her family which remains as it was built some almost ninety years ago.

While Vernon Favell, in addition to his other interests described earlier, created the heart of the garden that many people consider to be among the most beautiful in Cornwall.

THE HOUSE

The house that Granny Favell purchased in December 1918, was quite small - the present dining room and nursery and half the drawing room, surrounded by a veranda. It was obviously too small for a family of four young children.

Plate 19: The First Extension, 1921.

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So she embarked on the major building programme that resulted in the house to be seen today. It is difficult to imagine the problems that she and her architects must have had to overcome to obtain planning permission and builders able to handle dressed granite.

The work was completed in two stages.

The first stage, beginning in 1920, involved creating a kitchen, scullery and ‘motor house’ with four bedrooms at the western end of the house, with a master-bedroom and dressing room at the eastern end.

There were three resident staff. The drawings were prepared by the Penzance architect Geoffrey Drewitt and show the elevations and floor plan for the original extension to the house built by Thursby only a few years earlier.

The work took at least a year to complete. The builders were a local firm, Tregenza from Mousehole; and one of the Tregenza sons, who latterly ran a fruit and vegetable shop in Penzance, could recall working on this major project in his youth. One of the masons was Richard (Dick) Thomas, who bicycled over from Mousehole on a weekly basis, staying in lodgings in Treen during the week.

This weekly commute cannot have been too much of a hardship, since Dick went on to marry a Penberth girl. Eventually, Dick Thomas set up his own building firm, RH Thomas first in partnership with his brother and then with his nephew Bolitho Hosking.

Bolitho was retained by Richard Favell to patch up the roof after a storm on numerous occasions; and Frances often had cause to consult him, as the sole survivor of the generation of local builders who knew where the drains were and could locate the spring providing the house with fresh water.

The difficulties that Granny Favell must have faced moving to such an undeveloped location with a young family were graphically illustrated years later when Richard Favell moved his own family to Penberth in the mid-1950s. Anxious about the quality of the water from the spring, he sent a sample to Truro for analysis.

“This water is not fit for consumption by cattle” was the uncompromising verdict.

Nonetheless, by the autumn of 1920 the work on their new home was sufficiently advanced to enable the family to move from Sheffield.

The second stage of the building work evidently began in late 1928. The architects drawings by Cowell, Drewitt and Wheatly of Proposed Alterations to

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Foxstones in Penberth Cove for R Vernon Favell Esq19 show that this was a very substantial addition.

The white wing was built. An extension was built to provide the front hall and cloak and flower room with two large bedrooms above. The ‘motor house’ was converted into a servant’s hall (sic). And the present library and adjoining bedroom were added. The library (complete with the original ‘priest’s hole’) came from a Jacobean house in Yorkshire, possibly Bingley Hall just outside Sheffield – the letters WB with the date 1655 are inscribed above the fireplace.

While these major works were being completed, the family moved out to Chyvarton which had been purchased in September 1927. On a visit to Penberth for Ted George’s funeral, Margaret Pinsent was delighted to revisit her old schoolroom where she and her twin brother received their lessons from a governess. [Margaret and Teddy discovered that the easiest way to avoid lessons was to take their governess out in a boat; she was usually sea sick.]

Plate 20: Penberth from the Air in 1976.

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There may well have been a third phase of building work to complete the stable block, harness room, cow shed and kennels. At any event, there was a pause in Granny Favell’s programme of major land transactions until 1933. While the building work was being completed, Vernon Favell was developing the garden.

THE GARDENSEach of the families that have lived in the house has made a contribution to the

evolution of the garden over the last 90 years.

In October 1921, Granny Favell purchased two fields to the north west of the footpath that provided a right-of-way up to the farm at Boscean. These fields were South-facing and very sheltered, strewn with large granite rocks

Plate 21: Rhododendron Leucaspis in the Rock Garden.

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and boulders. This was to become the Rock Garden, planted with azaleas and rhododendrons as well as tender plants, such as puya chilensis and olearia scilloniensis.

The landscaping of the terraces and Rock Garden were carried out by Treseders, under Vernon Favell’s supervision. All the work, including the moving of the huge boulders, was done by local men with shovels and crow bars and hand tools.

A narrow snicket (a Yorkshire term) runs parallel to the footpath, connecting the rock garden to the old orchard which had already been planted with a few trees by the time the Favell family came to live at Penberth. Tom Angwin was the foreman, helped by Bob Batten and John Chappell from Treen1.

During this initial phase, a small stream and pond were created by diverting the stream under the driveway along a channel above the water-garden. This had the effect of extending the garden as far as the gate above the clapper stone bridge that carries the footpath back to the roadway, emerging opposite what is now Penberth Cottage.

The water garden, with its run of small waterfalls by the gatehouse, was also begun by Vernon Favell. He began by planting some tree ferns and a magnolia tree. The area is subject to regular flooding when the river comes over the drive; and it has had to be re-planted regularly by both Richard Favell and Frances.

During the Second World War, with most able-bodied men called up, much of the garden and the fields in the valley were turned over to growing early potatoes. After the war, much of the land reverted to horticultural use with early daffodils filling the gap in the flower market between the Isles of Scilly and ‘up-country’ crops.

Thus, by the time Richard Favell and his family arrived in 1955, he was faced with the challenge of restoring the garden to its former glory after the inevitable neglect of the war years. With the help of John-Henry Chapple (who had started working for Vernon Favell in his greenhouses when he was 14, before being called up), Lewis Mathews and Tom Harry, he was to succeed magnificently.

During his three decades in the garden, Richard Favell replanted much of the Old Orchard with azaleas and camellias. He opened up the pathway from the main lawn leading visitors down the garden - which had hitherto been closed off by the snicket. He also had to deal with the after-effects of Dutch Elm disease on the valley; many trees had to be felled, including those that used to mask the gatehouse from view when they were in leaf.

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Most notably, the long walk down to Boscean Mill was created at this time. A fruit cage was built and a border of dahlias was planted; and on the opposite side of the walk Richard Favell planted shrubs and a number of magnolias, invariably

to honour some family event such as the birth of a grandchild. One of the most striking features of the long walk is the many dogwood trees which flower in the summer, after the Spring shrubs.

Plate 22: Azaleas in the old orchard.

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By the time Frances took over responsibility for the garden from her Father in the spring of 1987, after a rare snow and ice-storm had decimated many Cornish gardens, she was faced with a new challenge: how to maintain the high standards her father had set, while making her own contribution to the garden she had inherited.

Frances replanted the border across the lawn and the herbaceous border on the east side of long walk ; this included a banana tree that has survived several cold winters (so far).

She has planted many shrubs and trees, to help compensate for the loss of the elms she remembers from her childhood. She was especially pleased to win the best in section award in the heritage daffodil section of the 2013 West Cornwall Spring Show with one of Vernon Favell’s cultivars, Penberth.

She built a new greenhouse where one of the bulb sheds had been; the insurers had declined to pay for the repeated damage to the original greenhouse by branches falling from the pine trees originally planted by her Grandfather. Finally, Frances has cleared the land on both sides of the river to the North of

Plate 23: The Chmoy Mill field.

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the house and planted shrubs and trees as well as named Favell daffodils. All this activity has had the effect of moving the centre of gravity of the entire garden up the valley, closer to the house, and of creating a space that is ideal for parties - where the celebrations of A Century of Favells at Penberth are planned.

Thus, 90 years after he first started to lay out his new garden, Vernon Favell’s original vision remains intact for the next generation. As the old saying has it: ‘you should live your life as though you will die tomorrow, and farm your land as though you will live for ever’. This is the attitude towards their garden that has characterised three generations of the Favells of Penberth.

FAVELL LAND-HOLDINGSFavell Briggs has undertaken considerable research to produce his own history

of the Favell family at Penberth.

As a solicitor in practice in Cornwall for many years, he was particularly well-placed to trace the growth in the family’s landholdings in and around the Penberth valley between late 1918 and Alice Favell’s death in 1954 through the various property conveyances recorded in the Land Registry. The details of the relevant property transactions have been extracted from his history and are summarised here with his kind permission.

The first family member to live in the Penberth valley was Alice Favell’s oldest sister Annie Elisabeth, always known as Miss Cohan, who was her senior by 10 years. Miss Cohan took a sub-tenancy of Briar Cottage a Century ago; and this was followed by a formal 14-year lease granted by Lord Falmouth in September 1923, to Miss Cohan and her sister Mary Bury.

At this time the (unmarried) sisters were aged 44 and 40 respectively. Later that same year, the freehold of Briar Cottage and the adjoining Bridge Cottage together with a piece of garden land at the seaward end of the property was conveyed to Mary (May) Cohan by the Falmouth Estate.

On her death in October 1958, May Cohan left Briar Cottage to her niece Margaret Pinsent; while Bridge Cottage was left to her other niece Mary Briggs.

The first purchase of land in the Penberth valley by Alice Favell was completed in December 1918. In total there were 12 separate transactions over 15 years.

The details of each are listed below, together with some comments which have all been drawn from Favell Briggs’ History1 referred to earlier:

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1. The purchase of the house, gatehouse and garden at Foxstones was completed in December 1918. In total the purchase involved less than three acres. The conveyance was between Robert Tregonning (as mortgagee), Charles Thursby as Vendor and Alice Favell. Thursby had only owned the property for around five years. The area purchased included a small house, the gatehouse, weir and bridge across the Penberth river which had been built by Thursby during his period of ownership.

2. The purchase of what is now the rock-garden from William Harvey of Boscean Farm in October 1921. This included OS fields numbered 2455 and 2442 and included a right-of-way up to the public road at the entrance to Boscean Farm.

3. Boscean Farm bought from William Harvey in late September 1923. The purchase of the entire holding of 47 acres included the Boscean Mill which was described as ‘now unoccupied and in ruins’. The millhouse was last occupied in the late 1800s; Bolitho Hosking’s great grandmother was born there. Boscean Mill is the oldest building in the valley and is mentioned in the Doomsday Book; part of the existing building dates from pre-Tudor times, according to an expert on old Cornish mill houses.

4. Seven acres of land from the Chyvarton Bridge to just below Chmoy Mill, contiguous with the first land purchase (above). This parcel of land was purchased from Lord Falmouth in December 1923.

5. Land from the gatehouse to the public footpath and boundary with the garden of what is now Penberth Cottage (formerly The Old Abbey). This is the first piece of land that is west of the river; it was purchased from the Trezise family, who also owned Penberth Cottage, in February 1924. The cottage was purchased by Favell Briggs in 1969 and is one of the oldest in the valley, being built in about 1820.

6. Further purchase from the Falmouth Estate of Cove Farm at Penberth with 11/

2acres. This was the first purchase in or near the Cove; it was completed

in late September 1924.

7. The Old Coastguard Cottages and The Green, about 3 acres including the wet meadow. There are no details available about a transaction involving a purchase from an Edmund Brown.

8. Purchase of Penberth Cove from the Falmouth Estate. This transaction in July 1926,when the first phase of building work at the house must have been completed, was by far the most important since the initial land

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purchase in late 1918. Not only were eight separate tenanted cottages involved (including The Thatched Cottage and Shell Cottage) but also the cove and slipway, with its capstan and winch. The consideration paid for the cottages and 211/2 acres was £4,000 - or more than £200,000 in today’s money.

9. Chyvarton and Chynance Farm were both purchased from two Rogers sisters at the end of September 1927. The Rogers family were builders, living in Crean; and they were said to have purchased Chynance Farm from the estate of the former owner, who had moved there from Selina in the 1830s. Chyvarton was vacant at the time of the purchase; it was used by Alice Favell and her family while building work was underway at Foxstones, where phase two was about to start. Margaret Pinsent could still remember having school lessons there on her last visit to Penberth.

10. Agricultural land at Treen, purchased from William Johns in April 1929. This purchase included seven numbered Ordnance Survey enclosures, including four fields two on each side of the footpath running from Treen to the Logan Rock - the site of a long-running dispute over planning permission in this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, as well as Special Historic and Scientific Interest which would have been of great concern to Dr Favell.

11. A further ‘estate’ purchase, extending the Favell holdings westwards to Treen and the Treen cliffs above the beach at Pedn Vounder, from Sir Courteney Vyvyan of Trelowarren. The purchase included the estate land, farmhouses, outbuildings, cottages and other buildings in Treen and on the Treen cliffs as well as on the land on the west side of the road from Penberth to Treen. The total acreage was just over 220; and the consideration paid is reported as being 6,000 guineas, or over £300,000 in today’s terms.

12. Three adjoining cottages in Treen purchased from the estate of William Johns in May 1933. This final purchase included the cottage used as the Treen Post Office. The cottages were sold with outbuildings and their ‘little gardens’.

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The map below shows the extent of the Favell landholdings in West Penwith at the time of Vernon Favell’s death.

Thus, over a period of some 15 years, Alice Favell had built a substantial new home for her family at Penberth that would be able to accommodate her 11 grandchildren - all as yet unborn; at the time these purchases were being completed none of Granny Favell’s children was even married. She had also acquired a substantial estate. While her husband had created the most wonderful garden where there had been fields, and had helped lay the foundations for what was to become an important local industry.

The foresight and courage of Vernon and Alice Favell was to bring untold delight to her grandchildren, to whom this history now turns.

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3: THE COUSINSAlice and Vernon Favell’s three surviving children had 11 children between

them. They all share a love of Penberth; and they were, in turn, moulded by the beautiful environment. As a picture taken by Richard Favell in about 1950 shows, the first cousins often spent the summer with their grandmother who had kept the house and garden going through the war years on her own - she was widowed in 1936, when she was only 50 years old.

Granny Favell was the anchor of her entire family and left all her grandchildren with the most wonderful memories of golden summers at Penberth. Small wonder that her son-in-law Aidan Briggs was to say at a cousin’s wedding years later (it was Frances’) that “there is something very special about those Favell girls from Penberth”. Most importantly, those summer holidays created friendships that have lasted a lifetime and are an endless source of happiness to each cousin and their families in turn. It is a most remarkable legacy, and a model for every future grandmother. The histories that follow are exactly as they were written originally by each cousin; there has been minimal sub-editing to ensure that each cousin tells their story in their own words. However, “being a Favell” can result in undue self-effacement. So in some cases, the stories have been told by a husband!

Plate 25: The Favell Cousins in 1950. From right: Mary Jane, Anne, Frances, Favell, Mary, Bridget, Jenny, David, Libs, Julia and Teds.

54

MARGARET ANNE (Anne)

Anne Pinsent = John Simpson

HarryOliver

(b.2000)

ThomasJohn

Stuart(b.2012)

BeatriceMolyneux(b.2010)

EdwardGeorge

Lawrence(b.2007)

RoscoJames

(b.2003)

CharlieRhys

(b.2002)

IsabellaSophie

(b.2005)

JamesEdward(b.2003)

GeorginaBlunt

BenjaminJohn

Lawrence(b.1970)

SimonThomas

Dan Salmons

JessamieAnne

(b.1968)

JoannaMary

(b.1965)

===

Plate 26: Anne Pinsent in the early 1960s.

55

Anne writes: My contribution to this history is of my memories of Penberth over my life of 71 years.

I was born in Penzance on 15 May 1941, and obviously have very few memories of the first years. I know that I spent quite a time at Penberth during the war, and was very lucky in that my father was involved with gunnery and training and did not go abroad. My mother and Aunt Mary spent some time at Penberth with their mother (Granny Favell) during the war - so much so that Mary Jane and I were not sure which mother we belonged to!

We moved to Birmingham when father joined the family firm of solicitors Pinsent & Co. We would then have summer holidays at Penberth - a long and tedious drive with no motorways - it must have been hard on my parents with four small girls saying “Are we nearly there yet?” for hours on end. However when we arrived, no complaints - we had our bedroom, shared with the Briggs - always the same, with the Favells further up the passage - and we had great fun. Some of my memories get confused as we also stayed at Penberth for more than a year between 1948 -50 while father was learning to farm at Trengwainton.

I then went to West Cornwall School in Penzance (the second of six schools I attended) but remember days of sunshine and fun. Granny Favell, the rock on which everything was centred, was a very kind and fair person. At lunchtime she would sit at the head of the long oak dining room table - foot on the bell under the carpet to summon Salter the ‘butler.’ - all the parents and grandchildren seated round the table nearly always behaving beautifully. Sometimes after lunch, the sliding-door between the dining-room and the play-room would be heaved back and we would perform a rather bad play which we had been rehearsing - poor adults!

There never seemed to be a shortage of food - plenty of home-grown vegetables and home-baking, and especially milk, cream and butter. There were always at least two Guernsey house cows, milked by hand. As well as milk to drink there would be pans of milk on the granite slabs in the dairy (two rooms either side of the front door) waiting to be taken to the kitchen to make into cream - or later cream into butter - all quite delicious.

In those days the kitchen was downstairs - just the butler’s pantry and the sewing-room on the same level as the dining-room. In the sewing-room was Miss Harvey, at that time probably a young lady in her 30s, but to all the cousins she was quite ageless and always called ‘Miss Harvey.’ I think she was almost self taught and could put her hands to anything, from mundane alterations and darning to making a beautiful child’s tweed coat with velvet collar in a day - no pattern needed. She also made dungarees for everyone - so all the cousins looked like peas out of the same pod - never any arguments about what to wear. (In later

56

years she would come to Higher Ludbrook and sew for my mother, bringing with her a crunchy bar for each of us; each bar would then be cut into several pieces, one piece a day would make the treat last longer - sweet rationing was still in place in the 1950s. While thinking of Miss Harvey, I am also reminded of Mr Mellor the pedlar who used to call at Penberth quite regularly - sometimes with his barrel-organ - and hanging around his neck a covered tray containing threads, buttons, elastic, fasteners; anything and everything for the seamstress. He must have walked miles by foot in his lifetime - and occasionally appeared at Higher Ludbrook.

Another character, who lived in the staff-room just to the right of the back door, was ‘Bob Parrot’ - an African Grey who had been at Penberth for many years. He had been given to mother. He had a fairly small vocabulary, but he would imitate the ‘Runnelstone’ fog horn and say the telephone number St Buryan 208 whenever he heard the telephone (a hand held mouth and earpiece on a separate stand). He also whistled a few well known tunes. When we moved to Higher Ludbrook, he came too and was very much part of the family.

It seemed that every day the sun shone and we would go off to the beach / sea. Sometimes we all piled into Granny’s enormous shooting-brake and went off to Sennen, where with luck we would be one of the few families there - (no problems parking in those days). We all swam and surfed, no wet suits, and if we had been good were given a banana ice-cream from the kiosk at the top of the path - a cornet each, but no licking of the ice cream - you had to bite it, which was agony on the teeth - these were Granny’s unwritten rules.

If Sennen was not the chosen beach we might go to the cove and swim there, struggling through the seaweed and watching the fishermen come and go with so many mackerel and other plentiful fish. If Uncle Aidan was around it was a great bonus as he took us out in Puffin usually round to the Sea’s Rock or a little further out to sea, and drift in, feathering for mackerel and hauling in 20 at a time, and big fish too.

Granny Favell came with us once, for a picnic trip to Prye. The boat was crammed with children and adults (no life-jackets). We arrived at Prye - no picnic - but over the cliff came one of the fishermen, staggering under the weight of the feast - so kind - as they all were, and such characters, and so many fishermen making a living from fishing and flower growing in the valley at that time. We also went to Pedn a lot - no complaints at the walk and the difficult climb down. Uncle Aidan had to carry us on his shoulders to the island. He spent a lot of time lancing for sand eels, which he used for his lobster pots. Occasionally we went to Porthgwarra - foreign territory really. I remember once I was wearing my water wings and thought I had learnt to swim; so I took them off and promptly sank to the bottom!

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On Sundays we always went to Sunday School at St Levan church - the service was taken by Mr Ladner - a very kind and gentle man - quite small and dressed in a black cassock. We would all sit in the north aisle by the organ - each Sunday there would be a bible story and the highlight was being given the appropriate stamp for the Sunday lesson to stick in our special Sunday School books - (I was christened in St Levan church, but obviously remember nothing about that day, except that I have a silver christening mug!).

We moved to Higher Ludbrook in 1950 - the year Teds was born - and continued to have holidays at Penberth for a few years, but when Granny died these became less frequent, partly because mother and father were so busy on the farm. Time passed - school at Downe House, college in Plymouth doing domestic science, work with the Coal Utilisation Council, cooking for a Winchester College House and for the Bishop of Winchester. This was where I met John, who at that time was serving in submarines but about to go to Theological College in Wells.

We married and lived near Wells for a year before moving to Winchester when John was ordained. And so I became a vicar’s wife with all that entailed in those days - not to work, but to support the vicar - organising coffee mornings, fetes, bring and buys, jumble sales, Sunday School, young wives etc. We seem to have moved quite a bit - Winchester , Repton (Derbyshire), Helston and Trelowarren (Cornwall), Curry Rivel (Somerset), Tunbridge Wells (Kent), Bristol (when John was a Canon at the cathedral) and eventually retirement at Ashill, near Ilminster in Somerset. During these years we had three children: Joanna born in Winchester at the end of 1965, Jessamie born in Totnes in the Spring of 1968 while we were still based in Winchester and Benjamin born in Burton-on-Trent in July 1970, while we were in Repton.

We continued to visit Penberth from time to time but whilst in Helston we had The Lizard and the Helford River on our doorstep, and as the children got older and moved away from home, family holidays were less frequent. Latterly John and I would go to Briar Cottage, which the Pinsent family had inherited from mother via Aunt May - (firstly both Bridge Cottage and Briar Cottage were given to mother and Aunt Mary and then divided between Briggs and Pinsent).

We would go in the late winter or early spring and have a lovely time clearing up the garden and going for walks. The coast line is still one of the wonders of the world. Penberth is magical and unspoilt and the view to the Logan Rock over Pedn is out of this world.

How lucky we were to have had a grandmother, who was inspired to settle at Penberth and had such a love for the place and the people who lived there.

58

As the preceding picture shows, our family has expanded:

Joanna worked in London as a PA and ended up as Marketing Manager for SJ Berwin, a large law firm. She married Dan Salmons, who is a strategy consultant. They have three children: Harry (b.2000), Jamie (b.2003) and Bella (b.2005).

Jessamie read Spanish at Durham University and lived in Spain, Uruguay and Chile before starting her own business teaching English to premiership footballers. She married Simon Thomas, who is manager of a wholesale gift company based near Liskeard. They have two sons: Charlie (b.2002) and Rosco (b.2003).

Benjamin read law and economics at Durham University and is now a senior partner in a law firm Withers in London. He married Gina Blunt, a management consultant. They have three children: Edward (b.2007), Beatrice (b.2010) and Thomas (b.2012).

Plate 27: The Simpson. Back row; Ben, (holding Thomas), John, Simon, Dan; middle row; Gina (holding Beatrice), Anne, Jessamie, Joanna, Harry; front row; Edward, Rosco, Charlie, Jamie and Bella.

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MARY JANE

HannahMary

(b.2000)

Toby Thomas(b.2012)

GeorgeBenjamin(b.2003)

Freddie Oliver

(b.2000)

HenryGuy

(b.2003)

Johnny MacNamara

EmmaClare

(b.1972)

Katherine Mary

(b.1970)

MathewGuy

JenniferSarah

(b.1967)

GuySnell

SusanJane

(b.1966)

===

Mary Jane Briggs = (1) Tom Morkill (2) Jim Branch

Plate 28: Mary Jane Briggs in 1963.

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Mary Jane writes: I was born in Penzance on 2 June 1941, while mother was living at Foxstones with Granny Favell as father was away on service.

Aunt Margaret and baby Anne who is two weeks older than me were also there and we had a nanny. Favell was born 15 months later. We had the most wonderful happy childhood messing around in and around Penberth with the Pinsent cousins overseen by Granny Favell. Mother and Aunt Margaret were known as Aunt Mummy. I never went north or east of Penzance until I was 4 years old.

In 1945, on father’s return from the dreaded POW camp, we moved to Waterdale House near Watford. This was a charming house with a large garden, stables and paddocks that was owned by Benskins. My first memories of Waterdale was of a new baby brother and, far more importantly, our donkey Jimmy and my lovely little white Shetland pony Molly.

Favell and I went to a primary school in Bedmond run by a Mr Kitchenman; and on fine days mother drove us to school in the pony cart with a pony called Jeano. We then both went to St Alban’s High School for Girls where my only memory is that the school uniform was blue; but mother dressed us both up in green corduroy skirt and shorts (made by Miss Harvey) and we were teased as Greenpants and Greenpants’ sister.

In 1956, we moved to Blackwell Grange Farm, which was a very happy family home. Mother and I had our horses and loved our hunting; I became very interested in mum’s great hobby, her Hereford cattle, and learnt a lot from the great Henry, her stockman.

I went to Downe House, where I excelled in sport but not much more! I left after my ‘O’ levels and spent a year at Rhode Hill domestic science school. I then had a wonderful six months at Montfertile finishing school in Switzerland speaking French and skiing. I then spent a year at Hartwell House of Citizenship, near Aylesbury. I escaped to Canada in 1961, where I spent the summer working as an elevator operator in the Banff Springs Hotel.

Three girl friends and I then spent four months travelling around the USA, returning to Canada to do a ski season in the Laurention Mountains working as a waitress. On my return home I went to Constance Spry Flower School and followed up working for Spry’s, in London.

In 1965, I married Tom Morkill, a local boy from Chipperfield, who was working with Bass Charringtons brewery. Our first home was in Chesham, where both Susan and Jennifer were born.

We then found a lovely period cottage Oak Cottage in Flaunden, which was conveniently near both sets of our parents. Kate and Clare were born in 1970,

61

and 1972 respectively. It was a good life: we had many local friends, a donkey and pony for the girls and there were good local schools for them.

Tom progressed well at work and was promoted within the company. But the promotion came at a price - he was to be based in Burton-on-Trent, in Staffordshire. This was a huge emotional move; but we settled in well and got stuck into rural life, with plenty of equestrian activities. Ten years later Tom was sent back to London and we bought a house, Barracks Farm, in Nash, near Buckingham.

Sadly, after 24 years my marriage to Tom broke up. But I met Jim Branch and we have now been together for 23 years.We have a great life together with many of the same interests. I have learnt to fish; but my greatest joy is working my springer spaniels and gardening (it must be the Favell gene). We ran a mushroom farm when we were first together, and have had bed and breakfast guests for 20 years. I worked as an independent monitor, at Woodhill High Security Prison for eight years.

I have recently celebrated my 70th birthday and had a truly memorable party at Penberth, along with all my immediate family and cousins. How better to

Plate 29: The Morkills at Penberth. From left, Susan, Jen, Mary Jane, Kate and Clare in 2011.

62

celebrate than with Cornish pasties, champagne and birthday cake. Our visits to Penberth are always happy and fun. All of this is due to the amazing legacy of our grandparents, Alice and Vernon Favell.

Tom and I had four lovely girls: Susan, Jennifer, Katie and Clare. All the girls were brought up in Buckinghamshire and Staffordshire; and we lived a lovely rural life surrounded by ponies and dogs. Part of the summer holidays was always spent at Penberth, in Briar or Bridge Cottage.

Susan was born in November 1966. She has her own house in Launton, near Bicester, in Northamptonshire, and a little aged dog Tarka. She works as a travel consultant with Last Frontiers who specialise in South America, so she travels a lot and organises tailor-made tours. She continues to ride when time permits. She enjoys her skiing, is a very good cook, and a wonderful aunt.

Plate 30: Susan Morkill at work.

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Jennifer (Jen) was born in December 1967. She married Guy Snell in May 1998, and they they have two children: Hannah (born in August 2000) and Henry (born in July 2003). Both the children are active in their sport.

Hannah is a very capable little rider and has a lovely pony called Amber. Guy is an electrical engineer in his family firm and they live in Royston in Hertfordshire. Their holidays are spent skiing or in Cornwall.

Kate was born in September 1970, and she was married at the end of 1997, to Mathew Guy, a financial planner in the city. They have Freddie (born on the last day of December 2000) and George (born in February 2003). Both boys are sports mad and are in their school teams for rugby, football and cricket - this must be the Morkill rather than the Favell gene at work! Kate works from home and runs a freelance marketing business. They live in Newnhan, near Hook, in Hampshire.

Plate 31: The Snell family. Guy, Jen, Henry and Hannah.

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Clare was born in late October 1972. She married Johnnie MacNamara on 8 August 2012. An Irishman from Cork, he is a schoolteacher to 6th form students. They have a son, Toby born on 25 March 2012. Clare is a physiotherapist specialising in neurology and rehabilitation. Their family holidays are spent in either Ireland or Cornwall.

Plate 33: The MacNamaras in 2012. Clare and Johnnie, with Toby.

Plate 32: The Guy family in 2009. Freddie, Mat, Kate and George.

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FAVELL

ArcherFavell

(b.2008)

MaxCory

(b.2005)

JackJocelyn(b.2010)

OliverOrmsby(b.2007)

IseldaMolyneux(b.2012)

DominicMyers

EmilyOrmsby(b.1974)

JoelleLau

Jocelyn Aidan(Jos)

(b.1972)

==

Aidan Favell Briggs = Helen Barnes

Plate 34: A Favell Briggs circa 1968.

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Favell writes: I was born in Penzance on 29 October 1942. My first memories, of course, are of my mother and probably my elder sister Mary Jane, my father being away on service during the war; and places and events are definitely of Foxstones and the cove.

We had toy wheelbarrows and must have moved tons of gravel from in front of the verandah, leaving it in piles - when it was no doubt promptly raked back neatly. The rival toys were two wooden boats, which our grandchildren now use.

After the war we moved to Waterdale House, at Garston, near Watford, where my father’s family business, Benskins Brewery, was based. The family remained there from late 1945 until 1956. My mother and Mary Jane had horses and ponies; and riding was part of their lives. But on the whole the males stuck to dogs and shooting. This was even more the case when in 1956, we moved to Blackwell Farm.

I went to boarding prep school at Lockers Park in 1950, and then on to Eton in 1955. I had a gap year after leaving school in 1960 and travelled for six months in Canada and the United States. Finally, I read law at Trinity Hall at Cambridge, graduating in 1964. Throughout most of this time, our summer holidays were spent at Penberth, staying with Granny Favell and after her death at Briar Cottage which had been left to my mother and Aunt Margaret.

We had occasional holidays in Scotland; but I never went overseas until we started skiing holidays in 1960. For a couple of years, after the family summer holiday I used to stay with Mabel Tresider at Chyvarton and go to sea catching mackerel (mainly) with David Chapple. From the age of 17, I was allowed to take the Puffin out on my own; this was a milestone in my life at the time!

In order to qualify as a solicitor at that time, it was necessary to pass exams before having any practical experience of working in a solicitor’s office. So I went to law school for a year and fortunately passed all the exams. I then spent two years (1966-67) doing articles with a well known firm of Crossman, Block & Keith in Grays Inn; this was the same firm where my father had done his articles exactly 30 years earlier. I qualified as a solicitor in 1967; and to gain wider experience I went to another firm, now known as Pannones, which had offices close to St Paul’s in the city.

While working in London, I was sharing a flat with a group of friends from Cambridge. It was at a Christmas Party in 1969, that I met Helen Barnes. She was then working for a travel company, well known at the time, Murison Small. Sadly, my Father had died some six months earlier. But I lost no time introducing Helen to Blackwell and to Penberth in the summer of 1970.

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We were married in February 1971, in her home town of Hadleigh in Suffolk; and there were Penberth violets (supplied by Billy Thomas) in Helen’s hair in her going away outfit. We later spent four months enjoying an extended honeymoon at Penberth in the then dilapidated Penberth Cottage , which I had bought 18 months earlier, and where we now live. So our married life has come full circle in Penberth!

In August 1971, I joined the old-established and highly-regarded firm of St Austell solicitors Graham & Graham. There I shortly joined the partnership and remained a partner until I became a consultant and finally retired from the law in 2009. During this period of nearly 30 years the firm flourished and I held a number of interesting appointments. I served as trustee of several local landed estates and helped a number of important local medical and fund-raising charities on a pro bono public basis. I held the office of Under Sheriff of Cornwall for 25 years and was able to swear in Frances as High Sheriff of Cornwall, in 2000.

In 1972, we bought Carwinnick, a farmhouse and farm buildings with about 10 acres of land, just outside the village of Grampound mid-way between St Austell and Truro. We moved in November 1972, when our son Jos was just six weeks old. Emily was born in March 1974. Both our children tell us that they had an idyllic country childhood shared between their home at Carwinnick and Penberth which was an hour’s drive away, for holidays and occasional weekends.

Plate 35: The Briggs family in the 1990s. Emily, Helen, Jos and Favell.

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Jos was educated at Mount House, Eton and Oxford where he read modern languages at Magdalen.

He qualified as a solicitor in 1997, and worked for a leading city firm before moving first to New York and then Hong Kong. He married a fellow solicitor, Joelle Lau, in 2008, and they now have two children.

Emily went to St George’s School in Ascot before going up to Edinburgh university to read English. She went into journalism and spent some time working for BBC Radio before she married Dominic Myers in 2003. They have three boys and now live in San Franciso.

In 2000, we sold Carwinnick and moved back to Penberth Cottage, where we created a garden from the rough woodland on the steep slope above the house; it is often referred to as The Hanging Garden of Penberth. There are now over 70 different named camellias in the garden, many of them ‘home’ propagated.

In 2006, we had the opportunity to acquire Briar Cottage. Since this was the first dwelling to be occupied by the Favell family, we are fortunate still to own it a century later. Our grandparents certainly set quite a precedent moving from Sheffield all those years ago.

Plate 36: The Young Briggs (left). Jos, Joelle, Iselda and Archer. The Myers family. Dom and Emily with Oli, Jack and Max.

69

William Laurance(b.1998)

ThomasAudley(b.1998)

AbigailElizabeth(b.2009)

JoscelineLeanne(b.1993)

JoshuaKyle

(b.1991)

EllenAngel

(b.1999)

Kerry Robinson

Audley Mervyn(b.1969)

RachaelMary

(b.1968)

MikeNorman

NikkiKnott

NicholasHenry

(b.1966)

===

Mary Pinsent = Denis Archdale (d.2005)

MARY

Plate 37: Mary Pinsent in 1963.

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Mary writes: I know I am very lucky to have had a wonderful, wonderful childhood; whether it was at home at Ludbrook on the farm, or summer holidays spent at Penberth with cousins and other friends. For me, the farm and horses was all I was interested in, and after I left school (Totnes High School) I went to Bicton College, then known as The Devon School of Agriculture. I left in 1960, with a National Certificate in Agriculture. I worked at home on the farm for a couple of years before deciding I would like to go to New Zealand.

I distinctly remember setting out from Ludbrook at the beginning of the big freeze in 1963. The only way to get to Plymouth station was by tractor, and even then father was driving along the top of hedges at times, so deep were the snow drifts. I went by ship to NZ, taking five weeks which was a holiday in itself; except for the first week when I was very sea sick! I had an unforgettable 18 months in NZ, working on farms and always treated as one of the family.

After returning home to be a bridesmaid at Anne and John’s wedding, I went to Ireland on a camping holiday with my sister Jenny and a friend from NZ. While there we went to visit Denis Archdale who was the friend’s sister’s brother in law! Denis and I were engaged a month later (most of that time he was in Ireland and I was in Devon). Three months after that we were married. No doubt my parents were slightly concerned!

We spent our early married life at Castle Archdale in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, where our three children Nicholas, Rachael and Audley were born. We started up a holiday centre at our home on the shores of Lough Erne which had been an important base for flying boats during the Second World War. Known as RAF Castle Archdale it played an important role in submarine detection and convoy escort in the North Atlantic throughout the war.

As a result of all this the estate was left with acres of concrete by the shore which had been hangars and service areas. This later proved to be ideal for caravans etc, but not much else.

The holiday business took up more and more of our time and gave us less time for the farm, and as farming was the main love for both of us we decided to sell the holiday centre. So ended 400 years of Archdales at Castle Archdale, which is now known as Castle Archdale Country Park. We didn’t move very far, about three miles to a farm again, on the shores of Lough Erne almost overlooking our previous home.

The children all attended Castle Park prep school just outside Dublin. I was on the committee of the Fermanagh Harriers Pony Club from 1965-1980 and DC for the last few years. I also helped start up a RDA group for which I was chairman. Denis was a DL for Fermanagh, and High Sheriff for a year while we were at CA.

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In 1980, we were destined to move again, this time a bit further afield to Roseworthy in West Cornwall, where our farming changed from beef to mainly arable as land quality here was vastly improved from the wet clay soil of Fermanagh. The children all got involved in the farm whenever they could and were a great help. Nicholas and Audley both went to Truro School and then to Seale Hayne Agricultural College where they both obtained degrees.

Rachael went to Helston School and then did a course in agriculture at Duchy College. She is married to Mike Norman, who conveniently spent most of his Royal Navy life at Culdrose. They have two children, Josh and Josie. They are all hoping to emigrate to Australia and as Mike was born there it will be easier for them than most. In fact, Josh has already been living there for two years.

Plate 38: The Archdale family at Teds’ wedding. Nicholas Audley, Denis Mary and Rachael.

72

Nicholas is married to Nikki, who has two children, Daniel and Damian, from her previous marriage and they now have two more, William and Ellen. Having been involved in farming in Portugal for 7 years, then in Australia for 18 months, they are now in Florida but are leaving shortly for New Zealand.

Audley, who is now living at Roseworthy Barton, is married to Kerry and they have two children also, Thomas and Abigail.

Plate 40: The Nicholas Archdale Family with Libs, from left, Nicholas, William, Libs, Ellen and Nikki.

Plate 39: Rachael, Mike, and Jose Norman.

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In 2005, my world fell apart when Denis was killed in an accident on the farm aged 67. Enormous thanks are due to all my family who helped me carry on with my life without him.

Now having retired from farming which has been my whole life, I am grateful to Audley and Kerry who decided to come back to Cornwall after Denis died, so they are now living at Roseworthy and we have built an annexe for me. We share the garden but I do most of the work!

I look forward to my twice yearly walking holidays with Anne and Libs. We have so far completed the SW Coast path, 630 miles, and have just started the Welsh coast. I think we all wish we had started earlier in life, but hope we will be healthy enough to continue for a few more years yet.

Plate 41: Kerry and Audley Archdale (left) and Thomas and Abigail.

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FRANCES

EdwardJohn

Middlecott(b.2004)

LukeRichard

John(b.2008)

JemimaEmily

Morwenna(b.2006)

MarthaOliviaRose

(b.2004)

JagoRauffe

William(b.2007)

Joseph John

(b.2004)

HarryArthurTalbot

(b.2008)

SaskiaAliceFreya

(b.2005)

MarkSullivan

MorwennaBridgetFavell

(b.1972)

NigelPengelly

NatashaHorn

SerenaFrancesTamsin (b.1970)

MarkRichard

Middlecott(b.1968)

===

Frances Barbara Molyneux Favell= John Banham

Plate 42: Frances Favell in 1965.

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John writes: Frances was born in Bath on 6 February 1943. At the time her mother was living with her parents ; her grandfather was the director of Naval Dockyards at the Admiralty then based in Bath.

Her earliest memories are of the stress of wartime Britain: being told to ‘bequiet because Grandad is working’ and being put under the kitchen table during air raids. Both her mother’s beloved brothers, Frank and Bob, had been lost in submarines shortly before she was born20. The family later moved to Alverstoke in Hampshire, close to the submarine base in Gosport. When her father finally retired from the Navy to take over the management of HE Moss, the family moved to Orchard Mains in Woking where they were close to her Talbot grandparents.

Throughout this time, every Easter and Summer holiday was spent at Penberth. Frances remembers:

“Endless sunny days, with picnics at Sennen and Pedn and fishing for mackerel in the Puffin [a 15 ft diesel-engined fishing boat kept on the slip at Penberth].Granny Favell was very tolerant of having so many young children around her. She took us on outings in her large shooting brake on rainy days to Lamorna to buy ice cream cornets - which we were not allowed to lick, but had to bite. Wow. How it made your teeth hurt! The eldest five of us cousins all slept in one room in the white wing; we had lots of fun.”

Frances was 12, when the family came to live at Penberth. She was sent away to Downe House (where both Anne and Mary-Jane preceded her) and spent her time longing for the holidays:

“I was so excited to be living here. Then we had ponies, which was the icing on the cake for me! We went riding all over the cliffs above Pedn and Porthgwarra; and sometimes we would gallop along the beach at Sennen. Often Mummy would join us with a picnic lunch. There was lots of swimming and we went sailing in the Wild Duck, a clinker-built sailing boat which was modelled on those naval cadets used to learn to sail on at Dartmouth. Often, some of the cousins would be staying in their cottages, which made life even more fun. They were very happy teenage years”.

After leaving Downe House, Frances spent three months in Paris studying French and music before returning to study physics ‘A’ level at Dr Willey’s crammer in Carbis Bay, in order to take up a place she had been awarded to read medicine at Trinity College, Dublin.

However, Frances’ medical ambitions were frustrated by a bout of glandular fever and a skiing accident to her knee, compounded by an excessively good social life, during her second year at Trinity College in Dublin. She decided

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that physiotherapy at St Thomas’s Hospital in London was the next best thing to medicine. But, once again, her ambitions were thwarted. This time, it was another sort of illness: marriage!

Frances met John Banham in the summer of 1964, at the wedding at Trereife of one of her oldest friends, Sarita Le Grice. He was a ‘foreigner’ from the banks of the Fal; the only quality that commended him was that his Father was one of the (two) consultant ENT surgeons in Cornwall and he had operated on most of the residents of Penberth at one time or another. The couple became engaged in the late spring of 1965 and they were married by cousin Billy Favell on October 30, of the same year in St Buryan Church.

Their first home was a rented flat in Collingham Place in the less fashionable end of West Kensington, or more precisely Earls Court- where, in the early 1800s, Frances’ ancestor Sir William Ponsonby had his home at a “convenient distance from his duties as a Member of Parliament” (he later died leading the Heavy Cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo). After a short while we moved to Scarletts Close at Kiln Green near Twyford in Berkshire. It was here that our three children were born Mark in 1968, Serena in 1970, and Morwenna in 1972.

When Serena was two months old and immediately after Bridget’s wedding, we moved to Tanzania for a year, where I was working for McKinsey & Company. It was a fascinating experience living in Africa; and Frances worked as a volunteer in a leprosy rehabilitation centre. We visited the Ngorogora, Lake Manyara and Serengeti game parks (then largely unspoiled by tourism). The family loved all the watersports that were available.

We returned to Scaletts Close, where Morwenna was born in 1972, before spending two years in Washington DC, a fascinating contrast with East Africa. This was during the Watergate scandal.We were lucky enough to travel across to the Grand Canyon and skiing in the Rockies, spending Thanksgiving with friends in Boston and visiting new friends in Philadelphia. It was a special delight when Richard and Barbara came to stay and we took them to stay on the Maryland Eastern Shore, in a house lent by friends in Talbot County (my mother-in-law was justifiably proud of her Talbot ancestry). We returned home in 1975. After a couple of years, the family moved to Woottens, at Upper Woolhampton, in West Berkshire, not far from Bucklebury Common and Downe House! Our new home had a wonderful view over the Kennet valley and a lovely garden; there were stables and plenty of land for ponies for the children.

Mark went away to preparatory school at Ludgrove and subsequently to Eton; Serena and Morwenna both went initially to Downe House and then (somewhat abruptly!) to Cranborne Chase and St Anthony’s Leweston respectively.

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All three graduated with good honours degrees in their chosen subjects.

Mark read economics at Downing College, Cambridge, and embarked upon a career in the City as a lawyer, ending up as the general counsel for a new housing finance company, Castle Trust.

Serena graduated in fine art from Manchester Metropolitan University and is one of the very few of her contemporaries still following a career in photography, albeit childrens’ portraits rather than the striking Cornish landscapes which initially made her reputation.

Morwenna graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London and has been involved in famine prevention and relief working in Brussels for the European Union and for Action against Hunger, largely in sub-Saharan Africa.

After ten very happy years at Woottens, Frances and John returned to live at Penberth in the spring of 1987, when John became the Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry and her parents moved to Shell Cottage. Since then, like her father before her she has devoted herself to her family, Penberth and the county of Cornwall (in that order).

Plate 43: Mark, Serena and Morwenna Banham, circa 2000.

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She has welcomed her eight grandchildren and their parents to stay at Penberth as often as they wish: Mark and Natasha have three children - Edward (Teddy), Saskia and Harry; Serena and Nigel Pengelly have two boys, Joseph and Jago; while Morwenna and Mark (Sully) Sullivan now have three children - Martha, Jemima and Luke. She looks forward to their coming to stay on their own, which has always given her the greatest pleasure.

Pursuing her interest in healthcare - while living at Woottens, Frances had qualified to teach people with learning difficulties and served as a member of the Berkshire Community Health Council as well as of the Board of Visitors of Holloway Prison in London - she served for two terms as a non-executive director of the Cornwall Healthcare Trust. During this time she served as chairman of the fundraising committee for St Julia’s Hospice in Hayle, raising over £1 million for developments at this wonderful facility for the people of west Cornwall.

Finally, like her father and grandfather before her, Frances served as High Sheriff of Cornwall (2000/1) and as a magistrate for 20 years. In this capacity, she set up the mock trial competition for schools in Cornwall and served on the national steering committee for the competition; and she was elected to represent Cornwall on the Council of the Magistrates’ Association. She was a highly

Plate 44: The Banham grandchildren. From left, Jemima, Martha, Luke, Edward, Harry, Saskia, Jago and Joseph in 2009.

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regarded chairman of Family and Criminal Courts in West Cornwall for over a decade and was elected chairman of the family bench. She served for nine years as a member of the Cornwall Advisory Committee, responsible for recruiting magistrates. She was a governor of Truro School for 12 years and helped to set up the nationally-recognised White Gold project to prevent young people getting into trouble with the law.

She has been president of the Sennen Cove RNLI fundraising team for more than a decade. Following her retirement from the bench, she is a trustee and volunteer for a local charity helping bereaved children and their families, Penhaligon’s Friends. Frances was the President of the Royal Cornwall Agricultural Association in 2008, and of the Cornwall Garden Society from 2010 to 2012. She was the founding chairman of the Cornwall Victoria County History, during which time a number of books about Cornwall’s history were published; and she was a local trustee and subsequently Patron of the Porthcurno (Cable & Wireless) Telegraph Museum Trust. She was appointed MBE for her services to the community in Cornwall in 2011.

Plate 45: The Banham family celebrating John’s 70th birthday, in 2010.

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Frances has always counted it an enormous privilege to be living at Penberth and to follow in the footsteps of Granny and Grandfather Favell and her parents in cherishing the house and garden for future generations.

She is delighted that so many of Granny Favell’s descendants are making the effort to come to celebrate her wonderful legacy a century after she first visited the cove.

Plate 46: Frances after her Investiture in December 2011.

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JENNIFER (Jenny)

GeorgeWilliam(b.1997)

HectorLouis

(b.2007)

Fred Emanuel(b.2005)

Poppy Lolanda(b.2003)

Benjamin Christopher

(b.2004)

HarryJohn

(b.2002)

ThomasJames

(b.1999)

AmandaJane

(b.1976)

SophieObert de Thieuses

William Scott

Paul Christopher

(b.1972)

Julia Anne(b.1970)

==

Jennifer = Christopher Wreford- Brown

Plate 47: Jennifer Pinsent.

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Chris writes: Jenny was born in Penzance while mother was temporarily living at Penberth. The family lived in Birmingham during her early years where father worked as a solicitor after the war. In 1950, the family moved to Higher Ludbrook where they built up a thriving farm which is now farmed by brother Teds today, 60 years on.

It was a happy life as a child on the farm and Jenny loved helping with the animals. It was always eventful even if there were downside incidents like being chased by the gander and having to take refuge in the chicken house to await mother’s rescue some three hours later. Riding was an important part of her childhood and she was very active in the Pony Club and loved her hunting, particularly on Dartmoor.

Every summer holidays while Granny Favell was alive was spent at Penberth with the cousins. These were wonderful holidays where it never seemed to rain. Days were spent outside either playing in the garden, rock climbing at the cove or excursions to Pedn or Sennen.

Mary, Jenny and Libs all went to Totnes High School. It was a long day leaving the farm at 7.30am and to catch a bus and returning after 5.30pm. Jenny preferred sports to the academics! On leaving school she did three years business studies and law at Plymouth. After working for a while in London, which she did not enjoy, she spent a year in Jamaica and Barbados. In Jamaica time was spent helping her uncle ranching his cattle on horseback.

Jenny married Chris Wreford-Brown in Ermington Church on 29 March 1969. His family home was near Dartmouth and they had known each other since children, through their love of riding and Pony Club activities. He had joined the Royal Navy in 1963, and was just starting out in a career in the submarine service. As a result the first few months were spent living in a small cottage in Noss Mayo very close to the water’s edge. This was their first of ten homes they lived in during the next ten years, which included houses in Greenwich, Gosport, Chatham and Faslane in Scotland.

Jenny found that she had to give up riding for the next ten years as the family moved around the country. Amber, Jenny’s first golden retriever, arrived shortly after their marriage and was to become a loyal and devoted friend to her and a resolute protector of children’s prams. Julia was born in 1970, and the family settled in married quarters at Rhu, near Helensburgh and the Clyde Submarine Base before moving along the Clyde in 1972 to the first house they owned at Kilcreggan.

This was a very run down, large Victorian building which needed a lot of attention, but it was only a few yards from the water with spectacular views down

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the Clyde. It came with a massive rhubarb patch and a large garden in which Jenny created fantastic displays of daffodils and a productive vegetable garden. It was close to a tennis club and the local Scottish church had very long sermons! Shortly after moving here, Paul was born.

Amanda was born in 1976, and by 1980 fed up with all the house moving Jenny and Chris decided to move to provide stability for the family and stop the steady change of schools. Jenny was able to start riding again and the three children soon had their own ponies. In addition, Jenny started her small holding, which is still going strongly today. Her flock of pedigree polled Dorset sheep began as a couple of ewes, and she was very successful rearing young calves and the occasional pig. As soon as Amanda started full time school, Jenny was able to start hunting with the Dartmoor Foxhounds again.

During the children’s school years Jenny, Chris and the children together with their constant companion Amber, always looked forward to two weeks holiday at Penberth in the summer holidays. A favourite spot, despite the challenge of getting young children and all the paraphernalia there safely, was Pedn. The whole family have fond memories of many happy times there.

Chris was away for much of this time, meaning that Jenny had to look after everything very much on her own. A particularly worrying tome for her was in 1982 during the Falkands War when Chris was deployed down south in his submarine and news of activities was very sparse. Jenny was as surprised as anyone to hear on the BBC News on 2 October 1982, that HMS Conqueror had sunk the Argentine cruiser Belgrano.21 In 1988, Jenny and Chris decided to

Plate 48: The Wreford- Browns at Penberth circa 1995. George, Thomas and Harry Scott with Jenny and Chris.

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move house again to be closer to Dartmoor. Since then Moorpark has been their home, right on the edge of the moor. Jenny has been fortunate to hunt regularly on Dartmoor and enjoy helping the family pursue their equestrian activities. Chris, left the Royal Navy in 1995 to work at Paignton Zoo for 15 years. He, like Jenny, enjoys his hunting with the Britannia beagles. They both enjoy their large garden, looking after the animals and spending time with their seven grandchildren; there is never a dull moment!

Julia qualified and worked as a food technologist before marrying William in 1994. She now spends her time helping William on the farm, working part-time at a local visitor attraction, looking after her four sports-mad sons and when she can, like her mother, hunting on Dartmoor;

Paul after his degree at Exeter University, followed by a MSc is a partner in his own marketing company, specialising in digital solutions for Financial Services. He married Sophie in 2000 and they have three children;

Amanda, after a first degree in Equine Science, taught equine studies before qualifying as a McTimony practioner and then obtaining a degree as a Chartered Physiotherapist.

As well as working for the NHS, she runs her own business treating animals. She also manages to find the time to pursue her hobby of eventing.

Plate 49: The Wreford-Brown family in 2012. Back row, from left, Paul, Sophie, Chris, George, Thomas, William, front row, Hector, Fred, Poppy, Jenny, Amanda, Julia, Benjamin and Harry.

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BRIDGET

William EdwardHaswell(b.2004)

Tonsley RichardLlewelyn(b.2009)

SorrelVictoria(b.2012)

BryherElizabeth(b.2010)

AliceMargaret(b.2006)

Victoria Shelley

Tristan Llewelyn(b.1973)

RennyHenderson

Demelza Alice

(b.1971)

==

Bridget Alathea = David Hugh-Jones

Plate 50: Bridget Favell in 1968.

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Bridget writes: My early childhood at Penberth was idyllic, and one of enormous freedom and happiness, spent largely playing in the cove and garden, climbing rocks, long walks and expeditions, cousins to play with during the summer, ponies, swimming, fishing and wonderful trips in the boat, often taking a picnic and swimming from the boat.

I simply loved my school in Penzance, so boarding school was not a happy time and I was permanently home-sick, but when I left school I spent a year at home accompanying my parents during my father’s time as High Sheriff, followed by an exotic four months in India.

Reality set in when I trained as a nursery nurse, working in the very poorest areas of London with abandoned children and orphans, an extremely thorough residential two years in a council run training college which has stood me in good stead ever since.

This was followed some years later by a Home Office training in social work, specialising as a child care officer.

In 1970, I married David in St Levan Church, going away from the reception by boat from the cove - and we moved to the Republic of Ireland where we established and ran an oyster farm in County Cork. We started married life semi-camping for a year in the top of a very draughty barn, whilst renovating a long-time empty cottage alongside.

For the first year we had no running water, electricity, drains, telephone or neighbours, and ten years later we still had no running water or neighbours, although we did by then have electricity and a telephone line.

MorwennaHarriet(b.2010)

AmeliaPeggy

(b.2007)

OttilieElisabeth

Favell(b.2013)

JasperFrank

(b.2010)

GeorgeTimothy(b.2012)

Timothy Parker

CarenzaBridie

(b.1978)

Lydia Allen

Rupert Favell

(b.1977)

==

Bridget= David Hugh-Jones (cont.)

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It was a very busy, interesting and exciting time, as we brought up our family and David developed the only known system in the world for breeding native oysters in the semi-controlled conditions of artificial breeding ponds. Gradually the enterprise grew into a thriving concern employing up to 25 people and with a good deal of interest from all over the world.

All our four children were born in Cork, and as there was no pre-school provision at all in Ireland at that time, I started a nursery school/playgroup which I ran for several years with our own children as the first pupils! I became a governor and closely involved with their primary school, which was unique in Ireland because of being non-sectarian.

We returned to Penberth in 1981, for a variety of reasons, and settled in the Thatched Cottage, with David commuting to Cork on a weekly basis. Our children all went to school locally and for the next 16 years or so I spent most of my time driving round Cornwall ferrying them and their friends to all the things that children do, which included a lot of music and sport.

There were lots of walks and expeditions, swimming, surfing, rock climbing, searching for treasure in the rocks and cliffs, barbecues on the beach, fishing and adventures with the boat, musical weekends, working and playing in the garden, lots of bonfires, rugby and cricket matches, as well as plenty of school activities.

I was a governor for 15 years of Cape Cornwall Comprehensive School, which they attended, and also on the Council of the Woodward school in Penzance which Demelza went to.

I have always been closely associated with St Levan Church, as a member of the PCC as well as churchwarden, and was Lay Chair of the Penwith Deanery Synod for 14 years and am still a member of the Truro Diocesan Synod and the Bishop’s Strategy Group for Spirituality. I was also chairman of the Friends of the International Musicians’ Seminar, Prussia Cove, for sixteen years, organising twice-yearly seminars for international chamber musicians, with 14 local concerts annually.

Life changed gear again for me as the family grew up and left home. Demelza graduated from Cambridge University in Natural Sciences, then gained a PhD in crystallography from University College, London, and after a stint doing research, including teaching at Cambridge, changed tack altogether and became a Verger at St Paul’s Cathedral then Norwich Cathedral, and is now a licensed Reader in the Diocese of Exeter.

Rupert graduated from Bristol, then won a scholarship for a year’s post-graduate research in the USA before settling in Ireland, where he grows organic vegetables, runs farmers’ markets and is starting a micro-brewery.

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Tristan graduated from Bristol University and then joined David in the oyster business, which he is gradually (and brilliantly) taking over. Carenza graduated from Edinburgh University, then worked as a classical music journalist, working first with Classic fm magazine, then as a classical music editor at the Southbank Centre in London, subsequently working freelance as a classical music writer and editor.

Plate 52: Tristan Hugh- Jones family with Vickie, Sorrel, Bryher and Tonsley.

Plate 51: Demelza with Alice and William after her lay licensing at Exeter Cathedral, and Rupert Hugh-Jones with Lydia, Amelia, Jasper and Ottilie.

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When my parents died, they left Shell Cottage to us, and for the next 14 years I ran it as a house of prayer and retreat, providing a quiet place for people to come and retreat, as well as arranging Quiet Days, study days, pilgrimages, prayer groups etc throughout the year.

It became extremely popular, not least because of its stunning location, and was used by people from all over the world. It was very rewarding and worthwhile and eventually became a full-time occupation for me, welcoming different groups and individuals who were all looking for peace and quiet, as well as all the associated administration.

In 1998, I was made a Lay Canon of Truro Cathedral and then in 2001 a Chapter Canon, becoming one of the two non-ordained members of a small team responsible for the overall governance of the Cathedral. I was appointed as an examining chaplain for those seeking ordination within the diocese, and, more recently, also as a selector in the Ministry Division of the Archbishops’ Council for those attending a Bishops’ Advisory Panel.

In 2010, we moved to Shell Cottage. So my life has been a geographical progression down the valley, from my childhood at Foxstones, right down to the cove via the Thatched Cottage in the middle. To our delight, Tristan and Vickie moved to the Thatched Cottage, so their three children, Tonsley, Bryher and Sorrel, are the fifth generation of the family in Penberth. The rest of the family are here a good deal - Demelza, with William and Alice, come down regularly from their home near Exeter; Rupert and Lydia and their three children, Amelia, Jasper and Ottilie come as often as they can from Ireland; Carenza and Tim, with Morwenna and George, have recently bought a cottage in Treen so are down here for much of the time - so we are proud and delighted that the fifth generation of the family are building their own childhood memories of golden days at Penberth, as well as becoming deeply rooted here.

Plate 53. Carenza and Tim Parker with Morwenna and George.

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JANE ELIZABETH (Libs)Libs writes: I was born in Birmingham on 4 March 1948, but cannot remember

living there or at Penberth. I feel very fortunate to have always enjoyed being at Higher Ludbrook in Devon - the only home I have had since 1950.

When we first moved to the farm, most of the 98 acres was let on an annual basis, there were chickens nesting in the kitchen, and light and power provided by a petrol generator in the yard. Mother and Father worked extremely hard to build up the farm and provide us with a wonderful home where I loved playing outside and riding ponies.

The highlight of the summers was our trip to stay at Penberth, leaving Father at home to look after the farm. It must have been quite an invasion for Granny Favell to have 11 grandchildren there at once but it was a great treat for us. Father had first holiday in about 1960 when he took Anne, Mary, Jenny, Teds and me skiing in Switzerland with Aunt Mary, Mary Jane, Favell and David where we met up with Aunt Barbara and Uncle Richard, Frances, Bridget and Julia. This time leaving mother to look after the farm.

Plate 54: Libs and Clydehound, three-time winner of the ladies race at the Four Burrow Point-to-Point.

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After school I went to Seale Hayne Agricultural college for two years and then back to work on the farm, where father made me a partner. I continued to enjoy riding and went hunting, point-to -pointing and eventing. I couldn’t have done it without my wonderful girl groom - my mother!

In 1986, Mother, Father and I moved down the hill to Warren Cottage and I went out gardening for people; which I still do and help a little on the farm. When we first moved we added part of a field to the garden; so Father and Mary and I used to go on garden visiting trips returning home with the car packed to the gunnels with new plants. Now Anne, Mary and I have walking holidays and completed the SW Coast Path walk in 2012 - it only took us six years! Now we have started on Wales and I thoroughly enjoy it.

Mother died in 2010, and we miss her very much. But Father and I are lucky that Teds and Sue live just up the road. Jenny comes to visit us once a week (usually bringing eggs) and Anne and Mary often come to stay.

I have 12 nieces and nephews and 24 great nieces and nephews and of course six cousins and their families, so I am very much looking forward to being part of celebrating a century of Favells and Penberth in May 2013.

Plate 55: From left; Mary, Libs and Anne.

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David = Annabel King

Lucy Alice = Simon Jackson Harry Charles David Aidan William = Zoë Andrews (b.1974) (b.1977) (b.1984)

Woody David Hector Geoffrey Jago Harry Ayre Alistair Peony Olivia(b.2004) (b.2006) (b.2007) (b.2008) (b.2013)

Plate 56: David Briggs circa 1970.

DAVID

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David writes: I was born in 1947, 4 ½ years after Favell, as Aidan had been in POW camps in Italy and elsewhere for several years.

As a child growing up at Blackwell, I was involved in all the farm activities and started several new ones; I kept my own bees from the age of nine and converted a barn into a mushroom-growing enterprise. There was always a small shoot and fishing in the river, so life was never dull! Summer holidays were all at Penberth, and I fished with David Chappell for several summers and then fished commercially during the Cambridge Long Vacations.

I went away to prep school (Lockers Park, like Richard, Teddy and all the Favell grandsons) and then Eton, where (uniquely, almost certainly) I kept bees in my bedroom. I then won a scholarship to Cambridge and went to Trinity Hall, (following another family tradition) and read engineering. Career prospects for engineers were pretty dismal at the time, so I qualified as a chartered accountant, but worked for engineering and manufacturing companies for most of my life, most notably for Cadbury-Schweppes.

In 1974, I married Annabel King. She is the fifth of seven children of Charles and Ursula King. Charles, like David, was an engineer. After school at Cheltenham Ladies College, she worked in London where she and David met. She loves theatre, opera and ballet, but above all she is an adoring mother and granny.

We lived in Leicestershire for 10 years, where all our three children were born. Our house - The Old Rectory in Mowsley - was a large Georgian pile that was renowned as the coldest house in Leicestershire. In 1985, we moved back to Blackwell, and have now lived there for almost 30 years - just about as long as Mary did.The house has changed little - it still has no central heating - and always seems to be full of children.

We still keep the herd of pedigree Herefords that Mary bred and showed so successfully for many years. They still win prizes, but we don’t go to many shows now. We have built up the shoot on the farm; but the main purpose of the farm now seems to be as a giant quad-bike track for the Jackson grandchildren.

Plate 57: Granny Bull’s Legacy.

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We have three children: Lucy, Harry and Aidan who has become the family genealogist (along with his Uncle) and has made an invaluable - if unknowing - contribution to this history.

Lucy was born in May, 1975 and spent the first ten years of her life in Leicestershire. She went to Godstowe school at 8; followed by Wycombe Abbey, then ended up doing her final A level year at Dr Challoners in Bucks when the bad behaviour got too much for Wycombe to put up with (there are striking parallels with the school careers of at least two second cousins).

After working for Richard Branson for a while, Lucy embarked on a nine-year stint at the BBC ending up as head of strategy for the corporation. She married Simon Jackson in 2003; and they moved out of London to a cottage at Blackwell at about the same time.

The four boys are all mad surfers and all their holidays are likely to be spent in Cornwall for the foreseeable future.

Plate 58: From left; Harry, Aidan, Lucy, Annabel with David standing circa 1990.

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Harry was born in 1977. He has fond memories of early summers at Penberth. Easter egg hunts in the garden (Dad’s Cadbury job made them legendary); rock climbing and crab-hunting for hours in the cove; damming streams at Porthchapel; and even attempting the world’s longest daisy chain with Morwenna on Briar Cottage lawn. Harry thanks the Favells for his musical gene. He was a chorister at St George’s chapel, Windsor Castle, from age seven, and performed Liszt’s 2nd piano concerto at Eton (terrifying).

He founded a chamber choir, Voce, in London, in 2003. It recently performed with the Rolling Stones at the O2. And he loves few things more than playing songs round the piano with a few friends after supper. Harry foolishly broke with Cambridge family tradition and went to Oxford, where he got a first in Psychology. He followed two Favell cousins to McKinsey & Co before starting a health drinks company, Firefly.

He’s now an investor in start-up companies, living in London, clocking up outrageous numbers of air miles, and retreating to Blackwell to recuperate as often as possible. But if there’s one place in the world that feels most like home,

Plate 59: The Jacksons: Simon with, from left, Jago, Ayre, Hector and Woody.

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that conjures up the richest memories, it’s still the little patch of the planet between Lamorna and Pedn.

Aidan was born in 1984, the year before the family moved back to Blackwell, so that is the only home he has ever known. Summers at Penberth were filled with fishing and rock-climbing and almost inevitably punctuated by a trip to Penzance General Hospital for some play-induced injury.

He was keen on shooting from a young age, though his aim never seems to have improved, and he also sang so much as a child that he too was swiftly dispatched to St George’s School, Windsor where he sang as a chorister.

Aidan kept singing through Eton and at Durham University, where he studied Japanese and Philosophy. Singing carried him seamlessly into student theatre, which occupied the majority of his spare time and through which he met his future wife Zoë Andrews, from Beverley, East Yorkshire.

Although offered a bursary at 16 by the RAF to become a pilot, by 22 he was too tall to fit most ejector-seats and too argumentative for the forces, so he trained in law and was called to the Bar in 2009, where he has practised as a commercial barrister ever since. Aidan and Zoë were married in Durham Castle in April 2012, and live in a flat in Finsbury Park.

They both still sing, Aidan is a hopeless but eager member of Hackney Rugby

Club and they have a red tandem which takes them on holiday now and again.

Plate 60: Harry Briggs, and Aidan and Zoë Briggs.

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JULIA

Julia Alice = Robin Bryant

Rebecca Sophie Rachel Jessica Frank Ingram Favell

(b.1978) (b.1980) (b.1981)

Plate 61: Julia Favell in 1967.

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Robin (mostly) writes: Julia was six years old when the family moved to Penberth. She had a very happy childhood there, in an idyllic location - playing in the gardens and on the rocks at the cove, her father Richard teaching her to swim, to ride, to fish and to sail.

This existence led to a life long love of nature and outdoor life, and a near necessity to be near the sea. Following her primary education in Penzance Julia followed Frances and Bridget to Downe House. The school had (and still has) a strong music department, and Julia’s education there led eventually to a life teaching music all over the world.

In 1970, Julia graduated from the Royal College of Music, and in 1971 gained her PGCE following a year’s study at Homerton College, Cambridge. For two years she taught at a sixth form college and grammar school in Surrey, and then took a gap year in Latin America.

Julia travelled extensively in Argentina, based with Richard Favells’ prep school friend Ronald Dunn and family on their estancia in La Pampa. She assisted at a school in a remote village high in the Peruvian Andes for two months, and then moved to Chile shortly after the 1974 coup.

An attempt to change sterling resulted in her being bribed to take documents regarding the Pinochet regime out of the country. Fortunately she avoided arrest. In Belize she worked on a Mayan archaeological site for three months.

On Julia’s return to the UK she attended a course in the history of fine and decorative arts at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). The following year she taught the clarinet at Kings College Prep School, Cambridge, lectured at the Wallace Collection and researched ancient musical instruments at the V&A.

In 1976, Julia married Robin Bryant, and returned to Welch Estate, the plantation which Robin then managed in Malaysia. Julia loved the tropics and immersed herself in all aspects of estate life. She and Robin trekked in the jungle (on one occasion getting lost for two days).

Occasionally Robin flew them across to the east coast, where they slept on the beach and watched turtles hatching In Kuala Lumpur, she had the opportunity to play at a number of concerts at the British Council and Goethe Institute, and thoroughly enjoyed accompanying a performance of West Side Story at the university.

In 1978, they moved to the Solomon Islands, where Robin managed Unilever’s properties. An idyllic bevy of coral islands dotted throughout the archipelago where cocoa and coconuts were grown, and cattle grazed. Julia trained the cattle

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boys to ride in preparation for the independence (from the British) celebrations in 1978. The dances, drumming and feasts were a great success, and afterwards the islanders asked if they could have independence the following year also? Rebecca was born in Truro, and spent her first year in the Solomons, her favourite babysitter being a scar-faced cannibal.

In 1980, the next move was to the Philippines, where Robin was employed on an Australian project. Manila has a strong tradition of the arts, the grandeur of the cultural centre and display of wealth being in stark contrast to the abject poverty of the provinces. Julia became a member of the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra, and gave a recital on the famous bamboo organ. Rachel was born in 1980 in Newlyn, and Frank there 12 months and four days later.

Six months afterwards the family moved to Tanzania, where Robin was employed by GTZ on a project covering the coastal region. Home was on a beautiful Greek farm just outside Dar es Salaam. Living in Tanzania in the 1980s was either marvellous or horrific. Julia has memories of searching for a doctor in the hospital, carrying a nine month old Frank, whose eyes were the grey colour of a dying sheep’s.

When three year old Rachel had amoebic dysentery she was turned away by the doctor as it was a public holiday. Treating her at home with sips of water and sugar and salt was nerve racking for a mother. Rachel lost one of her three stone in five days. Julia returned to Chynance with the children for recuperation from five cases of malaria within the family during the first nine months there.

However, when all the family were well, there was so much to enjoy. The country is majestic, the people friendly with a good sense of humour; fresh fruit and fish were in abundance. The children would be bundled into the back of the Land Rover and the family would drive for 12 hours to visit the game parks. Once the vehicle broke down in the middle of Serengeti, hundreds of miles from help, and the children passed the time by watching meandering giraffe from a tree normally frequented by lions.

Rebecca found it hilarious when their canoe on the Rufiji River was chased by hippopotami, making the animals more angry by standing up and clapping her small hands in delight. Likewise a charge by elephants in the Ruaha National Park towards the vehicle accelerated to the sound of Rachel’s cries of alarm. On these excursions Frank and the girls often travelled lying on the roof of the Land Rover; once a passing truck driver warned Robin that a pride of lions rested around the next bend!

Julia taught at the Conservatory of Music and the International School of Tanganyika, which the girls attended. There was much cultural entertainment of a high quality especially music and theatre. Although they were having a good

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education the children were growing into little white Africans, and Robin made the unpopular decision that the family should return to Penberth, and remember that Granny was white.

In 1989, Robin and Julia left for Borneo, where Robin worked on a transmigration scheme, covering 25,000 hectares. As the project was 18 hours up the Mahakam River by boat, the children boarded at Millfield. Holidays were spent in Kalimantan.

There and at the next post - Sarawak, also Borneo, there were treks into the jungle, and Hash House Harrier runs - passing through pretty villages, the villagers taking up the call of “on on!”, up and down hills, through rice fields and jungle fringes. Frank aged nine was told by Julia to remain with her on the first run. He was not seen again until the finish, having come in near the front, and thereafter known as “the bullet” by the Chinese runners. The female members of the family hated running, but all became addicted to these twice weekly excursions.

Travelling through the forest by river, Robin and Julia were always welcomed by the Dyaks to their long houses. On one occasion the village elder, earlobes down to his shoulders raised his glass of “tuak” (rice wine) and shouted “down the hatch!” in impeccable English.

The indigenous Ibans and Dyaks were colourful people, with their brightly coloured loin cloths and intricate bead decorations. Rachel and Frank hated their skin being pinched and their fair hair patted by the curious crowds who had never seen white people before. Sarawak has a very strong tradition in classical music - initiated by Raja Brook’s wife Sylvia; and Julia played and performed a great deal, with the many Chinese and Malays who had also graduated at the London music colleges.

By contrast, Papua New Guinea, where Robin carried out consultancies in 1996 -97, was a far cry from peaceful Sarawak. The people were uncivilised and aggressive, sometimes violent. The coast and countryside is beautiful, and the climate pleasant. When a minister was shot outside Robin’s office, Julia decided that it was time for her to leave!

During the late 1990s Robin worked in Jakarta, Indonesia. Julia taught at a local music school and the British International School. Robin travelled extensively in Java and also Sumatra, visiting many transmigration schemes, and later managed plantations for Socfin in Medan, whilst Julia taught at the university, Indonesian being the instruction medium.

The unfinished wanderings of Julia and Robin led them back to Tanzania and Kwamtili cocoa plantation which Robin purchased. It is in an extremely

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beautiful location. From the German farm house there are views of the Usumbara mountains, and the sound of drumming rises from the village below. A haven for bird and butterfly enthusiasts. The cocoa is manufactured in Switzerland.

In 2000, Robin built their present house above four kilometres of empty and stunningly beautiful beach, south of Dar es Salaam, which the young enjoy visiting. Rebecca continues to think of Tanzania as home. Julia has resumed her teaching at the International School of Tanganyika.

Our three children have all made their independent way in the world.

Rebecca studied at Chelsea Art College, before spending two far too adventurous years in Australia. On her return to London she studied at the London College of Journalism which led to the start of Rebecca’s life in the media, working firstly with the BBC for ten years, and now based in Dubai.

Recent events include stage managing the opening and closing of the Olympic and Para Olympic Games and the Eurovision Song Contest in Slovenia. She and Jon Vint became engaged in the New Year 2013.

Rachel was a member of the Cornwall Symphony Orchestra, playing the double bass. She graduated in Education from Lancaster University. Her teaching experience was at a tough primary school in Kennington. She has taught

Plate 62: Rebecca (left) and Rachel, in 2012.

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at International Primary Schools in Cyprus, Dubai and is now in her sixth year in Hong Kong. Rachel continues to play and coach netball. At Millfield both her netball and hockey teams reached the national finals. In 2012, she represented Hong Kong in the Asian Netball Championships in Sri Lanka.

Frank played with the junior rugby Millfield team when they had an unbeaten tour of South Africa. Whilst at school he played hockey and rugby for Somerset, and junior cricket for Cornwall. Since graduating in Business Studies at UWIC Frank has worked in Latin America, collecting gems in Brazil for sale in London, teaching English in Colombia, participating in the rituals of shamans in Peru. He is fluent in Portuguese and Spanish. Now in London Frank manages several bands, organises events at various venues, and does sound engineering. He plays guitar, sings and writes lyrics.

Plate 63: Frank Bryant in 2012.

Plate 64: The Bryants in Tanzania at Christmas in 2012.

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Teds = Sue Hughes

Laura Elizabeth Joss Richard Harry Edward

(b.1989) (b.1991) (b.1991)

Plate 65: Teds Pinsent.

JOHN EDWARD (TEDS)

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Teds writes: I was born in Penzance, on 1 February 1950, shortly before family moved to Higher Ludbrook.

So I have only a few fleeting snapshot memories of summer holidays at Penberth. Breakfast at Foxstones surrounded by assembled company of sisters and cousins with Granny Favell presiding, like Mother Hen, slicing up a banana for me. Wow! Banana, what a treat! I remember, too, her giving me a pair of ivory hair brushes, not so politically correct now but still much treasured, if less needed. I recall watching Tom Angwin feed the pigs and ‘helping’ him with honey in the gatehouse. Back home at Ludbrook asking “Mummy, why are you crying?” when Granny Favell had died, then wishing I hadn’t.

There were still many holidays and happy times to come at Penberth. Later, after Aunt May died, at Briar Cottage, and often with the Briggs’s. I remember catching my first fish in the Puffin and then stepping on it in my excitement; forced marches to Pedn and getting scared on the path down to the beach; ice cream at Sennen and being told off by my sisters for reciting inappropriaterhymes in the car with Uncle Richard on the way back; long days spent at the Cove with family and so many great characters.

Growing up on the farm at Ludbrook was a wonderful time. Looking back, Mother and Father were obviously so happy and enthusiastic in their new venture and being newcomers to farming had a positive and pioneering spirit. I remember Father drying grass on tripods to make hay then giving that up and becoming one of the first locally to make silage.

Back then, harvest involved long hours and tiring manual work, cutting the corn with a binder, stooking the sheaves then building them into a rick and then the excitement of the threshing machine arriving. How farming has changed - then there would often be eight or ten people working together in a field and looking forward to a break for tea and a chat and stories to tell.

Horses and ponies featured strongly in all our lives with pony club rallies, shows, gymkhanas, and hunting. One of my earliest memories of hunting is riding a pony called Trixie bareback with Mother sitting behind me hanging on to me. As we cantered down the Western Beacon on Dartmoor, all I could hear was my Mother laughing as I slid nearer and nearer Trixie’s ears.

I first went to primary school Lambs Park in Plympton. We would drop the milk churns off on the milk stand on the main road and catch a train from Wrangaton Station - where the porter taught us the unsuitable rhymes that I repeated to Uncle Richard. I followed him to Lockers Park, in the footsteps of Uncle Teddy and Favell and David. I used to catch the train to Paddington and be

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met by Cuffy White, an old friend of Mother’s, who escorted me across London to Euston to catch the train to Boxmoor.

David, two years older than me, was my mentor and guide and explained everything to me. I recall long walks along the canal towpaths on cold, misty Sundays and occasional days out at Blackwell with Aunt Mary and Uncle Aidan.

Then I went to Winchester in same house as Father and his Father before him.Granny Pinsent lived nearby, so I could escape there for tea and lardy cake; and Anne and John lived in the Cathedral Close. I used to walk through the war memorial cloisters every day where, along with 600 or so others, are remembered the lives of Uncle Teddy and two Pinsent great uncles, Pip and Laurance, who died in the Great War.

I never gave it too much thought at the time; but it is a beautiful, sombre monument with a sobering tale to tell. Well worth a visit, particularly in the spring when the daffodils sent from Penberth are in flower.

I left school at Christmas 1967, and went to New Zealand for nine months where I worked on a sheep farm belonging to Jock Macaulay, a friend of Denis, and spent a month travelling. I loved NZ and vowed to return as soon as I could; but I have never been back.

On my return to Britain in September 1968, I went up to Pembroke College, Oxford, to read Agricultural and Forest Sciences. The pinnacle of my Oxford career was winning the Oxford v Cambridge ploughing match.

After university, I ran a farm at Harford on the edge of Dartmoor, sheep and beef, Galloway suckler cows, before returning home to farm with Mother and Father and Libs.

Some years later I went to a fancy dress party in Modbury at our local vets, dressed as a gorilla. There I met a black cat with long swishy tail who turned out to be a GP from over the border in Bodmin called Sue Hughes. I lost my car keys (gorillas have no pockets) and had to walk home at 2am still dressed as gorilla.About a year later, in September 1985, the gorilla married the cat.

Sue continued to work in Bodmin for a few months before moving to work as an assistant in a single handed practice in Wembury. Later she specialised in genito-urinary medicine and now is an associate specialist at Derriford Hospital, Plymouth. We have three children.

Laura was born in 1989. A keen and successful dancer, at 16 she went to Arts Ed School in Tring and then Laine Theatre Arts in Epsom. But after a year

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she decided it was not the career for her, went to Kingston University to study Business with Law, got a first and is now a trainee accountant in London.

Harry and Joss were born in 1991. Harry has been keen on farming ever since he was old enough to look out of his pram. Now in his final year at Cirencester studying agriculture, he has spent all his summer holidays and spare time in the last few years working for a large contracting business near Banbury in Oxfordshire, and is planning to come home on the farm in a year or two.

Joss has had a lot of fun playing rugby, for school, club and county; captained unbeaten Devon under 16 team. Currently in final year at Edinburgh doing engineering, he is about to embark on a two year teaching scheme called Teach First in Newcastle but has yet to decide on a career.

Plate 66: Teds and Sue with Laura, Harry and Joss.

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EPILOGUE: PENBERTH 90 YEARS ONFor 15 years after Vernon Favell’s death the Favell Estate remained intact.

But in the period between September 1950 and October 1952, all the farms, farmhouses and agricultural land at Treen owned by Granny Favell were sold to the sitting agricultural tenants; and following her death in September 1954 several other cottages and plots of land were sold by her executors.

When Richard Favell moved to Penberth in 1955, it was agreed that Granny Favell’s executors would transfer a substantial part of the remaining Favell landholdings to the National Trust (NT). The land and properties transferred included all the holdings on the west side of the valley, including the cove and Boscean Farm, and a number of cottages on the eastern side. After what are described as ‘lengthy’ negotiations, it was agreed that the Favells would retain ownership of the principal homes and gardens in the valley, along with the two houses opposite the gatehouse.

The agreement with the National Trust, concluded at the end of 1957, imposed restrictive covenants in respect of the retained dwellings and land and all the property transferred to the Trust: there were to be no building works without the permission of the NT or the executors respectively; no tents or caravans were permitted; there were to be no signs or advertisements nor tea gardens, hotels or beer taverns; and there was to be no official car park.

In other words, Penberth and in particular the cove was to be protected from the development that has ruined much of the coastline of West Cornwall “for everyone, for ever” in the words of the National Trust mission statement.

Fifty years after Richard Favell and the Trust entered into this far-sighted agreement, the results are plain for all to see.

When a childhood friend of Teddy and Margaret Favell, who had last visited Penberth in the 1930s, came to lunch with Frances and walked down to the cove to pay a call on Richard and Barbara Favell who were then living at Shell Cottage his instantaneous and delighted reaction on first seeing the cove again was that “It has not changed at all; it is just as I remember it before the War.” [The late Lord (Charles) Denman served in the DCLI and was decorated for his devotion to duty and his men during the campaign in North Africa; he died in 2012, after a long and distinguished career serving Britain’s commercial interests in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Gulf]

So a century after the first Favell visited Penberth, many of the homes in the valley are still in the hands of Granny Favell’s direct descendants, who take their

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responsibilities to the local community seriously. Many homes and gardens have been improved and extended in recent years.

Moving down the valley towards the cove:

Julia and her family base themselves at Chynance when they are in England; they have grown vines which produce wine for sale to the cognoscenti - Cornish wine is enjoying something of a renaissance;

As has already been described (in Chapter 2), the gardens at Foxstones have been substantially extended and restored after the inevitable neglect of the war years, first by Richard Favell and then by Frances. The house and most of the outbuildings have been re-roofed for the first time, using Delabole slate;

Chmoy Mill has been restored to its original appearance, and the mill machinery removed and donated to a local museum. Before the Banham family moved down to Penberth in 1987, Chmoy Mill was the setting for many a summer holiday - including during the Fastnet race in 1979, in which John was crewing in a yacht which was diverted to Milford Haven having been caught out in a hurricane!

Favell purchased Penberth Cottage (formerly known as the Old Abbey) in 1969 as he has already described. He has substantially extended and improved both the house and the garden. This was also the site of a carpenters’ workshop used by Father Bob George and his three sons who had done much of the maintenance work on Granny Favell’s estate;

Boscean Mill, also known as King Athelstan’s Mill (presumably because of the reference in the Doomsday Book), was close to collapse by the end of the 20th

century; many of the lintels and dressed granite had been used for other housing improvements in the valley. In 2011, Frances and John decided that the mill should be preserved; and the necessary work to stabilize the building was set in hand.

Bridget and David converted The Thatched Cottage and the adjoining cottage into their home when they first came back to live in Penberth in 1981. They created the garden that can be seen today. They handed the Thatched Cottage over to Tristan and his family when they moved to Shell Cottage. But HMS Trespasser’s ship’s bell still hangs outside the front door, to remind visitors of the provenance of the house and garden;

Bridge Cottage is now shared by Mary Jane and David; they have improved and extended the cottage and its garden;

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Briar Cottage, the first property owned by the family in the Penberth Valley and given to the Briggs and Pinsent families by May Molyneux Cohan, has been modernised and extended and the garden improved by Favell ;

Jeffrey’s Cottage, formerly the tea-rooms visited by the Molyneux-Cohan sisters a century ago, remains in family ownership (Julia);

Shell Cottage was derelict by the time Richard Favell and his family came to live at Penberth. He originally restored it in the early 1960s, to be let to visitors. Before moving there himself in 1987, the house was extended and further improved. On his death, Shell Cottage was inherited by Bridget; and it was used as a house of prayer and retreat for clergymen and their families - including former Archbishop Rowan Williams. In 2008, Bridget and David undertook further major improvements and extended the property and garden, before moving from The Thatched Cottage in 2010;

The capstan and pilchard cellars have been beautifully restored by the National Trust at very considerable expense, since Delabole slate was used for the re-roofing of the cellars.

When the Favell century began most of the houses in the Penberth Valley were in a state of disrepair, with no utility services. A picture of Shell Cottage by James Baker Pyne ARA (1800-1870), purchased from a friend of Frances who ‘dabbled in watercolours’, shows what the Victorians no doubt regarded as a charming rustic scene. But for many locals life must have been ‘nasty, brutish and short’.

The epitaph on Sir Christopher Wren’s memorial in St Paul’s Cathedral reads: si monumentum requiris, circumspice - if you seek a monument look around.

While it is certainly the case that the Favells have protected and improved Penberth for future generations, this is the least important part of Granny Favell’s remarkable legacy. Like so many whose lives were altered forever by the Great War, it seems inconceivable that she was remotely interested in creating monuments.

Rather, Alice Favell put her wealth, imagination and energies to work for her husband and family. The shared memories of the cousins described in this book are, surely, what she would have valued most.

Little could she have known, when she committed her young family to such a momentous move from Sheffield to remotest west Cornwall nearly a century ago, what a wonderful inheritance she was about to create.

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References

The principal references, for those interested in further detail about the sources of the information that has not been provided by the cousins directly are shown below:

1. The History of the Favell Family at Penberth AF Briggs 2012

2. The Sheffield Royal Infirmary: A Century’s Work 1897

3. Testimomial to Dr William Fisher Favell 1894

4. The archives at St Bartholemew’s Hospital, London 2013

5. RAMC Records

6. Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest W Davis 2011

7. RM Favell family records

8. Cornwall Garden Society Archives

9. The Cornishman

10. Cowell, Drewitt and Wheatley, Penzance.

11. Cecil Talbot’s War Diaries are in the Imperial War Museum

12. Patrick Leigh Fermor – An Adventure Artemis Cooper 2012

13. The Times, 18 December 2012

14. Service Histories of Royal Navy Warships in World War 2 GB Mason 2006

15. Winchester College Record

16. Assault on Europe, Chester Wilmott 1947

17. The Times, 28 January 2013

18. Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry Regimental War Diaries

19. Hertfordshire Yeomanry Regimental War Diaries: 135 Field Regiment Royal Artillery

20. Frank Talbot was First Lieutenant in HMS Thames, lost following an incident described in The Last War against France

21. See The Sinking of the Belgrano, Rice and Gavshon, 1984 and other accounts of HMS Conqueror’s actions during the Falklands conflict

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TWO CENTURIES OF THE FAVELL FAMILYFor more than a century, the people of Sheffield were served by successive

generations of surgeons from the Favell family. John Favell was practising in the city in 1806, and was appointed surgeon to Sheffield Royal Infirmary in 1819; 20 years after the opening of the hosiptal2. His grandson, Vernon Richard Favell (known as Richard) was working at the very same hospital when he died a week before the Armistice in 1918.

It was Richard Favell’s son, Richard Vernon Favell (known as Vernon just to make it easier for family geneologists!), who moved to Penberth in 1920. Between them, Alice and Vernon Favell had nine brothers and sisters; but they were the only ones to have children. Vernon Favell’s only brother, William, died in France, in 19161. The family trees that follow include all the descendants of Vernon and Alice Favell who are now celebrating a century of Favells at Penberth.

John Favell1767-1840

William Favell1797-1871

Vernon Richard Favell1848-1918

Richard Vernon Favell = Alice Molyneux Cohan1881-1936 1886-1954

RichardMolyneux1914-1995

EdwardVernon

Molyneux1917-1944

MargaretMolyneux1917-2010

AliceMary

Molyneux1920-1999

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Frances Barbara

Molyneuxb.1943

JohnBanham

MarkRichard

Middlecottb.1968

NatashaHorn

SerenaFrances Tamsinb. 1970

NigelPengelly

MorwennaBridgetFavellb. 1972

MarkSullivan

EdwardJohn

Middlecottb.2004

SaskiaAliceFreyab.2005

JosephJohn

b.2004

MarthaOliviaRose

b.2004

LukeRichard

Johnb.2008

HarryArthurTalbotb.2008

JagoRauffe

William b.2007

JemimaEmily

Morwennab.2006

=

= = =

The FavellFamily Tree1881-2013

113

Richard VernonFAVELL1881-1936

Alice Molyneux COHAN

1886-1954

BridgetAlatheab.1946

DavidHugh-Jones

JuliaAlice

b.1949

RobinBryant

RichardMolyneux

Favell1914-1995

BarbaraBridgetTalbot

1919-1996

DemelzaAlice

b. 1971

Tristan Llewelyn

b.1973

RennyHenderson

Victoria Shelley

Rupert Favellb.1977

Lydia Allen

CarenzaBridieb.1978

Timothy Parker

AliceMargaret

b.2006

Tonsley RichardLlewelyn

b.2009

BryherElizabeth

b.2010

SorrelVictoriab.2012

AmeliaPeggyb.2007

JasperFrankb.2010

OttilieElizabeth

Favellb.2013

MorwennaHarrietb.2010

GeorgeTimothyb.2012

RebeccaSophieb.1978

RachelJessicab.1980

Frank IngramFavellb.1981

William EdwardHaswellb.2004

=

=

=

=

====

114

Margaret Anne

b. 1941

JohnSimpson

Maryb.1943

Denis Archdale

d.2005

Joanna Mary

b.1965

Nicholas Henryb.1966

Dan Salmons

Nikki Knott

Jessamie Anneb.1968

Rachael Mary

b.1968

Simon Thomas

Mike Norman

Benjamin John

Lawrenceb.1970

Audley Mervynb.1969

Georgina Blunt

Kerry Robinson

Harry Oliver b.2000

William Laurance

b.1998

JamesEdwardb.2003

Ellen Angel b.1999

Charlie Rhys

b.2002

Joshua Kyle

b.1991

Edward George

Lawrence b.2007

Thomas John

Stuart b.2012

Abigail Elizabeth

b.2009

Isabella Sophie b.2005

Rosco James b.2003

Josceline Leanne b.1993

Beatrice Molyneux

b.2010

Thomas Audley b.1998

= =

=

=

=

=

=

=

The Favell / Pinsent Family Tree1881-2013

115

Richard VernonFAVELL1881-1936

Alice Molyneux COHAN

1886-1954

Jennyb1944

Christopher Wreford-Brown

John Edwardb.1950

Elizabeth Jane

b.1948

Sue Hughes

Margaret Molyneux

1917–2010

EdwardVernon

Molyneux1917–1944

John Laurance Pinsentb.1916

Julia Anne b.1970

Paul Christopher

b.1972

William Scott

Sophie Obert de Thieuse

Amanda Jane1976

Harry John

b.2002

Thomas Jamesb.1999

Benjamin Christopher

b.2004

Poppy Lolanda b.2003

Fred Emanuel

b.2005

Hector Louis b.2007

Laura Elizabeth

b.1989

Joss Richard b.1991

Harry Edward b.1991

George Williamb.1997

=

=

=

=

==

116

MaryJane

b.1941

Tom Morkill

(1)

JimBranch

(2)

SusanJane

b.1966

JenniferSarahb.1967

GuySnell

Katherine Mary

b.1970

MatthewGuy

EmmaClareb.1972

JohnnieMacNamara

HannahMary

b.2000

HenryGuy

b.2003

Freddie Oliverb.2000

George Benjamin

b.2003

Toby Thomas

2012

=

= = =

The Favell / BriggsFamily Tree1881-2013

117

Richard VernonFAVELL1881-1936

Alice Molyneux COHAN

1886-1954

AidanFavellb.1942

HelenBarnes

Davidb.1947

AnnabelKing

AliceMary

Molyneux1920-1999

John AidanBriggs

1912-1969

JocelynAidanb.1972

EmilyOrmsbyb.1974

JoelleLau

DominicMyers

AidanWilliamb.1984

SimonJackson

LucyAlice

b.1974

ZoëAndrews

HarryDavid

Charlesb.1977

IseldaMolyneux

b.2012

MaxCory

b.2005

OliverOrmsbyb.2007

JackJocelynb.2010

Woody Davidb.2004

HectorGeoffreyb.2006

JagoHarryb.2007

Ayre Alistairb.2008

Peony Oliviab.2013

ArcherFavell b.2008

=

=

=

=

====

Acknowledgements

This book could not have been written without the contributions provided by all eleven of the grandchildren of Alice and Vernon Favell.

Their forbearance in face of regular promptings (not to say nagging!) for text and family photographs has been another wonderful indication of their love and respect for their forebears. Any errors in translation that may have crept in, for which we apologise, are entirely Frances’ fault!

As will have been apparent, much of the research into the Favell family and their landholdings in West Penwith was carried out by Favell Briggs and has been reproduced here by his kind permission.

The History of the Favell Family at Penberth is required reading for anyone interested in the social history of the valley.

It is particularly encouraging that interest in recording the family history is not confined to the older generation. Aidan Briggs’ family tree has been a great stimulus; it was his grandfather and namesake who commented, in his speech for the bride at Frances’ wedding, that ‘there is something very special about those Favell girls from Penberth’.

Finally, Nigel Pengelly (a great grandson-in-law of Granny Favell) has prepared the text and pictures for publication, designing the layout and ensuring that precious pictures are not lost in the ether of the internet or damaged in the process of being reproduced.

His patience in face of the digital incompetence and indecision of his parents-in-law has been remarkable. He must have been fortified by the thought that this is a once-in-a-century project.

JMMB,Penberth.April 2013

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Plate 68: Penberth Cove by SJ Lamorna Birch RA.