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During my visit to Australia in March 2024, I stumbled upon a fascinating story with a surprising Cornish connection. In the outback settlement of Byng, once known as the Cornish Settlement, I found the forgotten grave of John Bray.
John Bray was certainly Cornish and would certainly have known the Cornishmen who unearthed the first large piece of gold in New South Wales that sparked a gold rush that forever changed Australia's history.
The tiny settlement of Byng itself, a relic of the past, seemed as lost as the memory of John Bray and the pivotal role he and his Cornish friends played in the Down Under story.
However, of course, here in North Cornwall John Bray has been well known for many years with the company he founded seemingly forever connected with selling and renting houses in our particular corner of Cornwall. There’s also an excellent funeral service bearing the Bray name too that is based in Wadebridge! Come to think of it, Bray's recently both sold my mother’s house in New Polzeath and conducted her funeral service too.
By some other quirk of coincidence, on my train journey through the Blue Mountains towards Byng, I was reading "The Eagle Has Landed". It’s a rather over-the-top tale about a German plot to kidnap Churchill. The book was used to make the film of the same name partly filmed here in the sand dunes around Rock. The book's realism often blurs the lines between fact and fiction but the story of disguised paratroopers infiltrating a remote corner of Norfolk to capture Churchill is so believable at times, it makes you wonder whether some of it really did happen. It didn’t, but there are untold stories with a John Bray connection that really are totally true!
This one is based on a real-life tale with echoes of wartime intrigue, set just a stone's throw from the filming location of "The Eagle Has Landed" on the low green hill overlooking Daymer Bay! You've probably walked right by a house called Beniguet that's now for sale on the John Bray website and not given it a second thought. I know I have!
So, during the war, Beniguet was owned by Mrs. Pamela Gott, wife of Lieutenant-General William "Strafer" Gott. In August 1942, General Gott was on the cusp of leading the Eighth Army in North Africa, a critical role in the fight against Nazi Germany. Tragically, just days before taking command, his plane was shot down, and he was killed.
It is hard to fully imagine the impact on Mrs. Gott and her daughters. A beloved husband and father, a respected and very high ranking military leader, was suddenly gone. They likely spent many summers at Beniguet and the house became a place of solace amidst their turmoil. The news of his death would have cast a long shadow, not just on their personal lives but also on the course of the war.
The story of Beniguet takes an even more intriguing turn when we consider how the Germans may have known about General Gott's whereabouts. Intelligence suggests the Germans had cracked British secret codes, possibly due to information from an American attaché. This critical intelligence coup allowed them to target General Gott's apparently unimportant transport plane, a Bristol Bombay, which wouldn't have had much in the way of defensive weaponry against a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter. The faster and more maneuverable Bf 109 inflicted heavy damage on the Bombay, forcing it to crash land and then, even though it was down, German fighters returned and strafed the wreckage, ensuring there were no survivors.
There are many questions about how much of a turning point this was in the war itself because Gott was replaced by Montgomery and some suspect that this, in the long term, turned the tide in North Africa. Who knows!? Anyhow I’m not here to conduct a “The Rest is History” podcast but to alert you to the interesting houses that you might see on a Polzeath Walk!
Looking for more information?
You can learn more about Lieutenant-General William Gott online and discover the impact his death had on World War II.
Revisit "The Eagle Has Landed" to see how it reflects the realities of wartime espionage, and don't forget to explore the nearby sand dunes of Rock, where parts of the movie were filmed with the young Jenny Agutter before she went Walkabout!
Or of course come on a Polzeath Walks
John Bray is currently offering Beniguet for sale at Offers In Excess Of £6,000,000. Their website describes it as "a much-loved private family home set in a truly magical position." Sitting on a substantial plot of about 4 acres, it boasts panoramic sea and beach views and easy access to nearby beaches. The house itself has four bedrooms, all with sea views, and offers the potential for renovation, extension, or even replacement (subject to planning permission).
As a happy end-note to this rather long story there has to be a big "thank you" to Pamela Gott, and some of her neighbours, who had the sense to buy the land infront of their houses in 1956 and give it all to the National Trust! It's called Fishing Cove Field and you walk through it on your way to Daymer Bay from Greenaway. A perfect spot to watch the kite surfers at play on the Doom Bar or the arrival of the Sand Martins who nest in the cliffs here each summer!
“Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed.”
Actress Jennie Agutter has a home in far SW Cornwall. She fell in love with Cornwall while filming "The Eagle has Landed"...including having to romp in the Rock sand dunes during filming in1976 with the German spy played by Donald Sutherland.
Just six years before on July 20th 1969 the Apollo 11 Lunar Module met the powdery surface of the Moon and "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" made more than headlines. Not sure why I connected all that but sometimes the sand dunes can seem like walking on the moon and much of them have gone now.
Agutter was just 25 at the time but had started acting at 12, and was already a Hollywood star thanks to great performances in: The Railway Children, Walkabout, The Snow Goose and Logan’s Run.
Star of the Cornish film, Tin, she's called the patron saint of Cornwall for her work with the charity Chicks and is famous now for her part in the series "Call the Midwife". Chicks provides a Coastal Retreat at Tywardreath, close to St Austell, for disadvantaged children from all over the UK.
Take comfort from the amount of sand that the golf course and its surrounds is actually covering still!
That says Submerged Forest and Jesus Well if you were wondering. Yes Jesus came to the sand dunes too and unlike Saint Perran came by boat.
Talking of which John Betjeman always talked about the first German spy in WW1 who came off a submarine off the Doom Bar, spent a night in the sand dunes, and then went into a disused house on Daymer Lane and lit a fire to get warm. His undoing, as it was spotted by an eagle eyed policeman and he was arrested and then "turned" (it was that or be shot in those days) and finally ended up as a spy in a early draft of a John Le Carre novel. Later used as an idea for the Man Who Never Was
Donald and Jenny messing around in dunes near the carpark. Donald's son returned to Cornwall a few years later, well actually quite a few, to film up the beach and across the bay at Pentire. Surprisingly perhaps the film was The Three Musketeers which you probably associate more with France!
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