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I didn't quite realise that Trevone was such a sister village to Polzeath. Both developed around their beach in much the same way and both even have an Atlantic Terrace that look similar.
Today, new buildings and rebuilding on the sites of old ones, seems to be the trend in both places. But with just one road in, like New Polzeath, I imagine that Trevone is crowded at the height of summer.
Although Trevone is just out of line of sight from our side of the estuary it's only the other side of the old airfield at Crugmeer.
Like Polzeath, Trevone has great surf and also an interesting literary heritage.
At the time that Laurence Binyon was writing his poem on the cliffs around Pentire, Dorothy Richardson was having the first of her 13 volume Pilgrimage, Pointed Roofs, published.
She started this volume of Pilgrimage on her first visit to Cornwall hosted by J D Beresford in 1912 who went on to lend the impoverished writer his holiday home. The same one he lent to DH Lawrence who finished off "Women in Love" in his house in Porthcothan in 1916.
Anyhow, Richardson never really made it financially in her lifetime. Despite her recognition now as an important writer she never sold many copies of her books and was forced to seek out of season lodgings in Trevone to see out the winters somewhere cheap with her eccentric painter husband Alan Odle, who made even less money than she did.
From 1917 until 1939, Dorothy and Alan spent their winters in a number of basic houses and lodgings in the Trevone area to save money. Sometimes in places like Rose Cottage where there were also tea rooms and they got to know their landladies. There is a good video from which I have taken some shots of an interview you might like to watch on Youtube of Bridget Woods, the daughter of Norah Hickey, who was Dorothy Richardson's landlady at Rose Cottage, Trevone and Cosy Corner, Harlyn Bay. She also owned and ran the Cot Tea Rooms. Before these properties passed to Norah, Bridget's great-aunts Beluah and Nellie Ponder owned all three. Richardson it seems was great friends with all three Trevone women and they still have a recipe she wrote out in her beautiful writing for them for American Slaw and Bacon omelette for two!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgTtdJMAFuc
From 1940 until 1945 Alan and Dorothy finally moved full time to Zansizzy, a bungalow in Trevone.
Over the years locals got to know the couple well and from all accounts they seemed decidedly eccentric, often sitting up all night talking, smoking and drinking, and not going to bed until dawn. There's an amusing account of Alan, with his long nails and very long hair, going off for a walk in a high wind and losing his hat to the Atlantic.
Despite spending so much time here, Dorothy never really published much about our part of North Cornwall, although her many letters, many available online at https://dorothyrichardsonexhibition.org do tell us a bit about life here.
In one letter of late May/ early June 1927 she writes that:
"More and more of the sophisticated intelligencia come down here. The Golders Green variety. Literate. At the moment the whole neighbourhood has its nose in the air. The Prince is coming to stay three days at the Metropole, in Padstow, next week. "
Richardson married Alan Odle in 1917. Odle, 15 years younger than Richardson, was a bohemian figure known for his association with artists such as Augustus John, Jacob Epstein, and Wyndham Lewis. He was tubercular and an alcoholic, though he later quit drinking and lived until 1948.
Odle's appearance was as striking as his art. He was over six feet tall with waist-length hair wound around his head and rarely cut his fingernails! See "There's been a tragedy I've lost my hat" story I've told by the photo of him.
Cornwall's Forgotten Literary Giant
Dorothy Richardson was a modernist pioneer and author of the 13-volume semi-autobiographical novel Pilgrimage. Despite her innovative use of stream of consciousness and exploration of female experience, she's become one of the most overlooked literary giants of our time. But her story, especially her deep connection to Cornwall, deserves to be told
Alan Odle with his long finger nails and very long hair. He enjoyed a good walk along the cliffs towards Stepper. On one ill-fated walk, Odle encountered a fierce Atlantic gale. The wind, with characteristic disregard for artistic sensibilities, tore the hat from his grasp and dispatched it. Richardson wryly observed that the hat was "by this time in New York," and returning home hatless presented a figure that was both comical and poignant. His "radiant but very grave" countenance framed by a "rounded mob of curls most beautifully shaped and exactly suited to his head and face." He gravely announced, "There's been a tragedy I've lost my hat".
Richardson, with an appreciation for the absurd, pictured him "marching trying to appear dignified and indifferent all the way up the very public road from the bay," a figure of unflappable self-possession despite the sartorial disaster. The image was, she confessed, almost too much to bear.
One of Alan's art works which are now collected by Terry Gilliam from Monty Python
The Cot Tea Rooms in Trevone as the village used to look around the time of the Great War.
The explosion of colours along the coast path has started with the gorse. DH Lawrence, who first came to Cornwall to stay in JD Beresford's holiday home at Porthcothan, while completing "Women in Love", described Cornish gorse as "sunshine itself". He later moved to Zennor which he described as "the best place I have been in". Lawrence was in Porthcothan, near Padstow, from 30 December 1915 to 28 February 1916 and would have seen a few storms there too! JD Beresford was a famous writer of his time, now probably more remembered for his daughter who wrote the Wombles! Liza Beresford took work as a journalist, but struggled for success until she created the Wombles in the late 1960s. She died at her home in Alderney, Channel Islands in 2010. Her son, Marcus Robertson, the inspiration for Orinoco, used to play hockey with me at Durham University. Small world!
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