Black Rock, Cornwall

Lower Cargenwen Cottage

During 1964 Marion Handley (nee Pritchard) knowing that her father and mother wished to retire to Cornwall, spent any spare time she had searching for a suitable place for them to live.  By good fortune she came across a small cottage attached to a farm at Black Rock which was vacant and available to rent.  So George (1897) and Nellie were able to leave Guide Bridge and move to Cornwall for a well earned retirement.  It wasn’t quite that easy though.  The cottage was very dilapidated and very primitive with no main drains, no running water and a chemical toilet halfway down the front garden.

poses on Black Rock in October 1969

Black Rock is two miles uphill from Praze-an-Beeble and in 1964 consisted of a few scattered cottages, two or three farms and a Methodist chapel.  It is roughly halfway between Hayle and Falmouth and is high enough (about 200m) to have views of both the north and south coasts of the county.  There was one bus a week on a Thursday afternoon to Camborne the nearest large town. The only other public transport was a limited service run by the Grenville bus company which ran through Praze-an-Beeble to Camborne or Penzance. Their home Lower Cargenwen Cottage was surrounded by three small reservoirs.

and Nellie with Dylan

George and Nellie soon turned the cottage into somewhere fit to live in.  They extended the small kitchen and had an indoor chemical toilet built and George bought a very large water tank so that they had a limited supply of running water inside which was a big improvement on getting water from the tap in the farmyard.  They soon settled down to life in rural Cornwall, attended the chapel and made friends with the neighbours. Before long many members of the family and friends were visiting them and they enjoyed their life together in Cornwall.  George built himself a chicken run and bought some chickens and the farmer next door gave him a small piece of land which he turned into a vegetable garden. He also got himself a greenhouse.  They grew to love Cornwall and all it had to offer more and more.  Nellie became very involved in the activities of the chapel and became a guest speaker at the other chapels in the Praze area.

George with grandchildren Philip & Julian White

with Dylan Pritchard in 1972

George and Nellie had eight happy years together in their cottage at Black Rock but on May 20^th 1972 Nellie died in Treliske Hospital, Truro after developing cancer.  George’s daughter Sadie had joined them in the cottage and after a couple of years they moved to a council house in Nancegollan a village about three miles away. George remained very active, was a keen gardener and entered local competitions. He enjoyed visiting his sons and daughters and his grandchildren and was always delighted when family members visited Nancegollan.  He lived for a further eleven years after the death of Nellie before he also died of cancer in Hayle hospital on September 22^nd 1983.

 

aged 84, two years before he died.

Sadie until he died in 1983.