#trenancegardens — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

In Newquay in Cornwall in 1906, work began on Trenance Garden’s boating lake, it was created as an unemployment relief measure, and workers were given a pasty a day and a shillings a week to dig it out.

Just over thirty years earlier it was agricultural land and the ‘playground’ of my great great grandmother. It has changed a bit since then of course, but she would still recognise it. Her family home is still there, as is the viaduct that she watched being built. Even in my lifetime, it has not changed at all. It was an exciting place for me as a child and it still holds a special place in my heart today. We could leave my grandparent’s house, walk down the street, descend through a wooded hillside and emerge into a formal garden - how very fortunate I was.

I have visited the gardens nearly every year of my life and that is a long time!

#familyhistory #cornwall #20thcentury #cornish #pasty #Newquay #trenancegardens #unemployment #boatinglake