Elizabeth Ann Prettejohn

  General Notes:

Note: Photo and story in "Beesands & Hallsands" by Cyril Courtney.

In the early 1890s Hallsands was a small fishing village on the south coast of Devon. It was protected from the sea by a beach of sand and shingle. Then in 1897 a major dredging operation began not far from the village. Within a few years the level of the beach fell by about twelve feet, and the village was exposed to the direct impact of high tides and easterly winds. Several buildings were damaged or destroyed in storms during 1903 and 1904. Some buildings were repaired, and temporary protection was given by a new sea wall, but another major storm in January 1917 caused further devastation, and the village was abandoned.

Over the last few years several accounts of the history of Hallsands have been published. They include a booklet by Chips Barber, The Story of Hallsands, published by Obelisk Publications in 2001, and a chapter in Leigh Driver’s book, The Lost Villages of England, published by New Holland in 2006. In particular, much relevant research has been carried out by Steve Melia, and published by him in Hallsands, A Village Betrayed, Forest Publishing, 2002 and in a website at www.hallsands.org.uk <http://www.hallsands.org.uk>.

Hallsands lay in Start Bay, just over a mile north of Start Point. It faced east and was sheltered from the prevailing south westerly winds by a steep cliff. For this reason its location may have been favoured by fishermen. The first known reference to a settlement at Hallsands comes in the Stokenham Manor court rolls of 1611.

The cliff immediately behind Hallsands had several flat rocky spurs about ten feet above the high tide mark. It is likely that the first buildings were constructed on these platforms, some of them being built right against the cliff face. Later houses were built partly or wholly on the compacted sand that lay between the rocky platforms. A road ran in front of them. At a later stage houses were added on the seaward side of the road, with walls below them to provide protection from the higher tides.

According to the census of 1891 there were 159 people living in Hallsands at that time, occupying 37 houses. There was a small shop with post office, the London Inn with stables and a piggery, and the Mission Room. By the 1890s the Mission Room was used as a community centre. It had originally been opened for religious purposes, but it was replaced in this respect by a chapel of the Bible Christian denomination built near the top of the cliff in 1858.

The nearest school was at Huccombe, about two miles from Hallsands. The school had been opened in 1878, and children were expected to attend between the ages of 5 and 14. They would have had to walk to and from the school.

Most of the houses in Hallsands were occupied by their owners. They had been offered for sale in 1857 on the death of the previous owner. As Steve Melia has pointed out, the fact that the houses were owner occupied would have had several implications when the village started to be destroyed. People would have been very reluctant to abandon their homes, but the absence of a single powerful landowner may have meant that opposition to the dredging and claims for compensation were relatively weak.

Nearly all the men of the village made their living from fishing, and women and children too would take part in activities related to fishing. Someone would be posted on the cliff top to look out for shoals of fish. Boats would then take seine nets out to sea to surround the fish, and both ends of the nets would be dragged ashore with the fish trapped inside them. More valuable fish were sold, others would be used by the villagers. Many, however, would be used as bait for the other main form of fishing, the catching of crabs. Crabs were caught in pots made locally out of withers, and then stored alive until collected by a boat that would take them to markets such as Billingsgate in London.

Fishing boats were stored on the beach above the high tide mark. In poor weather the task of pulling them ashore was difficult. Newfoundland dogs were trained to swim out to a boat, take a rope, and help to pull it in. According to the reminiscences of Evelyn Lamble, who was a child in Hallsands before its abandonment, on one occasion a dog saved a child from drowning. It brought the child out of the sea and then went to the nearest cottage to seek help.

The reminiscences of Evelyn Lamble and other former inhabitants of the village also stress the social support that villagers would give to each other. On the whole the people were “humble and poor”, but especially during times of hardship they would be happy to help each other.

We now come to the story of the dredging. Before the dredging began the beach at Hallsands was relatively stable. Some movement of sand and shingle would be detected from time to time, and at times the level of the beach might fall for a temporary period, but until 1897 there was no overall loss of shingle. As reported in 1904 by R Hansford Worth, a civil engineer and geologist, much of the shingle consisted of Dartmoor felsite that must have drifted from the north in the distant past and reached a state of equilibrium at the southern end of Start Bay.

R Hansford Worth, Hallsands and Start Bay, Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature, and Art, 1904 36 302-346. I cannot resist giving the title of the journal in full.

Near the end of the nineteenth century the Admiralty decided to enlarge the docks at Devonport in order to accommodate the growth in the size of their ships. The contract for this work was awarded to the firm of Sir John Jackson. In November 1896 Sir John Jackson was granted a licence by the Board of Trade to dredge and remove sand, shingle, gravel, and other material from the bed of the sea below the low water mark. Attached to the licence was a plan indicating the area where dredging would be allowed. It began a short distance north of Hallsands. A term of the licence was that if the operation should damage the foreshore defences of the adjacent land then the licence would be cancelled.

Soon afterwards Sir John Jackson obtained a similar licence from the Office of Woods that permitted the removal of sand and shingle from the foreshore between high and low water marks. A clause in this agreement stated that the work should be done in such a way that the land above the high water mark should not be exposed to the encroachment of the sea.

Dredging began in or around April 1897. At first a bucket-ladder dredger was used, but later it was replaced by two suction-pump dredgers. The shingle was loaded into hopper barges with a capacity of 1100 tons each and then transported to Devonport.

The fishermen of Hallsands, and of the neighbouring village of Beesands, were immediately alarmed. They had not been consulted about the dredging. The Board of Trade carried out an inspection in June 1897. The outcome was that the licence was not withdrawn, but Sir John Jackson undertook to pay the fishermen of Hallsands £125 a year while the dredging continued, together with a Christmas gratuity of £20. The payments were intended to compensate for the interference with fishing, not for any damage to the shoreline.

By 1900 it was apparent to the people of Hallsands that the level of the beach in front of their village was falling. There was now a gap at the foot of steps leading down to the beach. Large rocks that had previously been wholly or partly hidden by the beach were now fully exposed. It was becoming more difficult to pull boats ashore and the space available to store them was shrinking rapidly. Seine fishing was becoming more difficult as the sea bed was more rocky than before.

By November 1900 the sea was sometimes lashing the walls and foundations of buildings on the seaward side of the road through Hallsands. The owner of the London Inn, Mr Spital, pointed out a wall where “people used to play capers with a donkey and make him jump it.” He added that on the seaward side of the wall there was now a drop of nearly fifteen feet, “enough to kill any donkey who took the wall now.”

What must have happened is that the dredging created huge spaces in the foreshore just north of Hallsands and large quantities of sand and shingle were moving from the Hallsands beach to fill the spaces.

In May 1901 the people of Beesands protested against the dredging by pulling the dredger buoys ashore near their village. As a result dredging ceased close to Beesands. The men of Hallsands threatened similar action on 1 January 1902, but unknown to them a decision had already been taken to end dredging at Hallsands as well. The Board of Trade had sent another inspector, Captain Frederick, in September 1901. His report concluded that much damage had already been done, and more would occur if the dredging were allowed to continue. The licence to dredge was revoked with effect from 8 January 1902.

Just over a year later the first major damage occurred. On the night of 27 February 1903 the sea wall in front of the London Inn slipped forward and downward. The sea entered behind it, removing the filling at the back of the wall and undermining a conservatory attached to the inn. Either at the same time, or soon afterwards, the sea wall in front of the southernmost house in the village was destroyed, the house itself was partially wrecked, and a chasm appeared where the road had been. Other sea walls had slipped or were damaged, and a house opposite Wilson’s Rock was undermined and rendered uninhabitable.

Under the supervision of R Hansford Worth, the civil engineer mentioned earlier, construction of a new sea wall began. It was not enough to prevent frequent further destruction. In his log Hansford Worth recorded twelve dates between 24 August 1903 and 5 March 1904 when significant damage was inflicted on walls or buildings. On 20 September, for example, he wrote “Easterly storm. Kitchen, beer cellar, bedroom, and conservatory of London Inn washed away, despite all efforts to save same. Wooden boat slip at north end of village washed away. Nearly all timber broken adrift from works for short new wall opposite Wilson’s Rock.” Four days later he had to add “Wall of cellar and part of kitchen, which had been left standing at London Inn, fell, taking with it part of road.” On 12 December the sea took away the road to within three feet of the corner of a house: “Inhabitants departed, furniture and all.” Other houses were damaged beyond repair or had their foundations severely undermined.

The local Member of Parliament was Frank Mildmay. In the summer of 1903 he urged the Board of Trade to accept their responsibility for the damage to the village and provide a grant that would allow some compensation, essential repairs to buildings that could still be used, and enough to complete the construction of the new sea walls. The amount eventually agreed was £3250, comprising £2000 from the government, £1000 from Sir John Jackson, and £250 donated by Frank Mildmay himself. In taking receipt of this payment the villagers were required to undertake that it would be accepted in full and final settlement of all claims against the Board of Trade or Sir John Jackson.

At the same time a fund was started by one of the regional newspapers, the Western Morning News, to provide assistance to people who had been made homeless. The fund raised £650, and was used to build a terrace of four houses on the cliff top above the village. These were occupied by some of the people that had been made homeless, but others may have moved away from the village at this stage.

Within Hallsands itself some houses and the London Inn were repaired. For the next decade or so life returned to something like normal, although there would have been general anxiety that further major storms could bring fresh disasters. Such a storm arose on the night of Friday, 26 January 1917, when at high tide south-easterly winds drove the waves full of shingle over the sea wall and against the houses.

On Monday, 29 January 1917 one local newspaper reported as follows:

“The storm burst on Friday evening and the people living on the shore very soon saw that their houses were doomed. They speedily made their way to a place of safety at the top of the cliff, but one old lady, who was an invalid, could not be removed until the following day. Such was the fury of the waves that the householders found it difficult to save much of their belongings, and some have lost the whole of their goods and chattels.

“When morning broke a scene of desolation presented itself to the eye. The fishing boats had been tossed up clean into the meadows, wreckage was strewn about in all directions, and the village was practically wiped out. The seas swamped right over the houses, which seemed to crumple beneath their weight. Some of the people had a terrible experience. In one case there were nine people huddled together in a little house against which the waves were incessantly dashing, and they were expecting every moment that the walls which afforded them shelter would collapse, and that they would be washed away.

“One of the fishermen, James Lynn, saw two huge waves crash against his house and knock most of the front of it clean in. The lamp was extinguished, and the people were in utter darkness, but they managed to make their escape by the back door. Another home near by was levelled to the ground, and the roofs of others have been lifted off. Altogether twenty-four families have been rendered homeless. One old fisherman, sorrowfully viewing the wreckage on Saturday, said ‘This is the end of our village. We shall have to go elsewhere.’”

We will return a little later to look at what happened to the people of Hallsands after they were compelled to abandon their village. First I would like to focus in more detail on the way the events of 1903-04 and 1917 were reported in the regional press. We know a lot about those events, and we know it thanks to the thorough work of papers such as the Western Daily Mercury and the Western Morning News. Their “representatives” provided vivid descriptions of the storms that battered Hallsands and the damage they caused, from time to time they summarised the history of the destruction, being clear that it should be attributed to the dredging, and they would offer recommendations on what needed to be done to put things right. In general the quality of reporting was very high.

“Representatives” of the newspapers usually remained anonymous. In March 1904, however, a representative identified by the initials AES provided a report that was more than a little over the top. He compared the destruction of Hallsands to the fate of Carthage. One house, belonging to a fisherman with seven children, was now scattered and divided amongst the denizens of the deep. Elsewhere a terraced garden had been carried off for the mermaids’ use, and at the further end of the village naught but the garden wall was left of a former home, where love once grew and confidences were oft exchanged.

Please let me know if you believe you know the identity of AES.

No photographs appear in the newspapers of 1903-04. Instead articles about Hallsands were sometimes illustrated with sketches. Four sketches published in the Western Daily Mercury on 24 September 1903 will be reproduced at the foot of this page.

The Western Daily Mercury and the Western Morning News can be read at Plymouth Central Library. Unless you have a very strong reason for doing so you will not be allowed to see the original newspapers, but you can read them on microfilm and many of the articles on Hallsands have been photocopied and brought together in a folder in the Local History section of the library. Contact details of the Plymouth Central Library can be found at www.plymouth.gov.uk/libraries <http://www.plymouth.gov.uk/libraries>.

One feature of the reporting was the extent to which representatives would seek interviews with the fishermen and their families. They would often provide lengthy quotations from these interviews, no doubt in English that was considerably tidied up from the original. After the storms of 27 February 1903 Mr George Lobb, the landlord of the London Inn, was quoted in the Western Morning News as saying “When the greenhouse collapsed two coastguardmen and two fishermen came to assist me to remove the things in the bedroom. While we were in the room the roof came down upon us, and we all had a narrow escape. Then the gable gave way, tearing away the stove and nearly blinding us with dust. It was with the greatest difficulty that we grasped things to prevent us from falling into the surf. My wife also had a very narrow escape. We had arranged to have tea, as usual, in the kitchen. Mrs Lobb was sitting down when the wall gave way, but not in her customary place, otherwise she would have certainly fallen and perished in the surf. We hurriedly removed all articles of furniture, and had just got out the last, when the whole pile went like a pack of cards. The noise and the dust was bewildering, the latter enveloping the assistants and myself. I heard the bystanders shout ‘What has become of the men?’”

After the storms early in March 1904 the Western Morning News described the loss of Mrs Logan’s home. Mrs Logan was a widow over 70 years of age, who owned one of the nicest little abodes in the centre of the village. She tearfully stated how very hard it was, after a lifetime of thrift, to have her abode washed down, and she, but for the hospitality of her neighbours, to be homeless.

In the same article Robert Steere described the damage to his house early on the Saturday morning. “The sea came right into the bedroom windows, saturated our bedding and most of our furniture. We lost no time in clearing all this out; but our principal difficulty [was] with Anne Trout. We let her stay in the house until the last, but, feeble as she was, she had to go. The sea now commenced to rip the thatch off the roof, and the water poured down in torrents. From there and through the windows the water got so great that we had to bore holes in the bedroom floor to let it down into the kitchen, and in the kitchen we made another hole in the side of the wall, for the water to escape again into the sea.”

As well as quoting from their interviews with individual residents reporters would sometimes comment upon the psychological reactions of the villagers. Indeed on Wednesday 23 September 1903, a few days after major storms, the representative of the Western Daily Mercury asserted that “The Hallsander is a study for the psychologist at this moment.” The reporter was puzzled that “The man is in deadly peril ? he says so himself ? and all the while he goes about his daily task with consummate indifference.” He had observed that despite some anxiety there was “not a trace of excitement to be found anywhere”. He speculated that the possibilities of the situation had not yet been appreciated, but immediately acknowledged this could not be true as he had heard a number of men discussing the prospects of the whole village being eventually swept away. He was more willing to attribute their calmness to the inherent fortitude of their race and calling.

On 14 December 1903, after further damage had been inflicted, the Western Morning News reported that things were indeed gloomy out at Hallsands. The gloom was enhanced by the fact that the villagers themselves were unable to do anything to help themselves, being totally reliant on assistance and funds from elsewhere.

Less than two months later, the WMN’s representative found that the fishermen were in a more despondent state than at any time since the village was threatened. They considered that the new sea wall would not stand, that the money spent on it was practically wasted. It would have been better to spend the money on building a new village at a spot further inland. They now believed that nothing could save the present village.

On 21 March 1904 the reporter identified by the initials AES again observed the patience and sense of resignation among the villagers. He did, though, wish to lodge one complaint against their impassivity, that they could have done more to help themselves. They could, for example, have collected the larger stones on the beach to prevent them being driven against houses and walls during the rougher high tides. He realised, however, that any initiative was paralysed by the sense of injustice felt by the villagers, together with their despair of any return to days more prosperous. AES also noted the use of humour by the villagers. One of them remarked that the beach had not disappeared, but “they had took it away to Plymouth”.

Another theme running through the press reports of 1903-04 and again in 1917 is the strength of support for the people of Hallsands from others in the area and from individuals who had power, resources, or expertise to assist them. Indeed, the frequency and depth of reports on Hallsands in the press both reflect the general interest and concern felt in the region and must also have tended to sustain it. In addition, as we have seen, the Western Morning News organised a relief fund that led to the building of four houses on the cliff top in 1904.

Inhabitants of neighbouring villages on the coast, especially Beesands and Torcross, were connected to the people of Hallsands by ties of marriage and their shared engagement in the fishing industry. From time to time the newspapers would describe the help they offered in removing furniture and possessions, and in providing temporary accommodation.

Two individuals who gave important support to the people of Hallsands were Frank Mildmay. MP, and R Hansford Worth. Their contributions were fully acknowledged by the press. For example, the Western Morning News reported in detail on a visit made by Frank Mildmay to Hallsands on 16 October 1903 to see at first hand the recent damage. There was a meeting with local people in the reading room, when “Mr Mildmay, who was enthusiastically received, said that he was exceedingly glad that an opportunity had presented itself for himself to see what was really going on at Hallsands. He recognised that it was always better to see for oneself rather than take all that was said by authorities (Hear, hear.)”

On 2 February 1904 the WMN published a very long letter from Frank Mildmay in which he described his negotiations with the Treasury, the Board of Trade, and Sir John Jackson over the amount of compensation to be paid to the villagers. He had succeed in increasing the total amount to £2000, a sum that included £250 donated by himself. As it happens, this amount was not accepted by the villagers, and, as mentioned earlier, it was afterwards further increased to £3250, including Mildmay’s own donation.

We will now return to 1917 and the fate of the villagers after the final abandonment of Hallsands. It was not in fact the case that everyone left. Two houses at a higher level than the others survived and have continued to be occupied. Elizabeth Prettejohn lived in one of them in 1917, when she was 33. She stayed there until her death in 1964. For many years she was happy to provide guided tours of the village ruins to interested tourists.

Apart from Elizabeth Prettejohn it appears that all the other villagers moved away. Some went to live with relatives or friends, but others had to take whatever accommodation they could find. Five men spent several months sleeping in a loft over a coach-house. When the weather was calm and warm some people would return to sleep in the ruins of their former homes. An additional problem for the fishermen was that their boats and equipment had been badly damaged in the storm of 17 January.

Very soon the question of compensation arose again. The Devon Sea Fisheries Committee wrote to the Board of Trade calling for full compensation, and on 7 March another Devon MP, Sir J Spear, raised the issue in Parliament. The Board of Trade appointed Sir Maurice Fitzmaurice to investigate and make recommendations. At the end of his enquiry he confirmed that the damage was entirely due to the dredging operations, and he recommended compensation as follows:

26 buildings £8000
Stores and gear £1250
Furniture and belongings £500
Drainage, water supply, and roads £750

The decision about the actual amount to be paid was not made until May 1918. Instead of the £10,500 recommended by Sir Maurice Fitzmaurice just £6000 was offered. A year later, as plans were being developed for new houses, a survey was carried out to establish the intentions of the dispossessed householders. It was found that four owners did not intend to return, seven wished to have thirteen houses for themselves and their families, and three were undecided. Eventually 10 houses, named Fordworth Cottages, were constructed a little way inland. They were ready for occupation in July 1924. They were not, however, given to their occupants. Instead, despite having owned their homes in Hallsands, the householders were required to pay rent for their new homes.

Some of the villagers were able to go on earning a living in the fishing industry. Two sisters, Ella and Patience Trout, not only carried on catching crabs, but also had the enterprise to open a guesthouse on the cliff top above Hallsands, carrying out much of the building work themselves. Ella had already made a name for herself in September 1917, when she rowed out to rescue a sailor from a steamer that had been attacked by a German submarine. In 1933 the guest house was developed into the Prospect House Hotel, and more recently it has continued to be used as holiday apartments.

The story of Ella and Patience Trout has been told by Ruth and Frank Milton in their book Sisters Against the Sea: The Remarkable Story of Hallsands, Devon Books, 2005.