St Austell will evolve but the old town has rich niche

IT'S CURIOUS how we recall the past, something in the here and now triggering recollection. Looking at the reshaping of St Austell town centre recently set me thinking about early connections.

Miss Mabel Williams, a headmistress, my great aunt, was a key figure: my private tutor for an important phase. She lived on West Hill, her tuition diamond sharp, encouraging, instilling confidence.

She was more than an excellent teacher of English and elementary mathematics. Though she was then in her retirement years, she retained remarkable quickness of eye and ear.

She must have recognised some potential and inspired a love of words – the need to search for the right word, the importance of a good dictionary.

It was great aunt Mabel who guided me through that first Cornish book: The Splendid Spur by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. How she brought it all to life. I never go to Temple on Bodmin Moor without thinking of her and Q's riveting tale.

Remembers

Dr AL Rowse in his classic A Cornish Childhood remembers her, his first headmistress: "a charming smile, great dignity, raven-black hair." She, in fact, gave him his first volume and inscribed it "For dear Leslie, with love, ML Williams." Leslie Rowse reflecting, "the signature almost as elaborate and self-conscious as those early signatures of Queen Elizabeth 1."

In the evening, further coaching came from my grandfather Edgar Williams who worked for English China Clay, in the pay department. So arithmetic it was – the wireless turned off for an hour or so. And as we walked to his office each morning there were mental arithmetic exercises. Edgar too would have made a fine teacher.

And later Edgar Williams became a kind of mentor, motivating me in sports administration and writing. He even thought I should possibly aim for somewhere called Fleet Street. A Vice-President of the CCFA, he had played football for St Dennis and bowls for the St Austell club, he advised me to play and umpire and referee; "It'll all give you a greater insight into sport and life."

A wise man, he saw the bigger picture. He gave some sage advice about interviewing: how you plan your questions in advance, how you encourage the interviewee and never interrupt. He must have done a lot of interviewing for his company. Decades on, I met a man in china clay country who said "Your grandfather gave me my first job." Another St Austell resident recalled "Edgar was an organiser in the master class. Methodical... attention to detail."

The St Austell football ground, of course, has a special niche in memories. Attending the Easter Monday Cup Final, in the old days, was tremendous occasion: the ground packed, grandstand tickets like gold dust, boys hanging from trees outside the ground.

It was at a cup final that I first met Fred Peel-Yates, fanfare of this newspaper for more than a third of a century. His sports columns were soaked in colour and character – and occasional controversy. Fred wrote with a wonderful sense of perspective and an hour in his company was never dull or wasted.

He might see Noah Lobb playing football for St Austell and weave in something about Jack Rowley, the Argyle manager, who had been a goal-scoring inside-forward for Manchester United.

Through sport I also came to know a distinguished St Austell headmaster, Mr Archie Smith. He was the first headmaster of the newly-formed comprehensive school at Poltair and, in his younger days, was a legendary opening bowler for Gorran and Cornwall.

I heard him preach at a country chapel anniversary and propose toasts at cricket dinners, a real orator with the rare gift of blending wit and wisdom. Here is a comment from a man who taught on his staff: "Having Archie Smith as your headmaster was an education and an inspiration."

My love of films developed at St Austell: vivid memories of a film about William Pitt, our youngest ever Prime Minister played, I think, by Robert Donat.

Beautiful

Only years later did I learn about the Pitt family connection with Guardian Country and Boconnoc – and how Thomas Pitt (known as Diamond Pitt) bought the great house and its beautiful park with money he had made out of diamonds.

Then in the 1970s it was interesting to see Charlestown used for various location scenes in the film The Eagle Has Landed, the small Charlestown harbour transformed into German-occupied Alderney in the Channel Islands, the story of a German wartime plot to kidnap Winston Churchill.

Travelling along the St Austell bypass made me think about the travelling patterns in and around the town.

When I came to know St Austell as a boy, there were relatively few cars, people travelling by bus or walking into town for their work or their shopping. If they went to a social function in the evening, they booked a taxi to take them home.

It was when staying with my grandparents in Clifden Road that I began to read the Cornish Guardian. HJ Willmott was writing for the paper: a cultured man who covered the Royal Cornwall Show, the Bugle Band Festival, and wrote about the authorship of the Hocking brothers and the pottery of Michael Cardrew at Wenford Bridge – and other facets of Guardian Country.

He was co-author of a fascinating book called London-Bodmin, an Exchange of Letters between JC Trewin and HJ Willmott. Mr Trewin, a son of the Lizard Peninsula, was a respected theatre critic who, with his wife Wendy, lived at Hampstead NW3. I have a copy in my library at St Teath.

Reference

Here is HJ Willmott making reference to St Austell in a letter posted from Bodmin in 1948: "This is very much a St Austell week. During much of the weekend I was living on china clay – digesting all of the White Paper Report by the industry's Working Party... and Jeanne and I were again in St Austell on Thursday. We went to see the amateurs in the comic musical No, No, Nannette... gay and warm-hearted in this bleak age."

George Ellis of Bodmin took shoals of photographs for the paper and legend has it that, on one famous occasion, he asked the King and Queen – our present monarch's parents – to stand closer together.

St Austell has changed – and will continue to evolve – but, for me, the old town was a special place, a rich niche in memory lane.