Extract from The Story of Treworgey

An extract from:
The Story of Treworgey

To celebrate our 50th year at Treworgey (which we began in 1977), we are  - among other things - publishing selected extracts on our blog from a little book written in about 2013 by Linda. 

This first extract tells the story of how Linda and Bevis first encountered Treworgey.  Before this, Bevis spent 6 months working in an Australian gold mine while Linda worked in several jobs back in Cornwall. 

Bevis did earn lots of money in his gold mine. He worked twelve-hour shifts day and night, driving big graders or helping in the huge workshop repairing them. He managed to save every penny he earned. With food provided and nothing to do (but work), nothing to spend your money on, and nowhere to go but 100's of miles of empty desert, saving money has never been easier! Bevis even managed to obtain free flights to Australia and back by travelling on horse flights as a groom. This was an experience quite different to passenger airlines! When not looking after the horses, the grooms spent their time sleeping in hayracks. And so a very tanned Bevis arrived home a few days before our wedding (having worked up until the last minute) smelling very ripe from his executive travel in a hayrack!

It was early in September 1977 that we were married in the beautiful St Cuby's Church in Duloe. There followed had a wonderful two week Scottish Honeymoon in a mediocre cottage in spectacular countryside. We returned thinking that, like Scotland, Cornwall has lovely countryside, but that we could do better with the accommodation. We were ready to begin...

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Armed with Bevis's nest egg that had transformed a £100 overdraft and a beat up mini van, to a surplus of 3000 pounds (a reasonable sum in 1977) we paid a visit to our friendly neighbourhood bank manager, who gave us the green light to buy a property for holiday letting with a 100% mortgage! Our savings were to go towards the restoration. Having scoured most of Cornwall, we found a lovely cottage in need of improvement on Bodmin Moor approached via a mile of rough boulder strewn track. We loved the isolation. However our guests probably would not have enjoyed bumping their cars over that terrible track, or the wild weather at times. Luckily for us the vendors decided not to sell at the eleventh hour. Feeling very disappointed, we called in to tell my parents the bad news. It was then that we had some incredible luck. My father was in bed recovering from flu and reading the local paper. He called us upstairs and said, 'Look at this!' On the front page was the advert that changed our lives: Treworgey.

We found Treworgey in the Autumn of 1977 - it was only a few weeks after our wedding day - and fell in love with the glorious setting the moment we set eyes on it. Luckily for us, at that time, just the pair of crumbling Victorian cottages in an overgrown meadow (now Laurel and Elm) was for sale. 

In the overgrown meadow surrounding them was a laurel tree or two, a Willow, several dying Elms on the steep bank and one hydrangea, which we kept for sentimental reasons. It still flourishes in Willow cottage garden. The price was the same as our cottage on Bodmin moor, so we already had the money arranged. 

We telephoned the farmer the same day to make our offer - the maximum the bank would allow. Luckily for us, he accepted later that day, face to face on a handshake. He rang us a week later and asked if we genuinely intended to go ahead and stand by our agreement as he had received a higher offer. We were horrified and now on tenterhooks that our eager affirmation would not be enough to convince him that we were most definitely genuine. Thankfully, he stood by his handshake. Years later we bumped into someone who turned out to be the estate agent. He confirmed how lucky we had been to buy our first cottage from a man who stood by his word. He could so easily have dropped us for more money. It's good to know that genuine people are still out there. Over the years, we gradually bought the rest of Treworgey piece by piece from that same kindly farmer who was our neighbour for thirteen years.