Du Maurier's Cornwall: Fowey
A Walk around the Locations of Some of her Best Known Stories
Exploring the settings of Du Maurier's novels around Fowey helps deepen the appreciation of the stories and of what remains of Cornwall's beautiful landscape.
Standing on Pencarrow Head at daybreak on a spring morning, it is not difficult to imagine a pirate ship anchored off the beach in Lantic Bay, set in a beautiful, giant amphitheatre of steeply sloping cliffs a mile round the coast from the Fowey river estuary in southern Cornwall. This is where the pirates and Dona, the heroine, came ashore on their way to raid Fowey in Daphne du Maurier's novel 'Frenchman's Creek'. It is the kind of dramatic Cornish landscape that distinguishes many of du Maurier's stories.
Fowey is the seaside town where du Maurier spent much of her life. It is the focus of the Du Maurier festival's extensive programme in the first two weeks of May each year. It is also a good starting point in any season for a walking tour or trips by bus and boat to the places that the novelist brought to life.
Exploring du Maurier country
Taking the passenger ferry across from Fowey, the Hall Walk follows the hillside high above the estuary linking Polruan and Bodinnick, the setting for du Maurier's first novel, 'A Loving Spirit', and passes Ferryside, her first Cornish home.
A detour from the Pont Pill branch of the Fowey estuary leads to St Wyllow church where she was married. The churchyard was the final resting place of the real-life, boat-building Slade family on whom the Loving Spirit saga is based. From there a short hike over to the coast brings you to Lantic Bay. Further east along the coastal footpath, beyond Pencarrow Head and overlooking Lantivet Bay, is the isolated cliff side hut that the coastguard built in 1869 and where du Maurier sometimes exiled herself and worked.
To the west of Fowey, beyond Readymoney Cove, is du Maurier's old home of Menabilly which became Manderley in 'Rebecca'; a track leads down through the woods to Polridmouth bay with its beach and boat house which inspired the most memorable scenes of that story. Further west round the coast, past Polkerris and the lane that leads up to Kilmarth where she spent her final years, is the wide expanse of beach and sand dunes of Par and the village of Tywardreath, now a regular walking ground for local dog owners and the setting for 'The House on the Strand'.
An hour's boat trip to the southeast across St Austell Bay is Chapel Point, where Dick Young sailed with his family and where we can easily imagine Du Maurier at the helm of her own sailing lugger.
Cornwall then and now
In many respects Cornwall has changed almost beyond recognition in the seven decades since du Maurier wrote her early Cornish novels. She regretted many of the changes and cared passionately about her adopted county as her later work of non-fiction, Vanishing Cornwall, showed. And she quietly used a portion of the modest store of wealth that her books brought her to support pro-Cornish causes and help ensure that long stretches of the coastline are permanently safe from development.
So it is partly from her own efforts that much of the landscape that inspired her writing remains intact and unspoiled, especially for those who are prepared to walk for half an hour from the nearest bus stop or parking place. She would surely still feel at home in her coastguard hut overlooking Lantivet Bay or on the top of Pencarrow Head as the morning sunlight gradually works its way down the cliffs to the white sand of the Lantic Bay beach.
Note: Details of this year's Du Maurier Festival may be found at: www.dumaurierfestival.co.uk
For related articles on other parts of Du Maurier's Cornwall see Bodmin Moor and Helford.
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