Time travel: 1888
Stand on the quay in the year the outer wall went up.
Eighteen eighty-eight. They are building the outer wall and the village does not yet know that in three years the Great Blizzard will take a good part of it away again. The harbour below you is full of luggers. There is no electric light here yet — that comes later, and when it does Mevagissey is among the first villages in Britain to have it.
What you would see
The inner harbour, a hundred and ten years old and crowded. The outer wall going up beyond it. A fleet working pilchard in summer, herring in winter and mackerel in spring, and the whole village turned out when a shoal was sighted.
Three years on, the Great Blizzard of March 1891 destroys much of the new wall, wrecks the Bay of Panama with the loss of 23 lives, and kills a further 187 people and some six thousand animals across the region. The wall is not finished again until 1897.
A self-catering cottage in St Austell Bay with sea views, a large garden and parking, close to the beach and the coast path. Book direct with the owner.
Book direct with the ownerMevagissey Harbour — a guide to the village, the bay and the people who worked it.