A place to dream
Long before Rebecca, and long before Menabilly (Manderley in Daphne du Maurier’s best-loved novel) there was Ferryside. The large 1860s cream-and-blue building cradled into the water’s edge is a former boathouse that was discovered by her, with her mother and two sisters, while motoring down to the south coast of Cornwall in September 1926. She was only 19 years old.
As she remembered, ‘The hired car swept round the curve of the hill, and suddenly the full expanse of Fowey harbour was spread beneath us. The contrast between this sheet of wide water, the nearby jetties, the moored ships, the grey roofs of Fowey across the way, the clustering cottages of Polruan on the opposite hill by the harbour mouth, and narrow claustrophobic Looe where we had spent the night on our way down from London was astonishing, like the gateway to another world.’
It is still the same today.
Ferryside is right on the water at the foot of the hill in Bodinnick. In 1926 the car deposited the budding novelist’s mother and daughters at the foot of the hill by the ferry and they either had to cross the ferry into Fowey (pronounced Foy) or else lunch at the Old Ferry Inn, which is still there today opposite Ferryside Climbing the hill to the Inn the girls noticed a ‘For Sale’ sign on a gate just above the ferry. Behind it was a strange-looking house built like a Swiss chalet. The ferryman standing nearby confirmed that it was called Swiss Cottage and that they used to build boats there, and use the second floor for lofts.
Daphne in 1930, the year she finished her first novel, The Loving Spirit
After lunch, the du Maurier girls, led by Daphne, went into the boatyard and found yet another gate that led to the other side of the house and discovered the remains of a garden. The chalet part of the house was built against the rock, with the windows facing out across the harbour. Nothing has changed. The house is still owned by Kits Browning, Daphne du Maurier’s son, and I visited him on a glorious day in summer. Looking out from the house I could imagine the young du Maurier seeing the blue water immediately below as I looked towards the harbour mouth. Boats were everywhere and larger yachts at anchor. ‘There was a smell in the air of tar and rope and rusted chain, a smell of tidal water,’ du Maurier remembered.
Here then was the isolation that the young du Maurier craved – away from the crowded city life with all its duties and restrictions. Here was the freedom to write, to explore, to climb the hill walks, to boat, and to be alone. Swiss Cottage was bought and renamed Ferryside. All through that winter and the next spring, decorators and builders transformed the old boathouse and in May that year she came back to Ferryside and was left alone for the rst time in her life.
It was here in the middle- oor bedroom overlooking the harbour that she wrote her rst novel, The Loving Spirit, published in 1931. It is a room for dreamers and the bewitched du Maurier wrote three other novels before the publication in 1938 of Rebecca, which made her one of the most popular authors of her day. Menabilly is only a few miles away across the estuary on the Gribbin peninsula.
The view of Fowey from Ferryside
Ferryside today is exactly what you would expect it to be – full of character, jammed with family memorabilia: the Harrington Mann portrait of a youthful Daphne du Maurier, a smaller version of the Frederic Whiting portrait of the young du Maurier sisters (now in the House of Lords), portraits of both Kits’ father, Major Tommy ‘Boy’ Browning, and his grandfather, the actor-manager, Gerald du Maurier.
Silver-framed family photographs are all dotted around the ground- oor drawing room. In the northwest corner is the giant gurehead of the abandoned schooner Jane Slade, which inspired The Loving Spirit.
It is not a huge house but the location is romantic. The side hatch door opens right on to the Fowey Estuary and is separated from the water only by a parapet and narrow strip of lawn. The three light, airy bedrooms on the middle floor are reached by a stairway that climbs up the inside of the white painted rock face against which Ferryside is built. ‘I for this, and this for me,’ Daphne du Maurier said.
It was at Ferryside that she met and fell in love with the 35-year-old Major Tommy ‘Boy’ Browning of the Grenadier Guards, who was so enamoured with The Loving Spirit that he cruised into Fowey in his 20-foot boat Ygdrasil in 1931, determined to meet the young author. They married in July of the following year in 14thcentury Lanteglos Church, some way up Polruan Hill, behind Ferryside.
Daphne at Ferryside, 1931. Inset: the sitting room at Ferryside
Curiously the kitchen at Ferryside is conveniently on the top floor of the house next to the master bedroom. It spills out on to a deck with a staggeringly beautiful view southwards down the Fowey Estuary and the open sea. Only a solitary palm tree silhouetted against the skyline disturbs an otherwise tranquil horizon.
At night, the lights of Polruan and Fowey give glimpses of a different world. Anchored ships reach up through the darkness. Ghost trees frame the legendary scene and one hears or imagines voices echoing over the sweeping bay. This is where smugglers used to ply their trade.
The six-mile Hall Walk from Ferryside is a simple stroll through the lower reaches of Pont Pill and on to Polruan. Follow it and it will return you safely back to Bodinnick.
In 1943, on a whim, she rented the mysterious, dilapidated Menabilly from the Rashleigh family. However, it was in Ferryside that she discovered herself and the magical world of make-believe and it was from here, while walking, that she discovered the derelict schooner Jane Slade, and it was in Ferryside that she began writing The Loving Spirit, one ‘wild day in October with a howling, sou’- westerly wind and slashing rain, a rug wrapped around my knees, sitting at the desk in my bedroom at Ferryside.
‘Its title came from a poem by freedom that my new existence at Ferryside brought.’
It is that sense of freedom that still exists today at Ferryside.
The Last Colonial by Sir Christopher Ondaatje (Thames & Hudson, £19.95).
For West Country holiday rentals, see our Classifieds section.
Daphne du Maurier At Home, by Hilary Macaskill
As she remembered, ‘The hired car swept round the curve of the hill, and suddenly the full expanse of Fowey harbour was spread beneath us. The contrast between this sheet of wide water, the nearby jetties, the moored ships, the grey roofs of Fowey across the way, the clustering cottages of Polruan on the opposite hill by the harbour mouth, and narrow claustrophobic Looe where we had spent the night on our way down from London was astonishing, like the gateway to another world.’
It is still the same today.
Ferryside is right on the water at the foot of the hill in Bodinnick. In 1926 the car deposited the budding novelist’s mother and daughters at the foot of the hill by the ferry and they either had to cross the ferry into Fowey (pronounced Foy) or else lunch at the Old Ferry Inn, which is still there today opposite Ferryside Climbing the hill to the Inn the girls noticed a ‘For Sale’ sign on a gate just above the ferry. Behind it was a strange-looking house built like a Swiss chalet. The ferryman standing nearby confirmed that it was called Swiss Cottage and that they used to build boats there, and use the second floor for lofts.
Daphne in 1930, the year she finished her first novel, The Loving SpiritAfter lunch, the du Maurier girls, led by Daphne, went into the boatyard and found yet another gate that led to the other side of the house and discovered the remains of a garden. The chalet part of the house was built against the rock, with the windows facing out across the harbour. Nothing has changed. The house is still owned by Kits Browning, Daphne du Maurier’s son, and I visited him on a glorious day in summer. Looking out from the house I could imagine the young du Maurier seeing the blue water immediately below as I looked towards the harbour mouth. Boats were everywhere and larger yachts at anchor. ‘There was a smell in the air of tar and rope and rusted chain, a smell of tidal water,’ du Maurier remembered.
Here then was the isolation that the young du Maurier craved – away from the crowded city life with all its duties and restrictions. Here was the freedom to write, to explore, to climb the hill walks, to boat, and to be alone. Swiss Cottage was bought and renamed Ferryside. All through that winter and the next spring, decorators and builders transformed the old boathouse and in May that year she came back to Ferryside and was left alone for the rst time in her life.
It was here in the middle- oor bedroom overlooking the harbour that she wrote her rst novel, The Loving Spirit, published in 1931. It is a room for dreamers and the bewitched du Maurier wrote three other novels before the publication in 1938 of Rebecca, which made her one of the most popular authors of her day. Menabilly is only a few miles away across the estuary on the Gribbin peninsula.
The view of Fowey from FerrysideFerryside today is exactly what you would expect it to be – full of character, jammed with family memorabilia: the Harrington Mann portrait of a youthful Daphne du Maurier, a smaller version of the Frederic Whiting portrait of the young du Maurier sisters (now in the House of Lords), portraits of both Kits’ father, Major Tommy ‘Boy’ Browning, and his grandfather, the actor-manager, Gerald du Maurier.
Silver-framed family photographs are all dotted around the ground- oor drawing room. In the northwest corner is the giant gurehead of the abandoned schooner Jane Slade, which inspired The Loving Spirit.
It is not a huge house but the location is romantic. The side hatch door opens right on to the Fowey Estuary and is separated from the water only by a parapet and narrow strip of lawn. The three light, airy bedrooms on the middle floor are reached by a stairway that climbs up the inside of the white painted rock face against which Ferryside is built. ‘I for this, and this for me,’ Daphne du Maurier said.
It was at Ferryside that she met and fell in love with the 35-year-old Major Tommy ‘Boy’ Browning of the Grenadier Guards, who was so enamoured with The Loving Spirit that he cruised into Fowey in his 20-foot boat Ygdrasil in 1931, determined to meet the young author. They married in July of the following year in 14thcentury Lanteglos Church, some way up Polruan Hill, behind Ferryside.
Daphne at Ferryside, 1931. Inset: the sitting room at FerrysideCuriously the kitchen at Ferryside is conveniently on the top floor of the house next to the master bedroom. It spills out on to a deck with a staggeringly beautiful view southwards down the Fowey Estuary and the open sea. Only a solitary palm tree silhouetted against the skyline disturbs an otherwise tranquil horizon.
At night, the lights of Polruan and Fowey give glimpses of a different world. Anchored ships reach up through the darkness. Ghost trees frame the legendary scene and one hears or imagines voices echoing over the sweeping bay. This is where smugglers used to ply their trade.
The six-mile Hall Walk from Ferryside is a simple stroll through the lower reaches of Pont Pill and on to Polruan. Follow it and it will return you safely back to Bodinnick.
In 1943, on a whim, she rented the mysterious, dilapidated Menabilly from the Rashleigh family. However, it was in Ferryside that she discovered herself and the magical world of make-believe and it was from here, while walking, that she discovered the derelict schooner Jane Slade, and it was in Ferryside that she began writing The Loving Spirit, one ‘wild day in October with a howling, sou’- westerly wind and slashing rain, a rug wrapped around my knees, sitting at the desk in my bedroom at Ferryside.
‘Its title came from a poem by freedom that my new existence at Ferryside brought.’
It is that sense of freedom that still exists today at Ferryside.
The Last Colonial by Sir Christopher Ondaatje (Thames & Hudson, £19.95).
For West Country holiday rentals, see our Classifieds section.
HER OTHER HOUSES
Daphne du Maurier once described her feelings for Fowey as ‘more than love for a person’. Hilary Macaskill’s beautifully illustrated new book captures the writer’s relationship with houses and places. From her fi rst taste of independence at Ferryside to the chance discovery of ivy-clad Menabilly, Macaskill traces the links between objects, people and places and their incarnations in Daphne du Maurier’s fi ction.Daphne du Maurier At Home, by Hilary Macaskill