A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'M'

M - Menabilly

Menabilly, The Seat of Rashleigh, Esq. Cornwall
(Antique print - in public domain)

I first went to Fowey in Cornwall in 2007. By chance our visit coincided with the Daphne du Maurier Festival celebrating her centenary.

The opening of Rebecca, possibly Daphne's most famous novel begins - 

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited."

That opening introduced Manderley, a forbidding house with an equally forbidding, black-clad Mrs Danvers as its housekeeper. The fictional Manderley was modelled on Milton House, near Peterborough the ancestral home of the Fitzwilliam family and the house and gardens of the Cornish Menabilly. 

Menabilly House, Fowey, Cornwall
(Created Jan 1, 1920 - in public domain)

Belonging to the Rashleigh family, Menabilly, became the home for Daphne and her husband from 1943 to 1969, its history and grounds also provided input to novels later than Rebecca.

The first novel she wrote at Menabilly was The King's General. Set during the English Civil war, it was prompted by the discovery, during alterations to Menabilly in the 1820s, of a walled-up skeleton thought to have been a Cavalier. It tells the story of the love between Richard Grenville, The King's General and Royalist Honor Harris, one of du Maurier's strongest heroines.

in 1969 the year she was made a DBE, the Rashleighs wanted to return to Menabilly; despite all the money she had spent on its restoration Daphne was forced to accept a move to its dower house, Kilmarth, where she was to live until her death.

Fowey

A-Z Challenge – ‘F’

I went to Fowey in Cornwall for the first time after my son moved there to live. In May 2007, not only was it my 70^th birthday but it was also the time of the Daphne du Maurier Festival which celebrated the centenary of her birth.

I had read several of her books, including Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, but otherwise was fairly ignorant about her connection with Fowey. I finished up writing an article on her life as an assignment on a creative writing course.

 Ferryside

At Fowey I could see first hand the house Ferryside where Daphne wrote her first novel, The Loving Spirit. Daphne was inspired to write the book after discovering the wreck of the schooner Jane Slade in Pont Creek. The Slade family were shipbuilders in the village of Polruan which lies across the estuary from Fowey. The figurehead from the schooner was added to the house later.

The opening of Rebecca, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” is world famous. The fictional Manderley was based on a house near Peterborough and what Daphne called her ‘house of secrets’, Menabilly, the home of the Rashleigh family just outside Fowey. Daphne was to move into Menabilly and wrote many of her books there, but not Rebecca. 

 Menabilly

In 1943 Daphne lived at Readymoney in Fowey after Ferryside had been requisitioned as a naval HQ. The gardens of the cottage at Readymoney Cove are open to the public on occasions. The house carries a plaque recording Daphne’s time there.

Readymoney

St Catherine’s Castle stands on the point to the seaward side of Readymoney Cove and used to guard the entry to the estuary. The Fowey estuary was one of the deepwater harbours from which American troops departed for the D-Day landings in 1944. 

 St Catherine's Castle

Container ships and large cruise ships now visit Fowey and it’s a haven for boating enthusiasts; if you wish you can have a trip in a little steamboat.