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

F - Ferryside

In 1926, when she was 19, Daphne du Maurier's family found Swiss Cottage, a house on the bank of the River Fowey in Cornwall.

Swiss Cottage

Daphne later described that discovery in Vanishing Cornwall:

"There was a smell in the air of tar and rope and rusted chain, a smell of tidal water. Down harbour, round the point, was the open sea. Here was the freedom I desired, long sought-for, not yet known. Freedom to write, to walk, to wander, freedom to climb hills, to pull a boat, to be alone. It could not be mere chance that brought us to the ferry, and the bottom of Bodinnick hill, and so to the board upon the gate beyond that said For Sale. I remembered a line from a forgotten book, where a lover looks for the first time upon his chosen one – ‘I for this, and this for me."  

The house subsequently renamed Ferryside is inhabited today by Daphne’s son, Christopher (Kits).

It was at Ferryside in 1929 that she wrote her first novel, The Loving Spirit, the title taken from a poem by Emily Bronte:

Alas! the countless links are strong
That bind us to our clay;
The loving spirit lingers long,
And would not pass away!

The discovery of the wreck of the schooner Jane Slade in Pont Creek inspired Daphne. The Slade family were shipbuilders in the nearby village of Polruan on the same side of the Fowey estuary as Ferryside. Daphne researched the family and visited their graves at the local church of Lanteglos. In the book, Polruan became Plyn, Lanteglos became Lanoc and Jane Slade became Janet Coombe. The Loving Spirit is a family saga spanning four generations of the Coombe family, shipbuilders and mariners in and around the Cornish village of Plyn. The figurehead from the Jane Slade was later added to the front of Ferryside.

Ferryside

If you look closely you can see the figurehead on the right hand corner of the house, next to the tree.