SEA CREST, COULDERTON, AND THE PICKTHALLS, continued

Anybody who has arrived at this page directly via a search engine might want to go back to the beginning of the story.

Donald Pickthall came out of the Army in 1959, and soon afterwards began his long career at Sellafield (as we now call it). He never lost his love for the beach, and continued trying to emulate his father's energetic resourcefulness. North of the bungalows was a tar-black fishermen's hut, occupied by two old men who maintained fish-traps in the tidal shallows off Coulderton and How Man:
"If you go out to them you can actually see where they had the mouth, and where they put the nets round, on high poles, so that the last bit of water that was flowing out when the tide was out was at them pools. So any fish caught in them pools, those fishermen, those two old men, made their living out of them pools... I even went and tried it myself, got a net and everything, put it out' those pools- but what I'd never realised, till I really started delving around... at the How Man one and the Coulderton one, all the rocks had been laid o' the edge... so that there was ways in... Flat rocks had been laid on top into this pool area, and when you lifted the flat rocks with a crowbar... you were looking into an area where there would be a lobster, and you could just put your hand in and pick the lobster up- or crabs, and the crab would be there. And they'd made this, and I thought 'No wonder they said these two old men had a fairly good living...' "
As a new generation of Pickthalls appeared in the 1960s, they too were introduced to the delights and delicacies of the beach, continuing the family tradition of spending the whole summer in residence- May to September in their early years (if they'd moved in permanently, they would have had to pay a full year's Council rates). The delicacy shown here was caught at Coulderton using a crab-hook, not a lobster pot.

Actually, not all the delicacies came from the sea: Don's wife Barbara remembers that Hartleys' ice-cream van used to come down from Egremont. The biggest challenge was milk, bought fresh from Benn's farm up in Coulderton. Until the Pickthalls insulated a cupboard with polystyrene foam, the only way to keep milk usable for more than a few hours in summer was to boil it as soon as they got it back to the bungalow.

The water supply to the beach bungalows always used to come from springs. The railway embankment had been constructed in such a fashion that rainwater running off the farmland above could easily drain through it, so at many points along the foot of the embankment there were little streams flowing down the beach. Naturally filtered in its passage through the ground and the embankment, the water from these springs tasted wonderful, and made a great cup of tea. The nearest spring to 'Sea Crest' was a short distance south towards 'Green Bank' (which had its own spring within the plot, as did some other bungalows) and the Pickthalls created a little basin out of sandstone blocks, so that a bucket could easily be filled. Don also installed a 250-gallon [1100 litre] rainwater tank, plus a header tank- filled using a hand-pump- for a flush toilet, which was plumbed to a septic tank based on a design in a Reader's Digest book. Digging into the stony beach was not easy; to stop the sides of the hole collapsing, Don made a frame out of driftwood, which sank down into the excavation as material was removed, and prevented the sides of the hole from caving in. More ingenuity was displayed in the creation of a shower unit. A Tudor spray-pump was fed from a tank filled with pleasantly-hot water, and the user stood in a large tray which collected the run-off (this was so much fun that it was a good way to encourage the children to keep clean). When gas lighting became popular in the 1960s, he even ran copper pipes through the bungalow to provide light in every room.

At one point, when local Council estates were being renovated, Don acquired a quantity of old doors, which he used to build a garage. He also managed to recycle good-quality Whitehaven bricks, and even part of a rather elegant ship's rail which had washed up on the shore- but the rail, many of the bricks, and even a boat the family kept on the beach were ultimately re-recycled without their permission, and haven't been seen since. Most furniture at the bungalows is cast-off from the owners' main houses- but pity the unfortunate owners who briefly used their bungalow as a shop, allowing certain unscrupulous customers to spot that their cast-off furniture was old enough to be antique. On the other hand, Don doesn't think that Mrs Birbeck had any furniture theft problems at her sweet shop.

A more bizarre problem of Coulderton beach life was access. As more people came down to the beach by car, it became increasingly important to maintain tracks along the beach. However, some people failed to appreciate this, and occasionally plots would be extended so that the line of the track was fenced off. Drivers who strayed from the track were taking quite a risk- once the wheels started spinning, it didn't take long for a vehicle to dig itself in to axle-depth, to the great amusement of the regulars. Unfortunately, day visitors who were aware of this problem would sometimes actually park on the track, forcing everybody else to risk getting bogged down in the shillies. The best remedy/revenge was to park another car in such a way that the offending parker had to drive off the track when leaving, or reverse all the way. To be fair, once they'd had their laughs at stuck vehicles, the bungalow dwellers would bring out boards etc. to help the stranded drivers get out. Barbara recalls that on one occasion, when the victim was a fire engine, they skipped the amusement...

If your car actually broke down on the beach, you were in serious trouble. It was better to try and repair it there than to risk bringing a breakdown truck down the narrow hairpin-bend track from Coulderton village. Once, when Don owned a Ford Prefect, he had to have the rear axle repaired on the beach. It seemed a good job until he tried driving up that track, and realised that the brakes were binding. Lacking the power to reach the top of the steep hill, he had to reverse back down- round a hairpin bend. In a moment of panic, his foot missed the brake, and got stuck behind the pedals- luckily the handbrake was good enough to stop him before he rolled over the edge and down towards the railway embankment. Over the years, residents have dumped large quantities of gravel (and, it has to be said, a fair amount of rubbish) at the sharp bends, to make them easier to negotiate. "Global warming" may well have put an end to another occasional hazard of the track- on very cold conditions, the outlet of the communal spring part-way up the track would freeze over, and the water would flow onto the track, turning it into a sheet of ice, utterly impossible to drive over. At other times, the sea was so high it actually flowed through the archway, and the only way to the bungalows was along the railway embankment.

The railway was, of course, always quite literally in the background for the beach dwellers. About 11pm one night, shortly after a northbound train had passed, Don heard a strange, quiet rumbling up on the track, and when he looked out he saw about 16 freight wagons trundling back towards Nethertown Station, uncoupled from their locomotive (goods trains did not always have air-brakes). On another occasion, a party wandering back to the beach from the Tourists' Hotel, choosing to walk the line rather than risk twisted ankles on the stony shore, because they knew the signalman was still supping his ale, were caught out by another late-night goods train, and had to jump off the embankment. It turned out that the signalman had left the token, which permitted the train to pass, next to the signal-post before setting off for the pub.

When John Pickthall died in 1970, the bungalow was inherited by Donald's older brother, but because he lived in Surrey, he didn't spend much time there, except when he was in serious need of some R & R. Don, who had become a Scout leader, rented three adjoining plots to the south from British Rail, for camping and outdoor activities (his troop had a spectacular success in their first ever attempt at raft-racing). Don's picture below is looking over the intended campsite to 'Green Bank' etc. [though it's utterly irrelevant to 'Sea Crest' you can click here to see 'Green Bank', extracted from the background of a 1970s holiday photo by Don]

Even the Scouts weren't on the beach every week, let alone every day, and as hinted in the introduction to this 'Sea Crest' information, vandalism was a particular problem in the days when few bungalows were permanently occupied. Then again, the greatest acts of vandalism were officially sanctioned. For example, Coulderton bungalow owners are proud of the natural sea-defences provided by the tidal ridges in the shingle beach, and point to the struggles to protect the coastline and railway embankment further north, where the beach was once treated, with full Council approval, as a gravel-pit (the stone being brought by horse-and-cart to Sea Lane at Coulderton, where it was transferred to lorries).

In its ceaseless struggle to maintain the connection through Sellafield, the railway company would do whatever it could to shore up the embankments on which so much of the line ran. At one point, work on the landward side of the embankment cut off the water supply to the Pickthalls' spring, so they had to start using the main communal spring up the hill through the railway arch. But where, astute readers will be asking, was all that water going? Nowhere, of course; it was just turning the embankment into mud. When the line started to subside, the railway engineers took even more drastic steps, dumping huge blocks on the seaward face to try and prevent the slump. In doing that, they buried part of the plots that Don had rented from them, and when he complained he was told that they were perfectly within the rights granted by the Act of Parliament which had authorised the building of the line.

Meanwhile, a sign appeared by the communal spring, declaring that the lovely water was "unfit for drinking". Like the other similar signs erected up and down the beach, it soon disappeared, but it was replaced by another, more robust and more informative- "unfit for drinking because it has not been treated". Given the unnerving whiff of chlorine often given off by the "safe" treated water up at Thornhill, this struck Don, and most other beach dwellers, as being rather cheeky. However, encouraged by the Reverend Blair, the bungalow owners clubbed together and bought a connection to the mains supply (something that the old Water Board had always indicated was not practicable). One effect of the massive operation to shore up the railway embankment was to break the water-pipe to 'Green Bank', but it seems the water company's Act of Parliament trumped the railway's Act of Parliament, so the pipe was repaired. While they were at it, the railway company also made good the track along the beach to 'Green Bank', probably because it would be useful for their future work on the embankment.

One smaller source of trouble was the Pelham House Approved School at Ponsonby- rumour had it that the training there was so good, inmates would run away just before they were due to be sent home, and break into beach bungalows for a few days' fun, thereby earning themselves extended stays at the school. However, the real trouble for 'Sea Crest', some years later, began with a report to Don by a friend from the beach that a man and woman, both known to be married to other people, had started using the bungalow for their own variety of fun. That problem could be dealt with, but early one Saturday morning, Don looked out of his window at home in Thornhill, and saw a plume of smoke rising from the coast. As a good Scout, he had a pretty precise idea of the location of the bungalow, and sure enough, when he arrived, two-thirds of it was destroyed. The remaining third was, of course, the famous mahogany extension, much less flammable than the pitch-pine which had been used for the original building (though the fire had burned hot enough to shatter the ceramic toilet pedestal).

Although Don's brother had insured the building, a fundamental problem arose over the reconstruction- Copeland Council had decided, in their wisdom, to clamp down on idiosyncratic leisure buildings. The insurance policy covered a like-for-like rebuilding in wood- estimated cost £9,000; but the Council insisted on something more substantial, like cavity-walled brick- estimated cost £43,000. Therefore 'Sea Crest' (like several other bungalows which had suffered accidents since the Council's bold decision) did not get rebuilt. Copeland Borough Council policy has recently been modified, resulting in a resurgence of timber building on the beach, so Don has resumed negotiations. On a related matter: when Don retired from Scouting, he wondered what to do with the three narrow beach plots he had rented. He approached the Council for informal discussions about the possibility of installing a row of huts (as opposed to bungalows) which could be rented out to day visitors. No chance. Caravans? Even less chance- they have to be on a licensed site. As it happens, the Pickthalls now have a caravan down at Braystones, which they use regularly to keep their long and mostly very happy connection with the beach.

P.S. We'll leave these pages with a creative idea for dealing with District Council planners, which both Don and I have observed in different situations. Don's example, from Coulderton beach, concerns a Cleator Moor family who ignored planning regulations altogether, and simply moved a caravan onto the beach. After getting away with this for some time, they suddenly built a bungalow. When building a residential property, a key element in obtaining planning permission is to be able to prove that the site has a history of residential occupation- and if that prior residential occupation was not successfully challenged in court, then it seems that it cannot retrospectively be declared to have been illegal!