TRESCO, BRAYSTONES
by Helen Strickland

Tresco, northernmost of the main Braystones row of beach bungalows, fell into ruin years ago, and because of its position, it rarely features in people's photos [so if you have any pictures that can be provided for this website, please contact the webmaster ! ]. However, it is not forgotten, as Helen Strickland, still a Cumbrian resident, now demonstrates.


I stayed down there around 1955 +/- a year or two. We stayed at Tresco which was owned by the Haley family from Carlisle. Unfortunately I have no pictures to share just some funny stories.

A holiday I remember well but not sure how old I was, certainly under 10, was a week we spent on the beach in a beach hut at Braystones in west Cumberland, with Mum and Dad's friends. We went by train to Nethertown Station and walked along the beach to Tresco beach house. It was quite an experience as we were right on the beach with nothing between us and the water. Several nights Aunty would not go to bed till the tide had turned as it came up so close to the hut.

On another day Mum and Aunty put on a face pack (guess there was nothing else to do really) and they sat in front of the hut till it dried and set like cement. A little girl went past and looked in horror at the two ladies with white faces. Within the next 10 minutes or so the face pack had to be washed off and back they went to sit in the sun just in time to see this little girl come back along with her parents obviously looking for the ladies with the white faces.

One or two nights it rained all night with thunder and lightning. It rained in, and all over our bedroom that I shared with Mum and Dad, and we had it covered with buckets to catch the rain; other rooms were no better. Uncle, who was known to have a few accidents, went to empty the dry toilet that was in another little hut next to Tresco. He came back having thrown it into the wind and was covered in it. He stood on the verandah and did not dare come in.

One night we had the most horrendous thunder storm and cloudburst. The next morning we woke to find part of the railway line had been washed away.


The last few stories I was told so cannot substantiate them. I have heard the story of when the people we knew first bought Tresco; they took a 3 piece suite down from Carlisle to Braystones, I think probably on the train, and while carrying it along the beach they had to put it down several times to sit on it was so heavy to carry. Also another time they had taken down a load of bedding and as the train went past the garden of Tresco they threw the bedding out of the train window so they did not have to carry it along the beach.