MEMORIES OF THE LIDSTONE BOAT YARD,

SOUTHTOWN.

Miss Win Lidstone celebrated her 99th

birthday on February 11th this year. Here

she tells the story of her family’s business

and her early memories of living above it

to Ray Freeman.

The Lidstone boat building firm was started up in Southtown in 1826 by our great grandfather Samuel in premises which were previously used by the Newman family in their Newfoundland cod fishing trade. The buildings had not been used to live in before, and he converted part of them into a family house overlooking the boat yards and work rooms below. The house was a tall one, up some stairs from the river, with entrance doors on each floor, and had three bedrooms. The boat yard was on the river level, with workrooms and store rooms on the first floor on three sides of a small courtyard. Our grandfather was the first in Southtown to have piped water. It came down from the street above into a tank in the garden, then into the house. Most people in the road then still had to fetch water from conduits provided by the Feoffees of St. Petrox, whose signs can still be seen.

Our parents were William and Rebecca (neé Hannaford) Lidstone, who had four children between 1893 and 1901: Susan, Philip, Ernest and me, Win. We shared the house at first with our grandfather, who was very much the boss of the firm. When he was too old to work he used to sit outside and give directions. Uncle Thomas, who also worked in the firm, lived with us as well. The boatyard passed down through our father to our brother, Philip, the last of the family to build boats there. Ernest, my younger brother, became an engineer in the aircraft industry and worked on Spitfires.

Lidstones made small clinker-built rowing and sailing boats, later adapted to take engines. The first motor boat to be built on the Dart was built by Lidstones They employed three or four men, and some apprentices. An estimate survives from Sept. 1897 for a new boat for the use of the “Dartmouth Castle”: 14 ft. long, elm built, copper fastened, iron shoes, rings etc., no rudder, 1 coat of paint with tar on bottom, Cost: £8. 0. 0. Extra coats of paint etc. would have brought the cost to £9. 6. 0. Each boat was made to order, to their own designs, and they were proud of their reputation for quality. People said “You can always tell a Lidstone boat”. They had their own steam press, and prepared the wood by bending it to the required shape. Each plank might be different. Timber was bought in bulk from Plymouth and stored and seasoned for 2 - 3 years.

We were all born in the house above the boat yard and we had a nurse who came for a month to help our mother. At first Susan the eldest went to a private school at the end of Foss Street, but later moved to the Higher Street School, which had a good reputation, when she was 10 years old. After that all the children went there, and won scholarships when we were 13 to the Secondary school in Torquay, which we reached by train. This was the forerunner of the Grammar school, and took both boys and girls. After that Susan worked as a pupil teacher for two years in the Higher Street School where there could be 60 children in a class. She was there in 1917 when the old Britannia was towed out, and the headmistress Miss Althorp sent her (as the youngest member of staff) round to the Council offices to ask if the children could be let out ot school to watch. They agreed and all the school turned out to wave goodbye as the old “Brit” passed. I was then at Torquay school, but was allowed to stay at home that day: Miss Althorp wrote a letter to my school explaining that it was a historic event which none of us should miss.

Susan later went to Goldsmith’s College in London and became a qualified teacher. I was eight years younger than my sister, but I followed on after her to the same college. When we were both qualified there were no jobs in Devon so we taught in schools in London. It was unusual for families to educate their daughters in careers at this time: girls were expected to stay at home until they married.

Social life in those days was centred round the Church. We all went to the new Flavel church, built in 1895, which replaced the older building at the back of Foss Street. The former church was used as a Sunday school, and for concerts, rather like the present Flavel Hall which replaced it after it was bombed in the war. Lady Freake, who lived at Warfleet House, was very musical and organised many concerts there. Her daughter Mrs. Goldsmith had a beautiful voice, said to be as good as a professional, and she often sang there along with local singers whom Lady Freake encouraged to develop their talents. She even tried to persuade Susan to become an actress, but the family would not hear of it.

My sister and I both sang in our church choir, and were invited by Lady Carden of Ravensbury to sing to her in a group at her house. My sister also used sometimes to go and read to her - she liked young people. She gave Susan a book of poems by Emerson which she always treasured.

About 1911 her son Peter Carden came to live at Ravensbury. He was an amateur inventor who was fascinated by the new flying machines which had first flown only in 1903. He designed a plane which he ordered to be built in the Lidstone boathouse, using the steam press to mould the timbers. It reached an advanced state and I remember climbing into the wicker seat in the cockpit. One day Peter Carden brought to see the plane a young boy, only a toddler, who was staying with his mother at Ravensbury. This was Peter Scott whose father Robert Falcon Scott had died in the Antarctic in 1909. He was taken out by our brother in a boat for a trip around the harbour. Not long after this our father came in one day and said he had some very sad news: Lady Carden had died suddenly. That was the end of the plane - no one knows what happened to it. Ravensbury was sold and Peter Carden left the town. He continued with inventions however and in the First World War developed a vehicle with caterpillar tracks. He set up the Carden Engineering Company which was famous between the two wars for producing armoured vehicles and tanks. His interest in designing planes lasted all his life, and he built a tiny single seater plane which flew the Channel in 1935. Unfortunately he was killed in a crash in a commercial flight in 1935. A book is being written about his life, and the author has phoned me several times for information about Peter’s early life.

The Lidstone boathouse continued to produce boats under my brother Philip up to and after the Second World War. When he died there were no children to carry on the business. His widow went on living in the family home, and the boat yard was used for storing boats for several years. In 1971 the boat yard part was sold and then converted into a house. So ended a business which had been run by one family for nearly 150 years. There have been Lidstones living in Dartmouth for at least 300 years and there are branches of the family living all over the world, but I am now the last one of them left here.

CAPTIONS TO PICTURES.

1. Lidstone boat yard from the river, with the family home just above, in a photo

taken before 1900. The Manor House, just above the flagpole to the left, was pulled down in 1905.

2. This Lidstone boat was the first motor boat on the Dart. The lady in the

hat is Edie Bovey. Does anyone know who the others are?

3. William Thorning Lidstone, father of Miss Win Lidstone.

4. Wally Turner and friend, with the aid of a winch, haul a boat onto the first floor of

Lidstones for winter storage.