Did You Know?
-
A former resident of the house on The Island was Alexander Lodge, inventor of the Spark Plug. His father Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge the physicist was also a spiritualist. Sir Oliver knew Sir Arther Conan Doyle and both men may have stayed on The Island.
That during the 1920s, David Lindsay (1876 - 1945), a world-famous fantasy writer, lived at and wrote his books in, a sea-front house at Porth? His father was a Scot and the name he chose for his house was 'Lynscot'. This name was retained when the house became a hotel and has only recently [2000] been renamed after change in ownership to the Porth Beach Hotel. Linsay's most famous book was 'A Voyage to Arcturus' (source Neil Pedlar)
The oldest surviving Pilot Gig the 'Newquay' was built in 1812 and is still in use today.
Sir William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, was born in Newquay on 19th September 1911.
Titanium (Ti), the metalic element, was discovered by the Reverend William Gregor in Cornwall in 1791. The discovery went un-noticed and it was only later in 1795 that Martin Kalaproth independently re-discovered it and gave the element its name.
Rev. Gregor was born in Cornwall in 1761 and was educated for the ministry at Bristol and Cambridge. He died of tuberculosis in 1817. Newquay's White Tower of the Tower Road Golf Club was built in 1835. It was later purchased by the Gregor family as a holiday home.
Cornwall's first ever Escalator was installed by F W Woolworth in their Newquay store.
During the early 1900s Newquay had a large textile industry producing mainly high grade knitted garments for fashionable London stores. At its height there were some seven companies operating knitting factories and a separate box making factory was built to support their operation. This latter building was last used as a fruit store before its recent demolition [2000?] and site redevelopment for housing.
Donald Healey, of Austin-Healey sports car fame, went to Newquay College (now the Hotel Bristol). He was born in 1898 at Perranporth, just down the coast from Newquay, and died on 13 January 1988 at the age of 89. At the outbreak of World War I, Donald Mitchell Healey (or DMH as he liked to be known) joined the Royal Flying Corps but was soon invalided out at the age of 18 after being shot down by British anti-aircraft fire! He studied engineering and took up motor racing winning the Monte Carlo Rally in 1931.
