Westward Ho!

Christmas Eve at the Front

An interesting letter has just been received by Mrs Packer, of Broadclyst, from her husband, Corpl Packer of A Company, 1st Battalion Devonshire Regiment, who is serving with the Expeditionary Force in Northern France. In the course of a letter he describes a remarkable incident which occurred on Christmas Eve between the British and German trenches.

Delivering fish by boat to a waiting customer on Westward Ho! sands last Friday afternoon,

Capt J R Pile, ‘Commodore’ of Bideford’s fishing fleet, accomplished a feat that has probably not been performed within living memory, and certainly not in the month of October.

Mr Claude Wise of Westward Ho! had ordered some soles from Capt Pile and, having seen what conditions were the previous day, Capt Pile promised to deliver the fish personally at Westward Ho! When the Deera finished some way off Westward Ho! Capt Pile brought her in until she almost grounded in some six feet of water. He and Mr Vernon Boyle then transferred to a 14ft boat brought for the purpose – the Deera does not now carry a boat of her own on normal trips – and rowed ashore with the fish.

Although during that week of quiet weather, there had been little or no ground sea, the handling of an open boat in the surf is no sinecure but the trip was accomplished without difficulty. So often Westward Ho! is a lee shore which means that even if a boat gets ashore it is impossible to get off again.

Gazette article dated 16 October 1953

Ill-fated Westward Ho! Pier Enterprise

Where the beach ends and the cliffs begin under Kipling Tors at Westward Ho! a group of black bumps appear and disappear in the swell of the waves.

At certain states of the tide they could from a distance be mistaken for a group of seals at play. But closer inspection reveals them to be encrusted iron stanchions.

The stanchions are all that is left of a pier which when it was finished just over 100 years ago was the pride and joy of those who had hopes and plans for the development of Westward Ho! as a holiday resort.

Unlike most piers, this one had a very brief life – and not a particularly gay one.

Originally it was to have been 600 feet long but an autumn gale of 1871 snapped off a series of the cast iron pillars and only 150 feet were left intact. The first contractor departed and a Bideford iron works proprietor and engineer, Mr John Abbott, undertook the pier in a shortened form.

The idea, of course, was to get out to the deeper water so that the coasting pleasure steamers bringing holidaymakers could come right into Westward Ho!

The enterprise never really had time to prove it was the hoped-for success. The sea was declared the winner and the pier was declared dangerous and unsightly. Demolition work then started.

The full Gazette article is dated 1 March 1974.

Three-headed Tulip

In a Westward Ho! Garden

Two heads are better than one and three are better still, thinks Mrs E G Fisher, of Manorville, Kingsley Road, Westward Ho! seen here with the three-headed tulip that sprang from a single bulb in her garden. The tulip is cerise coloured and the bulb was just planted and received no special attention. 'Like Topsy it just growed' said Mrs Fisher.

Mr Roger Cobley, of the Seymour Cobley bulb farm at Braunton told the Bideford and North Devon Gazette that a three-headed tulip was by no means a rarity, adding that he had seen one bulb produce as many as fourteen flower heads. 'It just means that it is a large and very strong growing bulb' he said.

Article dated 25 May 1956