29/03/2026
Today, another extract from Tim Jennings: memories of his grandmother Mabel and aunt Elizabeth’s last years at Woodcot……
I would watch Elizabeth toddle off to church early on a Sunday morning, probably to take Holy Communion. There was never any ‘song and dance’ about their church going, it wasn’t set in stone that they would attend each and every Sunday, just when they felt the need.
There is little or no doubt in the collective minds of all Elizabeth’s family that she would have been influenced by a charity’s stated credentials. Thus the Plymouth Guild of Social Service, which later became the Plymouth Guild of Community Service, Help the Aged, Voluntary Christian Service, all indicate concern for the welfare of mankind in one way or another.
This extract from Holy Trinity’s church magazine in February 1967 written by the Reverend John Desmond Stewart Turnbull, Salcombe’s long serving vicar.
‘I think that you know that it is not my custom normally to do more than maintain a record, under the heading of ‘parish register’ of births, marriages and deaths which occur amongst our people here. However, I intend to make an exception to that custom this month.
On December 27th Mrs Jennings passed away from us in this world, after spending just ten days, the first of her 86th year, in Stonehanger. When she left her old home Woodcot on her 85th birthday, that marked the closing of an era in the life of our town and parish, for it was known that that day’s journey was her last in this world.
On the day of her death, her home and the view from it was one of perfect calm, bathed in soft but full winter sunshine, as if to give her a fair day for her journey from this world, and reflecting her own calm serenity which, with her outstanding graciousness, and courage, was so characteristic of her whole personality and life, for she was in truth a person filled with grace.
In her lifetime she was a very substantial and generous benefactor of our church here, though she did not like very much to be thanked, and most of her giving was shrouded in very strict secrecy.
We do have, as a visible memorial to her love of our church, the purple pulpit fall, which she not only gave us, bur herself made and with such skill embroidered.
It is above all a very wonderful person whom we miss with her passing. I am very sure that she rests in the peace of God in whom she had so steadfast and deep a faith. May she indeed rest in His peace.’
I remember the day of Grandmother Mabel’s funeral in January 1967 for the dusting of snow on Rickham Common, and the sight of one Cook’s larger white motor boats coming along underneath Woodcot in quite a heavy sea. I had never been in Salcombe during winter before.
