January 2006

Coffee Morning is great Success

Talk about the history of the Greenbank Hotel

T he Society held its 3 rd.Coffee Morning at the Greenbank Hotel on the 25 th.October 2005 when 27 members including their guests turned up to hear Mr. Neil Slade, Manager of the hotel, and Committee member, Brinley Morris, talk about this historic building past and present. This was followed by some lively and interesting reminiscences from a number of those present.

Mr. Slade, who went to school in Falmouth and was brought up here, described the recent changes in the operation of the hotel and proposals for the future expansion of the business

After this opening Brinley Morris entertained the audience with some of the eventful occurrences at the hotel during its more recent history. He was invited by a foreign gentleman in the 1990s to meet him and his architect so that he could advise Brinley of his plans to turn the Greenbank into” the best hotel in Cornwall”. One proposal was to excavate beneath Greenbank Gardens to create a car park for about 200 cars, the cost of which would have risked any worthwhile return on capital. Within a short time he erected a large marquee on the Greenbank Pier where very loud pop music was blearing away until after 11.30pm on the first night of its use. As you might expect this caused uproar in the area. It wasn’t long before the foreign gentleman disappeared.

The preceding owner similarly had grandiose plans to build a 3 story extension, and to build out into the water. Happily Carrick District Council were persuaded to refuse planning permission, but it prompted Brinley and a few locals to try to get the building “listed” to stop any further “character assassination”; not so much for any architectural merit, but because of its history. Although the move was largely unsuccessful, the Pier was listed.

The walls of Greenbank Pier had been built by French prisoners of the Napoleonic Wars using a method of vertical hard stone construction which had no form of infilling thereby breaking down the pressure of the waves.

There is a gap in the earliest ownership, but we believe that it was in 1640 that whatever building was in situ at that time became an inn, for it was reported that a ferry service was “operated by the keeper of the Inn”. It is probable that an inn was established at this point between Falmouth and Flushing because of the relatively narrow passage, called incidentally “The King’s Road Point”.

Martha Mitchell took over the running of the hotel from 1888, and we are told that she enjoyed a long reign at the Greenbank. Martha took over from her father, John Hoskin Mitchell, who in turn ran the business from 1869, it having previously been managed by a Mr. Thomas Selley. Apparently, Mr. Selley made the hotel into a gentlemen’s residence where captains of the Packet Ships stayed.

During the years of the Packet Ship service, the hotel was an important stop for coaches travelling to the main cities of the south west and was known as the “Commercial Packet Hotel, Greenbank”. An advert at the time proclaimed “The Lord Subscription Coach leaves the above hotel every morning at 5 o’clock for Plymouth, Exeter, London, Bath and Bristol. Neat Post Chaised, with careful drivers to any part of England

In June 1785 an advert in the Sherbourne Mercury referred to the building as “A Commodious Dwelling House Known As The Ship Inn, Falmouth”. In 1813 the hotel’s name had been changed from the Ship Inn to the King’s Arms Inn.

The most well known historical facts state that in 1907 both Florence Nightingale and Kenneth Grahame stayed at the hotel (at different times). Whilst at the hotel, Kenneth Grahame wrote letters to his son, addressed “My Darling Mouse” which letters led to him writing the stories for “Wind In The Willows”.

There is an apocryphal story of the origins of the name “Pennycome Quick”, one of two tiny fishing settlements established long before the town of Falmouth grew up. It is thought that the Greenbank Hotel occupies the site of that settlement. There is a story of the Landlady of the hotel describing the fondness of her customers for her ale so that “their pennies come quick”!

(with thanks to Brinley Morris and Felicity Nicholson)