As a child I was spellbound by a print of Stanhope Forbes’ “A Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach” that my Mum had hung in our home, I have no doubt that it influenced my desire to become a painter myself. A family holiday to Cornwall later cemented my dream of living here. Mark also longed to live beside the sea in magical Penwith since coming here on surfing trips and holidays with Ella.
Imagine our excitement when we found our dream cottage on the edge of Newlyn with a rambling garden on the hillside above, views across the bay to St Michael’s Mount and a history that involves the Newlyn painters themselves!

The Newlyn Archive tells us that artist Thomas Cooper Gotch first stayed at Gwavas House in 1879 when he took lodgings at Gwavas House, the owner at that time was William Henry Tonkin (we think he was the the second William Henry Tonkin in a line of 5 generations - we just purchased the house from the fifth William Henry Tonkin!). William and his wife had no children, so they rented out the spare bedrooms at their home to visitors. The lodgings were ideal for an artist because the net loft to the rear of the house could be used as a studio. Gotch completed several paintings there.

Walter Langley began to paint Newlyn in 1880 and also stayed at Gwavas House. Langley loved the place, he became friends with the family there, returning many times over the next 30 years to make paintings in the yard where he found the perfect environment to set scenes with local models. So far we have found images online of at least half a dozen paintings made by Langley in the linhay at Gwavas House. The painting pictured here even shows an easel outside the kitchen door. This piece was sold by Sotheby’s, their description mentions the house and its role for the artists.

When Stanhope Forbes arrived in 1884 he too stayed at Gwavas house, though only for a short period as he didn’t like the smell of fish from the yard and soon sought more refined lodgings further into the centre of the village! (As stated in Newlyn:When the artists came.)

The net loft is a long thin building used for storing and mending fishing nets. A large rooflight was needed to provide illumination for the net repairs and a big fireplace to heat a pot of tar into which the newly mended nets would be dipped before they were taken back to the boats. The loft also has a second, smaller fireplace (visible in the photo) for keeping warm when tar wasn’t needed. Generations of local families would have worked together in the linhay and the loft. It would have been a tough life, but a close community knitted the people together in their work.

The loft, with its large roof light provided a perfect temporary studio for the artists to complete their works in relative comfort. After a while Thomas Cooper Gotch grew tired of the ladder to the loft studio and had stairs fitted, the same stairs are still present today, though they are now in need of some repairs!

After the Newlyn school artists left and the pilchard industry declined, the loft was used by other painters and later a potter.

During the second world war a barrage balloon that protected the harbour was brought down by a storm, it crashed onto the back yard of Gwavas House and the loft. Half of the roof had to be replaced by the authorities on a war-time budget and so, alas, the traditional ‘scantle’ slate roof coverings and the large rooflight were lost in the process as a more economical asbestos tile roof was installed. New concrete supporting pillars were built in the yard to shore up the net loft, and nothing further has been done with the building to this day.

Accessed from the road via a covered alley or ‘ope’ the yard/linhay itself was used to clean and press pilchards into barrels, the fish were brought up from the boats in the bay outside and carried through the ope into the yard. The sloping floor was covered in lines of pebbles leading to a central drain, we believe those pebbles are still present beneath the concrete that was poured over them in the 1950’s.

Ironically, the corner of the yard where the paintings were made - we have nicknamed it ‘Langley Corner’- is the only part of the house to have been significantly updated over the years. A bathroom was created in the 1950’s, plumbing pipes now protrude from the wall, the kitchen window has been replaced with a plastic one and a partition has been built beside the back door, but it is still (just) recognisable from the paintings! The original slates are still poking out from beneath the rendered panel abvove the window and the roof lines remain unchanged. The white painted granite pillar beside the window is still there and the back door too, they are just hidden behind the partition for now.