Apropos of things that painters paint and photographers photograph, the fate of the ancient fishermen's cottages at Newlyn in Cornwall is now holding the nation breathless. The Town Planning Act—which with the best of intentions seems to be producing as many crimes as the speculative builder—has prompted the Penzance Town Council to say that the cottages are unfit to live in, and must be pulled down, and the fishermen shall be given a nice new row of Council houses away up a hill very far from and inconvenient for their work.
The cottages are certainly old and old-fashioned. But they are lovely to look at, very strong, and there seems plenty of evidence that they could be reconditioned to all modern requirements at far less cost than building new houses.
H. M. Bateman, the comic artist, who once lived at Newlyn, first set out to rouse the nation in the cottages' defence. Sir Arthur Quiller Couch,'Mrs. Dod Proctor, A.R.A., and many more have joined. The wives of the fishermen have composed an appeal to the Queen which they are coming up to present at Buckingham Palace. Doctors write to the papers to say that if Newlyn really is insanitary as the Penzance Council says, they wish other parts were equally unwholesome, judging by the consistently healthy appearance of Newlynites.
So there you are, and, as Pepys says, what shall be the end of it, God knows. But Newlyn is only a conspicuous example of the restless passion of the day for tearing down and making new. What we want is an Act of Parliament forbidding anyone, and most particularly any public body to do anything that interferes with the existing order of affairs for another ten years. By which time we may be saner in essential matters than we are now.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.