In 1955, when I was 17, I went on an adventure with my school friend John Newbery, both of us from Robertsbridge in East Sussex. I rode pillion on his motorbike, and we headed along pre-motorway roads to the West Country.
After a couple of days we arrived at Penzance and decided to park the motorbike and take the ferry to the Isles of Scilly.
MV Scillonian was the first in a line of steam-powered, similarly named, purpose-built Scilly ferries. She was retired in 1956, so we were among the last to sail to the islands on her. Built in Southampton, she was around 150 feet long and could take up to 400 passengers, so she was a substantial, mainly white-painted vessel with blue and green trim.
In 1951, in thick fog, she grounded on the Wingletang Ledge off the Scilly island of St Agnes, but was successfully recovered. (Wingletang is a Cornish language place name that also occurs on the island of St Mary’s.)
Information about the Scillies was provided in the ship’s passenger areas, and we learnt, among other things, why the Scillonian sea was particularly blue, and how we could go island hopping during our stay.
The Scillies lie some 35 miles by sea from Land’s End and 47 miles from Penzance, and our voyage took around three hours in calm weather. Not far from Penzance we passed Wolf Rock within viewing distance. The lighthouse there is an extraordinary feat of engineering, built as it is on a tiny island of hornblende-rich granite. This granite makes a particularly good base for a lighthouse tower.
We disembarked at Hugh Town on the island of St Mary’s, the largest of the Scillies, found some bed and breakfast accommodation, and had fish and chips in a local café for lunch.
After lunch we walked up the steep path to the Garrison Walls, from where we could enjoy the views across the islands, and the Western Rocks, to the distant Bishop Rock lighthouse, the most westerly point of Britain. The Garrison is a series of defensive fortifications, including Star Castle, built in phases from the 17th century. As well as the castle, there were storehouses, gun batteries and platforms, barracks, pillboxes, and breastworks in varying states of repair. It reminded me of old Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy.
We then set off to circumnavigate the island on foot. Now, some 70 years later, I see the St Mary’s inland landscape in my mind’s eye as on the edge of the infinite – a green, brown, and grey unfocused dream: granite walls bounding small, ancient fields with the occasional patient horse, and scarlet-flowered fuchsias in the hedges like bleeding bramble scratches, or earthy, wall-bound memories of daffodils and the last potato crop.
Like other islands of the archipelago, there are many ancient stones selected, shaped, and positioned by the prehistoric residents. There were also reminders of the still lively post-Roman Celtic culture in the extinct Cornish language place names: Porth Hellick, Halangy Down, and so on. The modern world of white-painted houses and tarmacked byways forms the top layer of my fading palimpsest.
The following day we took one of the many wooden launches with their inboard engines that ferried people round the islands to Tresco, the second largest of the Isles of Scilly. These wooden boats have now largely disappeared, apart from a few lovingly preserved as vintage craft. Inter-island traffic today is the province of larger steel- or plastic-hulled vessels.
We landed on Tresco at the small harbour of New Grimsby and set off to walk round. I didn’t really enjoy Tresco as much as the other places I visited or saw on this Scilly adventure. The island left an impression of a green blandness, a tamed part of the wild west Cornwall I had known as a child. There were neat fields, sandy beaches, and brown and gold stretches of heath, but the Atlantic wind was tamed by shelter belts. We visited the famous Tropical Gardens – very exotic but out of character for this part of the world, like a Kew glasshouse without the glass. One feature in these gardens of more topical interest to Scilly was the Valhalla Museum of ships’ figureheads, many collected from island shipwrecks (Valhalla means ‘Hall of the Fallen’ in Norse mythology). Curiously, I had an oblique connection with this museum some 35 years later: one of my team at the National Maritime Museum had the task of visiting Tresco from time to time to make sure the figureheads were not deteriorating or being damaged.
The following day we headed for Bryher, with St Agnes the smallest inhabited island in the Scillies (80–90 residents, 2 miles long, and 1 mile wide), and with a Cornish name meaning ‘hilly slopes’. We landed at Church Quay and set off to walk round the island. At first we passed the old walled pastures, and small granite-walled flower fields, then fallow land. Some of these farmed fields were thought to have been established in the Bronze Age. By early afternoon we had reached the northern heathland part of the island and had a splendid view over Hell Bay, with its jagged cliffs and black rocks facing the full force of the open Atlantic.
We finished our day on Bryher back at The Town near Church Quay and enjoyed a crab salad as part of a hearty farmhouse tea. In 1955 Bryher was very little developed, but from 2025 descriptions it sounds today more like a craggy, sea-girt theme park with shops, accommodation, and a range of places to stay.
On our final full day we went to St Martin’s island, which seemed particularly neat and bright – like an advertisement for the Isles of Scilly rather than one of the actual islands. When I worked at Land’s End many years later one of the staff told me she always took her annual holiday on St Martin’s, an interesting choice as the island is just visible from Land’s End. Our circular walk took much of the day and, like the previous walks, had vistas of tiny flower fields, coasts with white-sand beaches bordered by dark granite cliffs and rocks, and areas of heathland. This Scilly heathland is of several types but includes common heather, Cornish heath, two species of gorse, and many smaller flowering plants.
As well as our island landings, we saw many of the Scillies from rocks and granite islets to the once-inhabited Samson, Tean, and Annet with their Cornish language names. In 1998–99 I did much research on the lost land of Lyonesse, which many sources suggest was the Isles of Scilly (also known as Ennor), and my 1955 expedition gave important background to my work. The one larger island I have seen but not visited is St Agnes, the southernmost inhabited island in Scilly, and slightly smaller than Bryher. St Agnes was an early virgin martyr from Rome, and, as a child, I stayed for some time in the north Cornish village of St Agnes, a place name going back to at least the 14th century.
To complete my Scilly bubble I would like to visit the island of St Agnes and enjoy, from a guest house window, a view of the flower fields, the heathlands, the jagged rocks, the sea-worn zawns, and the wild and dangerous Atlantic. But I don’t suppose I ever shall.
