On this day in Wembury 9 March — 1930
On this day in Wembury, the little Pioneer Tea Hut at Bovisand Beach was shut up for the quiet months of spring by its owner, Jacob Smith, a caterer from Southside Street in Plymouth. The wooden hut stood just above the sand, a popular stop for coast walkers and bathers heading down from the cliffs. Smith’s daughter, Lilian McVicar, who lived at the Coastguard Cottages, kept an eye on it through the winter and checked the doors each night. But she did not think to test the windows. Behind the calm of the cove, the nearby Fort Renney gunners were restless, young recruits with small pay and plenty of boredom between drills. Within weeks the tea hut would be broken into, and the quiet of the beach shattered by one of the strangest petty thefts the village had seen.
(Western Morning News, 2 April 1930) To be continued on the 25th March !