On this day in Wembury — 17 March 1939
Mrs Elizabeth Audrey Hardy of Langdon Court appeared before the Plymouth magistrates charged with causing an obstruction in Russell Street with her motor car. The case was a minor one , she was fined ten shillings, but it caught the eye because Mrs Hardy was the mistress of one of South Devon’s most admired country houses. Langdon Court, near Wembury, was by then a hotel and social venue, its grand gardens and panelled rooms still recalling the days when it had been home to the Calmady family and later the Corys.
In 1939, just months before the outbreak of war, Plymouth’s city centre was already crowded with cars, carts, and delivery vans, and Russell Street was one of its busiest thoroughfares. A small parking misjudgment could easily lead to a summons. For Mrs Hardy it was a passing inconvenience, but her name in the court reports offered a reminder that even the genteel could run afoul of urban order. Within a few years, Langdon Court’s tranquillity would give way to the wartime demands of the nearby naval base, and small misdemeanours like this would seem a world away.
(Western Morning News, 18 March 1939)