On This Day in Wembury — 7 June 1921
A cliff fall at the mouth of the Yealm on Sunday left a 16-year-old boy seriously injured and exposed a glaring weakness in local communications. Dr. B. Smith, called to the scene, tried for fifteen minutes to reach Plymouth from Coastguard telephones on the Wembury shore, but the line was dead. He then hurried across to Bridgend, Newton Ferrers, where the postmistress had to be fetched from church to open the call office. Only then could Plymouth be contacted, after some delay through the Plymstock exchange.
An inquiry found the Coastguard cable was defective, and that the postmistress was within her rights not to be available outside normal hours. Officials insisted that once the call reached Plymstock, the connection to Plymouth took only three minutes.
The case provoked strong comment. W. F. Bensted-Smith of Newton Ferrers wrote that in summer the district’s population swelled to nearly 2,000, yet it relied on a single call box and fragile Coastguard lines. He called it astonishing that no proper telephone exchange had ever been provided.
The accident was a stark reminder that in a coastal community, emergency response could be hampered less by distance than by the limits of rural infrastructure.
Source: Western Morning News, 7 June 1921
Entries are summaries and interpretations of historical newspaper reports.