On this day in Wembury — 20 June 1963
A small item in the Torbay Express and South Devon Echo offered a snapshot of everyday life and justice in the early 1960s. It recorded that David Blackburn Sutton, of H.M.S. Cambridge at Wembury, had been fined £3 for depositing litter in a public place.
At first glance, the report seems trivial — a single line among routine magistrates’ court listings — yet it reflects the meticulous nature of local reporting at the time. Newspapers routinely published the week’s petty offences: minor driving violations, public order issues, and environmental misdemeanours. The aim was not only to inform but to reinforce civic standards, using public visibility as a quiet deterrent.
The mention of H.M.S. Cambridge places the event firmly in Wembury’s Cold War era. The gunnery school, perched above the cliffs at Wembury Point, was still an active Royal Navy training establishment, and its personnel were frequent figures in local news columns. Littering, while seemingly minor, carried particular weight in coastal parishes like Wembury where public pride in cleanliness and scenery ran deep — the same pride that would later underpin the creation of the Marine Conservation Area.
The £3 fine, equivalent to about £70 today, was enough to sting without ruining a week’s pay, a reminder that even small acts were expected to reflect the discipline of both the Navy and the community it served. It stands as one of those curious fragments of post-war rural justice — the kind of civic housekeeping that kept Wembury’s reputation as a “tidy village by the sea.”
(Torbay Express and South Devon Echo, 20 June 1963)