On This Day in Wembury — 24 August 1911
The Pall Mall Gazette painted a vivid picture of the River Yealm and Wembury coast after the arrest of an alleged foreign spy living aboard a houseboat there. While the case drew headlines, the paper noted that the estuary’s quiet beauty had long attracted holidaymakers seeking peace. From Wembury’s cliffs, the entrance to Plymouth Sound lay open to view, and from Staddiscombe one could see the whole sweep of the city and its defences. The article praised the Yealm as perhaps Devon’s loveliest river, with wooded slopes, creeks, and villages like Newton Ferrers and Noss Mayo looking out across sheltered waters where yachts and houseboats lay moored.
The writer added a gentle reflection that in times of tension the same secluded beauty spots that inspire leisure and poetry might also draw suspicion, as the line between a quiet holidaymaker and a watchful stranger could blur all too easily.
Funny thing, the Gazette was half swooning over the scenery and half warning about spies with binoculars. That’s Devon all over: the same estuary can be both a postcard and a potential lookout post. Makes you think how easily beauty and suspicion can sit side by side.
Source: Pall Mall Gazette, 24 Aug 1911