Lily Cottage, Lamorna

Lily Cottage is just one of many homes lining the Lamorna Valley and lived in by artists during the last century. This impressionistic painting shows the artist at work in his garden beside the stream, a small studio or summerhouse next to a washing line in front of the cottage. The studio looks to be a type of revolving summerhouse made popular by a firm called Boulton & Paul of Norwich, who went on to become military aircraft manufacturers.

Keith Gardiner wrote about how his family came to live in Lamorna: "The fine weather had brought two or three painters out, who had set their easels up in various positions around the cove, and the one my father got in conversation with happened to be Lamorna Birch, none other than the founder of the Lamorna colony of artists. Six months after this meeting my parents were living in Lily Cottage, by the stream at Lamorna; and eleven years later, in 1934, I was born. My father trained in Fine Art at Reading University College and went to Abroath Academy where he specialised in landscape painting. He first came to Cornwall in 1922, on a painting holiday. But when he and my mother discovered Lamorna they fell in love with the place and stayed for the rest of their lives. My father was the last professional artist to have lived in Lamorna"

Our thanks to David Tovey for identifying the house and the Lamorna Society for allowing us to use the quotation.