Plans for a new block of retirement flats on Falmouth’s seafront have caused quite a storm over the past week - but not for the usual reasons, it would seem.
Residents, Packet readers, and even a couple of our own writers, have been thundering away over plans to name a new building on the site of the Madeira Hotel ‘Fitzroy’ after Admiral Robert Fitzroy, the Met Office founder after whom the sea area formerly known as Finisterre was renamed.
Some residents had been trying to pressure developers Pegasus Life into renaming the development with a more Cornish sounding moniker, although ‘anything Tre, Pol or Pen’ is hardly a stirring clarion call for true localism and deep passion. They were joined in their call last week by former Packet chief reporter Mike Truscott, but the very next day our shipping correspondent David Barnicoat breezily pointed out the historic admiral’s historic ties to Falmouth.
Not only did he arrive in the port aboard HMS Beagle - the very same ship that returned Darwin to our shores, but he gifted the town a barometer to help predict storms.
While to many this may all seem like a tempest in a teacup, your pal the Skipper sees just such debate as the backbone of what we do here at the Packet - encouraging debate, as well as reporting all the stories both big and small. And occasionally shining a light onto our town’s past.
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