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Shiver Me Timbers

formerly of

Long Rock, Penzance

The late "Trader" Gray's reclamation yard come "museum of oddities and wonder"

SMT surfboard sign

Earlier in 2012 my friend Pete Brookes posted on facebook a set of photographs of this remarkable place, with the news that the landowners wanted to bulldoze the site and build a house on it. So in August, while we were in Cornwall on holiday, we took a trip down there to see it while we still could ...

SMT open sign

view of yard with pirate on roof pirate

pirate doll with telescope beautiful woman figurehead

pyramid shed pyramid shed

20120813_135855_p1010366.jpg

Property Developers sign

radioactive cat keep out

brewery sign bottles junk face welded metalwork sculpture rusty door handle/knocker piano

baths and toilets techno-toilet

rusty motorcycle yellow plastic star wreath

angel

painting on wall

Fireplaces and Oldies fire grate

montbretia and sash window weights rusty vice & stuff

HW cylinder sculpture HW cylinder sculpture

pram bogey

garden: metal urn & montbretia garden: head sculptures garden: head sculpture garden: head sculpture garden: woman sculpture garden: Ganesh cartwheel

interior: throne

interior: umbrella and stuff interior: hanging stuff interior: school desktop and mirror on wall

interior: animal head & horns sculpture interior: pennant

interior: black busts with beads interior: head with bulging eye interior: puppet in net interior: stuffed fox in hanging pram body interior: Charlie Chaplin cricketer interior: bicycle with basket

valve radio arc light Tape Recorder - Transistorised

Royal Navy recruiting plaque Ministry of National insurance plaque

poster: Beware the Cephalopod

interior: posters

Atom Bomb damage table

framed picture: troll brat framed old photograph

Lion comic book Golden Book of Comics: cover Golden Book of Comics: authors Golden Book of Comics: pages Golden Book of Comics: Timothy Trickster

Sirens Surf text Sirens Surf graphic

Trader Gray

Shiver Me Timbers was built up and run by Terry "Trader" Gray, evolving from a "normal" reclamation yard into "a museum of oddities and wonder".
It also seems to have been an arts workshop, and Gray himself something of a barefoot social worker.


Affectionate documentary by Sky Neal featuring Terry Gray and (presumably after his death) reminiscences of some who knew him.


And here's a short film featuring Seamas Carey & Callum Mitchell, and shot by Morgan Lowndes. It's split into four parts with each part done in one take:
1: Wastelands


2: The 5am Song


3: You & Me


4: La Belle Dame De La Campagne

mounted stuffed fox head with nautical cap

painting painting painting painting painting painting painting - playing card


Images from Shiver Me Timbers

The End?

Gray died in 2009 (here's an obituary at the SalvoNews blog) and the yard has been run since by his son Joe.

Fake petrol pumps and Bah Humbug
Bah Humbug Planning Permission Application notice

However in late 2011 the site owners applied for - and received - planning permission to raze the site and build a house on it.
With a double garage.

There was an article about it (illustrated with a dreary picture which somehow contrived to convey none of the charm of the place) and a discussion on the This Is Cornwall news-site. There was also a post on the SalvoNews blog. At the time I wrote this (back in August 2012) there didn't seem to be any suggestion of an alternative to the landowner's proposed development, and Joe seemed phlegmatic about it when I asked him about it.

Location

When I visited Shiver Me Timbers in 2012 it was at Long Rock, just outside Penzance going towards St Michael's Mount, but it has since moved to Truthwall Industrial Estate, at Crowlas (about 3miles from the old site), postcode TR20 9BW.
And it now has a website.

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