Sir John Betjeman Poet Laureate, 28th August, 1906  19th May 1984

The poet died at his Cornish home in Daymer Lane, Trebetherick and was buried in a simple grave in the churchyard of St. Enodoc amongst the sand dunes of the golf course. On 23rd May, 1084, the day after his funeral, the following Articie appeared in the Guardian Newspaper:

"It began when a boy from the London suburbs was taken by horse and cart on his first holiday to Trebetherick on the north Cornish coast before the first world war, and finished yesterday when Sir John Betjeman Poet Laureate and the Wordsworth of Suburbia, was laid to rest by the light of of lamps in the Norman village church of St. Enodoc on the Camel esturlary".

That horse and cart would have met him at Wadebridge Station and taken him  to Trebetherick after he had arrived by steam train all the way trom Waterioo Station in London.  In his autobiography `Summoned by Bells', he evokes the joy and excitement when:

     "On Wadebridge station what a breath of sea
     Scented the Camel valley Cornish air,
     Soft Cornish rains, and silence after steam
     As out of Derry's stable came the brake
     To drag us up those long familiar hills,
     Past haunted woods and oil lit farms and on

In 1984, Wadebridge Station had not been used since the Beeching cuts and was in a sorry state.  A group of local friends and enthusiasts launched an appeaal, and today, the old station has been splendidly renovated and enlarged, and contains a Memorabilia Room with many items of interest about the poet and his happy times spent in Cornwall.