Stop 14
The Trouts and Trouts Hotel
SX 817 385
The coast path ascends the hill around new houses. At the top of the hill is what was once the Trout’s Hotel.
Trout’s Hotel has a fascinating history. In 1917, a storm destroyed Hallsands village (more on the next page) which made many families homeless. Some were eventually re-homed in new housing in North Hallsands.
One family made homeless was that of Mrs Eliza Trout, a fisherman’s widow, and her four daughters, Patience, Ella, Clara and Edith.
The Trouts used some compensation money and a bank loan to build a new home for themselves, which they planned to make into a guest house, called Prospect House. Patience and Ella did much of the work themselves, digging the foundations, carrying shingle and boulders from the beach to make concrete blocks, and installing a water supply from a source up the valley. As fisherwomen, they were not afraid of hard work!
The completed guest house was so successful that the Trout sisters extended the building, and by 1933 it was a hotel catering for up to 70 guests. The hotel’s reputation grew and grew, and affluent guests would return year after year.
They took on a German girl, Gertrude, as a cook and general housekeeper.
The Trout sisters were real entrepreneurs, who introduced features, such as electricity and central heating, that were well before their time.
They continued to fish, and treated their guests to fresh fish, crab and lobster dinners. The sisters even learnt how to drive, and went on motoring holidays in Europe.
Patience Trout died suddenly in 1949, and Ella collapsed and died three years later, while tending her sister’s and parents’ graves. They are buried in the churchyard in Stokenham.
The younger sister, Clara, had already left, and after the deaths of the two oldest sisters, Edith and Gertrude tried to keep the hotel running, but were not up to the task. Gertrude left in 1958, and although Edith remained, the hotel was closed, and she lived as a recluse, with no water or electricity, until her death in 1975. It is said that despite her hermit-like existence, the tables in the hotel were always set for dinner.
After Edith’s death the hotel was converted into holiday flats and a tearoom, remaining this way for many years. In 2007 it was sold to developers and converted into houses and apartments, under its original name of ‘Prospect House’.
You will notice from the hotel’s foundation stone, that Ella Trout was awarded an OBE. This was for an heroic act during WWI, in 1917.
On 8th September 1917, she and her 10 year-old cousin, William Trout, were out fishing, when the SS Newholm, a British 3399 ton Steamer, hit a naval mine laid by German U-boat UC 31. Ella rowed her boat to the vessel and rescued a member of the crew who was clinging to driftwood.
Her heroism was also noted in The Daily Mirror with the headline “RISKED THE U-BOATS” and a photograph of her.
Ella Trout, who has been awarded the medal of the Order of the British Empire. Though fully realising the danger from submarines, she pulled out to a torpedoed steamer and rescued a drowning sailor.
The Daily Mirror
Curiously, the Newholm is still on a sandbank, 1 mile south of Start Point. After storms in 2014, more of the wreck has been uncovered, with divers recovering some silver cutlery from the hold in 2015.
From here, walk down to the old Hallsands village viewing platform.