Penlee Point’s old lifeboat house opens its doors again

The doors of Penlee Point’s old lifeboat house don’t open often, but on Bank Holiday Monday (31 August) they swung wide for anyone curious enough to look inside, and more than 150 people took them up on it.

A weekend that spilled into a bank holiday

The open day capped off a busy few days for the RNLI in west Cornwall. The current Penlee Lifeboat Station, on the harbour at Newlyn, had already had a full weekend of its own, and on Monday the attention shifted along the coast to the former Boathouse at Penlee Point. Visitors were free to wander through a building that spends most of the year closed to the public, and more than 150 of them did exactly that.

Volunteers who kept the doors open

None of it runs itself. The RNLI’s own Penlee Visits Team turned out to show people round and answer the inevitable questions, among them Rod James, Robert Andrews, Laura Holmes, Mike Sagar-Fenton and Colin Lawry. Between them they kept a steady stream of visitors moving through the old building for the whole of the afternoon.

A family link going back to 1966

Among those who came were Mark, Tamsin and Dom Butterfield. Tamsin’s father, Dr Mike Hersant MBE, joined Penlee Lifeboat Station in 1966 as its lifeboat medical advisor, and he is still its president today, a connection that now stretches back six decades.

Visitors from Fleetwood to Leicestershire

Not everyone through the door had a Cornish connection. Aimee Scott, a crew member with Fleetwood RNLI on the Lancashire coast, made the trip down to see Penlee’s old boathouse for herself. Alex and Grace, visiting from Hinckley in Leicestershire, were among the other names on the visitors’ list that afternoon.

There’s one more chance to see inside this year. The former boathouse opens again on Sunday 27 September, with the doors open between 11am and 3pm.