Hawker’s Hut is set into the 400-foot cliffs of remote north Cornwall, originally built out of driftwood by the Victorian priest Rev Robert Stephen Hawker as a place to write poetry, smoke opium and watch for passing ships coming to grief on this notoriously dangerous stretch of Atlantic coast. It is now owned by the National Trust, and at no more than six feet square, its smallest property. Morwenstow, the closest village across the fields, was where my farming grandparents grew up and retired - I have many dairy-farming relations there even now - and where we would visit regularly as children. It’s remote and wild, and one of my favourite places.
The ashes of my late brother, David, were scattered nearby. He died ten years ago today, at the age of 41.
