1,000 signatures reached
To: The Charity Commission - Orlando Fraser QC
Battle for Trevalga - Save A Unique Cornish Hamlet and Keep People's Homes Safe
Dear Orlando Fraser QC,
We ask you to, please, halt the sale of the Manor of Trevalga by the Gerald Curgenven Will Trust, and update the Will Trust’s charitable aims to reflect the true intentions of Gerald Curgenven.
Trevalga is referenced by John Betjeman, Arthur Mee, the “Black and Gold”, and is listed in the Domesday Book. The village is in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and its coast is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. It is a very special place; a living piece of our shared history.
Mr Curgenven managed the estate in a way which would preserve its beauty, its history, and provide affordable housing for local people. People with families in the local area were prioritised and children were allowed to assume the tenancies of their parents. Mr Curgenven instructed that the estate should continue to be managed in this way after his death, and this has given Trevalga a stability sadly missing from much of Cornwall today.
There are no second homes in Trevalga, no holiday cottages, no properties emptied of tenants to establish Air BnBs. Few Cornish villages can say the same. However, in more recent years the trustees started to use short hold tenancies and now many people in Trevalga are vulnerable to eviction should the sale go ahead. We are a thriving, diverse, rural community, and this sale will devastate us. It is incredible that the trustees would do this during a national housing crisis, with over 21,000 people in Cornwall on our housing waiting list.
Trevalga is also blessed with a wonderful variety of bird life with buzzards, sparrow hawks, herons, passing geese and one year even a crane. At night the calls of owls float across the valley. Savills, the trustees’ agents, are advertising Trevalga with the suggestion of establishing a shoot. This would be catastrophic for our birdlife, and completely ruin the peaceful nature of Trevalga which attracts walkers from all over the world.
This is not a new threat. Just after Gerald Curgenven’s death in 1959, Marlborough College moved to try to claim the village. Then, in 2010, we faced the same again. This time it is the trustees who are moving to sell, and it seems they are gifting the majority of the sale money to Marlborough College.
The trustees say that the Will Trust cannot protect Trevalga under law, and that the trust must end in a few decades. We have provided them with expert legal advice which contradicts both these points however they have refused to consider it.
Please act now, stop the sale, and have the charitable aims of The Gerald Curgenven Will Trust updated to reflect his true intentions.
Why is this important?
Trevalga is a living piece of our shared history, a medieval parish largely unchanged. The sale risks that being lost, as well as many people being made homeless during a housing crisis and a community being torn apart.
The Gerald Curgenven Will Trust may be small however it should operate to the same standards as all UK charities, and there are serious concerns about how this Will Trust, and the Manor of Trevalga, have been managed.
