LUNDY ISLAND.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18550, 27 November 1925, Page 12

LUNDY ISLAND.

SOLD FOR £16,000. Subject to the sanction of the Court, it is understood, Lundy Island, in the Bristol Channel, has been bought hy Mr Martin Coles > Harman for a price stated to be £16,000. Mr Harman, who is chairman of the Rock Investment Co., Ltd., of the Gas, Water, and General Investment Trust, Ltd., of Messrs John Retherington and Sons Ltd., of Manchester, and ot several other public companies, makes it quite, clear that his new venture has no business connexion. "There is no difference at all," he-said in an interview, recently, "between my purchase and the buying of a houses-only in my case it happens to be an island." Lundy, which is three miles long and half a mile wide, lias an area of 10-17 acres. Its tenure is a curious ono for these days, being, in fact, reminiscent of Feudal times. Successive owners have held practically complete sway, exercising unique rights, which continue to the present. A further advantage to its possessor is that the island is unrecognised for Imperial taxation or for county or municipal rating purposes. The normal population is between forty and fifty persons, mainly consisting of the staffs of the Admiralty and the Post Office, the lighthouse keepers, and employees on the farm and at the hotel, which was formerly the Manor House. One of the mdre famous owners of Lundy was Sir Richard Grenville, to whom it came through his marriage to Mary St. Ledger, one of the St. Ledgers, of Annery. Tn 1836 Lundy was purchased by Mr W. H. Heaven for i£Booo, and was sold by his son's nephew in 1918 to the present vendor, Mr August Laneham Christie, a descendant of John Cleveland, of Taplev, who bought it from Sir Robert Talk in 1787. It Mas on the Shutter Rock to the south of the island that Kingsley laid the final isoeno of the tragedy of "Westward Ho'" and there his 'Majestys ship Montague weut aground on May 30th, 1906. "