Newquay Harbour refurbishment took a step forward today as the final £600,000 was paid out. The Newquay Harbour Improvements Project includes building a storage centre for local fishermen as well as essential safety rails for harbour visitors to watch the activities in the Harbour from.
It was 2011 that Newquay Harbour was awarded a European Fisheries Fund (EFF) grant worth over £660k. To be called the Treffey Centre, the building contains storage, offices and training space and work begins after Easter 2013. CCTV will also be installed, along with better lighting, signage and a low-water landing stage.
Cornwall Council also contributed a further £106,523 from their Seaside Towns Programme and the total budget was made up from insurance money claimed after a fire in 2009, which destroyed the fishermen’s storage facilities.
The current Newquay Harbour was built to enable minerals, mined in Cornwall, to be taken more easily to South Wales. The minerals could arrive by horse-drawn trams and be shipped from Newquay Harbour, rather than taking a longer, more treacherous, sea route round Land’s End. The original tramway can still be seen across Newquay town and it emerges at Newquay Harbour through a tunnel. The tunnel can still be seen in the wall supporting the road above, beside the Rowing Club. Treffry Tunnel is currently used to store the club’s pilot gig boats, but there’s been talk of opening it up again as it emerges in Sainsbury’s car park above, where two small engine houses used to wind the goods up the final stretch of the tram tunnel’s steep incline.
[wordbay] newquay harbour [/wordbay]
