What Three Words: ///marginal.treetop.safest
OS Grid Reference: SX104594
Coulson Park was opened on the former town common land in August 1906, using £100 (£10,000 in today’s money) given for that purpose by Nathaniel Coulson to provide riverside peace with a bandstand and children’s play area. When first opened and for many years afterwards, the park was still used for the grazing of cattle.
The bandstand and its surrounding seating provided a pleasant place to sit while the steam trains to Fowey passed by. However, the wooden structure deteriorated and was dismantled in the 1960s. The shelter that had opened in 1936 to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary, suffered serious damage in 2011 and had to be pulled down. The park now has benches to sit and relax and there is a new children’s play area by the car park at the entrance from Pill Cottages and Dark Lane.
Nathaniel Coulson, known as Tommy, was born in Penzance in 1853. His mother died when he was 11 months old and his father abandoned him to the workhouse in Bodmin when he was just 6 years old. At 10 he was apprenticed to Thomas Hoar at Penquite Farm and spent much of his free time at the Methodist Church in Lostwithiel. He joined the navy as soon as he could and travelled widely before ending up in San Francisco where he became a successful dentist and made a fortune through property investment. He died in 1945.
The road continues through to the far end of the park and is the only access for large vehicles to the Lostwithiel Wastewater Treatmnt Plant, but is not suitable for private vehicles that far. When this road was strengthened in 1992, the Environment Agency required that the width of the river be maintained by cutting back the opposite bank. This unearthed the remains of a 19th Century wooden barge that had once plied between Lostwithiel and Fowey (pictured below). The remains were covered again to preserve them.
