YARD VISIT

WORKING MUSEUM

Historic Pin Mill yard in fine fettle

WORDS CATHERINE LARNER PHOTOGRAPHY THE AUTHOR

It was clear that, after almost 150 years, the sign for Harry King & Sons at Pin Mill needed some care and attention. Having taken it down this summer, though, it was sadly beyond repair and was now lying on the grass beside the new travel hoist.

“We don’t know what to do with it,” says Sarah Curtis who runs the yard with her husband, Gus. “It means so much to us that we can’t quite move it yet. There will be something we can salvage.”

There’s a great deal of history in this yard and its picturesque setting beside the River Orwell on the Shotley

Peninsula in Suffolk. Boats were built here for the ‘Swallows and Amazons’ author Arthur Ransome in the 1930s, the wartime history is profound and there are many stories of smuggling associated with the nearby 17th century pub, the Butt and Oyster now known for real ale and good food.

The hamlet of Pin Mill is popular with visitors for the riverside and woodland walks, sailing activity and moored houseboats but it was once a centre for the repair of

Thames sailing barges and a home for small industries such as sailmaking, maltings and brick yard.

“There was a long tin shed where all the boat building took place,” says Sarah. “They’d build two boats, one behind the other and launch them off the front of the yard exactly where our pontoon is now.”

The boatyard was opened by George Garrard from

Ipswich in 1850, and his apprentice Harry King took it over when Garrard died in 1898. The business remained in the

King family until Geoff, Harry’s grandson, retired in 2005.

Gus Curtis had worked for Geoff since 1988 and when, 17 years later, he was able to take over the yard, Sarah gave up her teaching career to join him, running the office.

“And now our son, Tom, is here,” she says. “We knew from the age of two he was either going to drive tractors or build boats and here he does both!”

Tom has taken space at the top of the yard to work on his own projects underneath fixed awnings and in two converted shipping containers. He has just launched his second new build clinker dinghy, using shipwright Shaun White’s design, and he also helps out with jobs where needed – there are seven self-employed and two permanent staff members in additional to the Curtis family.

“We do restorations, repairs and rebuilds but our bread and butter is storing boats in the winter and hiring out moorings in the summer,” says Sarah. “When Gus started in 1988, there were 40 lay ups, now there are 160.”

Customers come through word-of-mouth with 60 per cent living more than two hours’ drive away and the pattern of the year has changed over time, too. “We used to compare ourselves to farming with two harvests,” Sarah says. “There were two busy times, putting boats in and bringing boats out. But now we’re still launching when we’re laying up. It hasn’t slowed down at all.”

They’ve expanded over the years, making more space available behind the workshop for the lay ups. It is reached by a narrow winding lane, up sloping land and requires skilful driving and teamwork.

“It’s as difficult finding reliable yard staff as it is finding a highly skilled shipwright,” says Sarah. “We have to wait for the tide to float the boats up into the trailer, then we take them round the tight corners into the field where it’s a bit of a jigsaw puzzle getting them to fit.”

Gus is the brains behind everything, she says, launching trailers, pontoon construction, the crane lifting arm. “He is the only person able to get the larger, heavier boats into place and, of course, he is a very skilled shipwright.”

The repairs, renovations and construction take place in the two storey, red brick maltings building. This used to house the bends, sails and rigging, and was where clinker dinghies would be built upstairs and day boats downstairs.

One area of the workshop is filled with shelves and cupboards of parts which might come in useful one day. “We call it our museum!” says Sarah.

On the wooden side door there is a list of dates scrawled on the surface. It’s where Harry’s son, Sam King recorded seeing the first swallow of the year, Sarah says. “Sam didn’t want to talk about boats. He was obsessed with birds, or his allotment, and he always listed when he saw the swallows.”

Below: Work on the 52ft keelstepped mast for Selina King took over a year to complete

Facing page, clockwise from top left: The pontoon at Pin Mill stretches across the saltings; Museum of parts; Travel hoist with Butt and Oyster in the distance; The Mirembe, an Alan Buchanan design, was built here in 1961; Sarah in the office; Tom Curtis has been working on the 1930s Saxonia for over 10 months