Lundy Island
This little island has just been named as Britain’s first Marine Conservation Zone.
Lundy is an island I’ve always known about and is definitely on my list of places to visit. This is because when I was a child for a few years we lived nextdoor to someone, who my father called “The King of Lundy Island”. All I can remember of him is seeing him walking to the station after the house had been sold and a removal van had collected his belongings.
Was this Martin Coles Harman, who styled himself the “King of Lundy Island”, after he’d bought the island in 1924?
I can’t find any reference to him as living in Southgate in North London and he died in Oxted in Surrey, a few years after the mysterious King left.
He seems to have been an interesting man as according to this article in the Age in 1955.
London, June 23 – Mr. Martin Coles Harman, “king” of Lundy Island, in Bristol Channel, the financier who knew wealth, bankruptcy and gaol, sent a message from his grave yesterday to everyone in debt to his estate.
He said in his will “waive and destroy all I.O.U.’s.
His son, John Pennington Harman, was also one of the heroes of Kohima and won a VC in the battle.
The Anonymous Widower 
interesting 🙂
Comment by Boo Mayhew | January 12, 2010 |