The family of Elizabeth Jennings have spoken of their concern over proposals being explored by Age UK to sell Woodcot, the Salcombe property she gifted more than half a century ago for the benefit of older residents.

Jennings donated the house and grounds with a clear intention: that it should be used as a residential home for local people, enabling them to remain within the community they knew and loved.

Today, as discussions about a potential sale continue, her relatives hope renewed attention to her own words and correspondence will underline the purpose behind what they consider as a generous and carefully considered bequest.

This article is the first in a series, written and researched by her nephew, Tim Jennings, using letters, diary entries and family history. Together, the series will offer a glimpse into Jennings’ life, her devotion to Salcombe, and the motivations behind her actions.

“There has been much written in the mainstream media about Elizabeth Jennings’ gift of Woodcot for the benefit of old people in Salcombe since Age UK announced it was considering a sale of the property early last year, not all of it accurate.

Elizabeth’s family believe Woodcot’s remaining residents, those who live in Salcombe and the South Hams, might appreciate knowing little more about her family, her life here, her wishes for Woodcot, for the most part in Elizabeth’s own words.

Media-maid Cathy Koo has been steering the ‘Save Woodcot’ campaign valiantly since last spring, with the considerable help of the South Hams Society and a lot of concerned locals. Salcombe’s Locals & Yokels, who have been following events on Facebook, might be pleased to have this and that confirmed.

This series of articles in the South Hams Gazette newspapers will include responses from those Elizabeth corresponded with during the second half of her life, specifically from the time she and Mabel, her mother, first had the idea of giving their glorious home for the benefit of old people who wanted to stay on in the town they loved.

Elizabeth - also known as Libby, Ibby, Liddy, Eliza - was born in 1908 at the family home in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, to Thomas Noel Gwyn and Mabel Andrina Janet Jennings, the second of their four children, betwixt Ian and Margaret, Andrew.

She spent much of her childhood in Cape Town, South Africa, where her father was a businessman and banker with Standard Bank. There she began broadening her knowledge of plants, which she would often draw or paint.

A lot of plants found their way to Woodcot’s glorious gardens in the 1920s. She also learnt that a pleasant climate could be enjoyed in the Southern Hemisphere during an English winter!

Elizabeth’s great passion was sailing, her vast haul of silverware attesting to her prowess as a helmswoman. Her knowledge of the estuary generally, and the terrain under the water specifically, gave her the confidence to venture where others feared to go.

A single torpedo off the South Coast altered Elizabeth’s life forever when it sunk the ship on which served the most significant of friends during the Second World War. At the time she was helping run Salcombe’s first aid post with Dr Daniel Own Twining, as well as running Woodcot for her parents and the property’s vegetable gardens which supported the household, staff, locals, and billeted personel during the years of rationing.”