- Howard Keyte (Porton)
Howard Keyte (Emma Drabble)
Howard’s cottage is just a few yards from the seawall. “When you’re sat by here at high tide on a rough day, the tide is about 10 feet above you then but we try not to think about that! You get used to it over the years, it is a lot safer now than it used to be. They did a lot in the sixties to improve it but you could see the horizon, in the old times. If you got a good high tide coming over and washing down the bank, it would go through the kitchen and out through the front door then!”
His parents, Charles & Evelyn lived next door at Porton House where he grew up. “My grandfather came here to Porton first in 1906 but then my father moved up from Whitson to look after him. Father was a carpenter and wheelwright in Whitson in those days.”
Living so close to the seawall, the three generations of Kytes worked on the fishing ranks at Porton that once stretched out into the estuary catching the precious salmon: “There were three ranks there were, there was this one about 300 yards up, there’s one about a mile out in the channel, that was Black Rock, … that was hard work… and one at Redwick. When the tide was out we would empty the baskets, and collect the salmon and carry them in sacks over our shoulders. Then we would take them to the fishery at Goldcliff. He’d then send the fish off to Billingsgate market in London. But it’s all gone now.”
