Frederick William Baker was the lawyer and financier behind Lewinnick Cove House, the cliffside Newquay home better known as Baker’s Folly.
Frederick William Baker belonged to a British family established in Constantinople, now Istanbul, and later made his working life in England. Newquay Museum describes him as a London lawyer and financier. Ruby K. Gray’s family compilation remembers both his financial ability and changes in his fortunes.
His Cornish project was Lewinnick Cove House. The same family collection includes Anthony Armitage Bishop’s later account of a proposed companion house on the sunny side of Pentire, joined by a tunnel. Bishop also recalled swimming in the existing pool and seawater entering the house during storms. These are recollections, rather than surviving construction plans or weather records.
Baker married Winifred and they had four children. His family history should be kept separate from the dramatic story told about him in a 1916 school-magazine essay: that literary work is not proof of criminal conduct.
Sources
Ruby K. Gray, The George Baker Family (1965), with Anthony Armitage Bishop’s April 2006 recollection: https://www.levantineheritage.com/note24.htm Newquay Museum transcript: https://newquaymuseum.org/museum-archive-collections/discover-newquay/bakers-folly-newquay/ 1891 census image: https://levantineheritage.com/i/census13.jpg collection context: https://levantineheritage.com/census.htm
Connected subjects
Read on
- Baker’s Folly: An Argument with the Atlantic
The house beneath Lewinnick Lodge took years to finish—and its story did not end where the nickname suggests.