Clovelly Lifeboat Station
| Inshore Lifeboat | |
|---|---|
| Launch Method | Carriage |
| Address | Clovelly, Bideford, Devon, EX39 5TF |
| Telephone | 01237 431828 |
Explore two centuries of RNLI lifeboat history, heroic rescues, and the enduring tradition of saving lives at sea.
At the foot of the famous cobbled street of Clovelly, on the south shore of the Bristol Channel, the station runs a fast Atlantic 85 from a historic slipway, covering Bideford Bay and the coast between Appledore and Bude. Established in 1870, the station was closed in 1988 but reborn through the determination of the villagers, the RNLI returning in 1998.
A lifeboat station was established at Clovelly in 1870, following a wreck in the bay and because of the distance separating the flanking stations at Bude and Bideford. The first boathouse cost £175, and over the following decades the station’s lifeboats saved hundreds of lives — 158 between 1899 and 1931 alone — from a coast lashed by Atlantic gales.
The crews earned a strong gallantry record, including the Silver Medal to Coastguard Chief Officer John Bumby for the barque Odore, wrecked at Portledge Mouth, and a Silver Medal to Sidney Abbott and Robert Hodge for a capsize off Clovelly.
In August 1988 the RNLI closed the station, judging that the fast lifeboats at Padstow and Appledore could cover the area; the lifeboat house was listed the following year. But the villagers would not let the service end: the Clovelly Trust ran an inshore lifeboat from 1990, and the RNLI returned with its own inshore lifeboat on 14 May 1998. In 2014 a fast Atlantic 85, the Toby Rundle, was placed on service, named in memory of an Oxford student who died in 2010.
