Beech Cottage, 107 Tay Street

Beech Cottage, as it was known until the 1950s, dates from around 1930. It was built by the Leng family who owned nearby Seymour as accommodation for members of their staff. The first occupant was their chauffeur William Kinnear. However, the house now at 107 Tay Street doesn’t bear any resemblance to our lower photograph.

The original Beech Cottage

Garden Centre.

Over the last two years the house has been completely remodelled, but many Newport residents will have fond recollections of visiting the premises when the Macpherson family ran their garden centre and nursery here from the 1950s until the 1990s.

Jack Kinnear

Jack Kinnear

Beech Cottage was the childhood home of a little-known wartime hero who was involved in one of the most daring and dangerous, and certainly the most famous, World War II operations. John (known as Jack) Kinnear was just nine years old when he moved in here with his family in 1930. His dream was to join the RAF and that dream came true in 1939 a few months before war broke out.

617 Dambusters Squadron

Dambuster Raid

Within a couple of years he was flying in the new Lancaster bombers, and in the spring of 1943 he joined the famous Dambusters 617 squadron. On the night of the raid he flew as flight engineer in one of the first planes to leave Scampton in Lincolnshire. They flew towards their target of the Mohne dam at just 100 feet to avoid radar detection, but the plane hit high voltage electrical cables before reaching their target. The immediate explosion of the mine on board offered no hope of survival for the crew.

Newport war memorial panel

Along with his comrades, Jack was buried first in the City Cemetery in Borken. They were all reinterred after the war, and lie together in the Reichswald Forest Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery. His name is of course on the Newport war memorial.