I grew up in 'the loveliest seaside village in England' - but I'd hate to live there now

I was fortunate enough to grow up in what is undoubtedly one of the UK's prettiest seaside villages - Mousehole in Cornwall. I returned recently - and realised I really wouldn't want to live there now.

The Welsh poet and writer Dylan Thomas, who spent his honeymoon in Mousehole, dubbed it "the loveliest village in England". A Welshman should probably know better - many Cornish, like the Welsh, consider themselves to be a part of a proudly independent Celtic nation, one that should never be lumped in with England.

Mousehole was a truly magical place to spend my 1980s childhood - and I'm sure it's still a great place to grow up in now, in these not-so-roaring twenty-twenties. Who wouldn't want a childhood filled with boats, rockpools and death-defying leaps from harbour walls and cliffs into cobalt-blue seas?

But my recent (all-to-brief) visit reminded me just how much Mousehole has changed. And how much I wouldn't want to leave my home in the 'big smoke' of the unfashionable but underrated city of Plymouth, to return as a full-time resident.

Physically, at first glance at least, Mousehole has barely altered over the decades that have eloped since I left. The tightly clustered cottages still cling like barnacles to its coastline.

And Mousehole's narrow alleyways still meander away from its scallop-shell-shaped harbour, like the cracks in crazy-paving. These have ensured there's little space for modern developments and the glass-fronted erections have sprung up elsewhere in Cornwall.

The changes are much more subtle than multi-million-pound follies, with epic sea views, for the Hollywood elite. In some ways, the changes are far, far more insidious.

When I was a boy, Mousehole was still a real community. It had two general stores, plus a butcher's, a post office and a newsagents. These shops - alongside the two pubs, the Royal British Legion, a football clubhouse, and two chapels - were the beating heart of local life.

Today, all that remains of those vital facilities are the Legion, one pub - the famous Ship Inn, home to the infamous Starry Gazey Pie, with its fishheads poking up through a sea of pastry. The rest have all been swept away by a tidal wave of tourism - and replaced with galleries, craft shops, and holiday homes.

The closest Mousehole has to a general store nowadays are two bougie delicatessens While the produce they stock is undoubtedly delicious, artisanal goods come at artisanal prices - and they aren't much cop when you've run out of baked beans and other basics.

So what changed? Even in my youth - which is far longer ago than I'd like to admit to myself - Mousehole was a mecca for tourists. Indeed, my family - a few of whom still call the village home today - blew in as tourists in the late 1960s, fell in love with the place and made it their home.

Mousehole's fame and allure grew, exponentially, in the years that followed. This was, in part, due to the catastrophically tragic events of December 19, 1981.

The Penlee Lifeboat Disaster saw eight brave men from a village of less than a thousand souls lose their lives. They died in a heroic but ultimately futile attempt to save the lives of other eight people, who were stranded on the Union Star, a stricken cargo ship that had been dashed against the imposing granite cliffs near Tater Dhu lighthouse, during a ferocious storm.

Every resident of Mousehole lost a friend or family member on that awful, awful night. For an eight-year-old me, it was my cousin Kevin Smith, who - at just 23 years of age - was the joint-youngest crew member aboard the RNLI's ill-fated but illustrious Solomon Browne.

The resulting news coverage, of a village in shock and then mourning, catapulted Mousehole into the international spotlight. Its Christmas lights - which are now turned off every December 19 - kept the village in the news in the years that followed.

And they, like the story of The Mousehole Cat - a beautifully illustrated children's book inspired by the village's Tom Bawcock's Eve celebrations that are still held on December 23 - meant the village still attracted tourists in the winter season, when most of the rest of Cornwall was reclaimed by the locals.

One result of this year-round-attraction is that Mousehole succumbed to the downsides of tourism far quicker than many other places in Cornwall. Its quaint cottages were snapped up as second homes, in ever-increasing numbers.

Today, Mousehole's full-time population has plummeted to a few more than 500 people. This is a 50 percent reduction from 2001, when the village was home to more than 750 people - and even back then, it had already been heavily harmed by the blight of empty homes.

The results of all this are plain to see today. While Mousehole still has a close-knit community at its core, there are too few residents to sustain even one proper shop. Instead, residents need to leave the village and head to Newlyn where there's a Co-op - or further afield to Penzance if they want a larger supermarket.

Having spent the last two decades living in a city, I'm not sure I want a life where I can't just pop out for a pint of milk and meet my neighbours. Mousehole will always have my heart - and be the place I think of as home. But even if I could afford to live there, I'm not sure that I'd want to - even if it still is the loveliest village (not) in England...