On the rocks: why a Cornish lighthouse makes the perfect summer retreat

Henry Morton only went because he fell in love with a place name he thought the most beautiful in the country: St Anthony in Roseland. “I came prepared for the worst: for a mine shaft and a street of dreary shops,” the British journalist wrote in his 1927 travelogue, In Search of England. “At Tregony I left the main road and dived into a labyrinth of lanes so small that there was no clearance between the car and the hedge-banks. Green plants caught me by the arm and seemed to say: ‘Don’t go on; don’t go on; a man who expects St Anthony in Roseland to look as it sounds is only gathering one more disappointment.’”

Last month, my children and I followed exactly in his tyre-tracks, turning at Tregony and heading down the Roseland peninsula, the hedge-banks still straining towards us, filled with red campion and foxgloves. The Roseland dangles off the south coast of Cornwall, bounded on one side by the River Fal, on the other by the sea, and wreathed in legends.

Some say the name was coined by Anne Boleyn, impressed by the roses when brought here on her honeymoon (more likely that it’s from the Cornish word rhos, meaning promontory). Others even suggest that Jesus stepped ashore here as a child, after the boat he was travelling in was beset by a storm.   

Morton wasn’t disappointed, delighting in St Anthony, the peninsula’s last hamlet, where, among gardens buzzing with bees and shaded by palms, the tiny whitewashed cottages seemed “lost, and happy to be lost, dreaming beside the sea”. We continued another mile to the final headland, where a National Trust car park is the start point for walks on the glorious coastpath, or to the crowd-free sands of Great Molunan beach.

Another path leads down to the very tip of the peninsula, where a high fence and gate abruptly block the way. A potential disappointment for some, but I had the combination for the padlock, and swung open the gate to the lighthouse that would be ours for the next four nights.

England and Wales’s lighthouses, somewhat peculiarly, are not run by the government but by Trinity House, a body established by Royal Charter in 1514. It is more fully known as the Corporation of Trinity House of Deptford Strond, and more formally still by a title that runs to 33 words including “glorious”, “fraternity” and “brotherhood”. It is still overseen by a “court” of 31 “elder brethren” and a “master” (currently Princess Anne).

More lighthouse retreats

Croatia’s rocky coast also offers numerous lighthouses for rent — including several on their own, tiny, private islands, as Stanley Stewart discovers

Yet despite such clear historical enthusiasm, all 66 lighthouses are now controlled remotely from a cutting-edge operations centre in Harwich, Essex. The last lighthouse keepers were retired in 1998, leaving their living quarters vacant, and at a dozen lighthouses these have been turned into holiday rentals — 32 cottages in all, each sleeping between two and eight.

You might expect them to be the kind of places that are snapped up years in advance but, though easily bookable online, they seem to remain somewhat under the radar. We arranged our May half-term visit only a fortnight in advance, and many of the cottages still have availability this summer.

St Anthony’s lighthouse is a classic, straight from the pages of a children’s storybook (or TV show — it was used in the opening credits of the 1980s series Fraggle Rock). Built in 1835 on a narrow bit of flat ground carved from the steeply rising headland, there is a 19-metre tower (which unfortunately guests can’t enter), a single square cottage at its foot and a separate “observation room” where you can sit and watch the waves and the coming and going of ships, sailing yachts and the resident seal — “Sammy”, according to the visitors’ book.   

Steps lead up to a little patch of garden, surrounded by slopes covered in sea fig, thrift and navelwort. Inside, the cottage has comforts of which earlier keepers could only have dreamed — two bathrooms, two bedrooms, a cosy lounge (there’s even a TV) and a fully equipped kitchen. Bedside tables contain ear plugs, for the unfortunate occasions when the fog horn sounds.

Out front, the granite flagstones glint in the afternoon sun, and the sea view wraps around for 270 degrees. It takes a while to get used to the feeling of exposure — you narrow your eyes against the brightness and the breeze, and sense the entire peninsula pressing at your back, as if you are at the end of a pirate’s plank.

I could happily have stayed a month. We went to Towan beach, home to the Thirstea Company’s lovely café where Bruce the dog sleeps sprawled in the courtyard, and the wilder beach at Porthbeor, accessible only with a boat or down a steep, overgrown path with a rope to help you on the final pitch. On the last day we walked round to St Anthony, where there’s a 13th-century church and a tiny foot-passenger ferry across to the village of St Mawes. On the pontoon we found a Cornish flag with a note, “Wave me for pick-up”.

The journey takes 10 minutes at most and St Mawes is delightful, with great pasties, ice-creams and crabbing from the harbour wall. Coming from across the water, though, even this little village felt busy, a touch too plugged in to the outside world, and we soon retreated on the ferry, back to St Anthony and the lighthouse, happy to be lost again beside the sea.