Castle Drogo

Castle Drogo

Castle Drogo is famous for being the last castle built in England and so we thought we would make a slight detour to go an see it on our way home from Cornwall. It was built by Sir Edwin Lutyens for Julius Drewe, founder of the Home and Colonial Stores from which he made his money. He was adamant that his new home should be a castle, and furthermore one with 6ft thick walls.

The site was bought in 1910 on a granite outcrop over the Teign Gorge on the edge of Dartmoor.

Work continued until 1930, just a year before Drewe's death. Pevsner describes the castle as Minimal Tudor, but I think it has the appearance of a Cambridge College of the 1970s.
 

 

 

Here is the main entrance. You can see that work is underway on the roof, and one of the National Trust Guides observed that it eventually cost £15m to build and a further £10m to finally fix the leaking roof

 

The interior is interesting with areas of bare stonework ...

 

 

... unadorned windows ...

 

 

... and rooms with interior panelling and curtains that seemed quite cosy and traditional.

 

This is the unusual chapel, seen from the outside ...

 

 

... and from the inside.

 

 

And one more external viewpoint shows the end of the main range with what appear to be fins.

 

 

 

We finished our visit in the delightful National Trust garden.

 

Padstow

 Padstow Harbour

The harbour is in two sections. The larger outer section is fully tidal and at this stage had no water - at this time of day the ferry across to Rock runs from much further downstream. The small and picturesque inner harbour always has water as it is closed off by massive gates. It contains an interesting mixture of fishing vessels and pleasure craft.

But Padstow is better known for its restaurants than for its architecture, but we avoided Rick Stein's offerings to eat at the wonderful Prawn on the Lawn with its famous Small Plates. 

 

For me, the Padstow Almshouses in Middle Street (above) were the most interesting building in Padstow. They were built in 1875 in red brick English bond, which is unusual in Cornwall.

We also wondered about the Padstow Institute, Library and Museum in the Market Place.  It was erected by public subscription in 1881-2 (the Library and Museum roles were added more recently). I have been unable to establish what the functions of the Institute were or are.

 

So today we decided to have a trip down memory lane and do a there-and-back walk along the Coast Path. We did the linear version of this (Trevone Bay to Padstow) in 2015.

We skirted the harbour and followed the path beside the Camel Estuary, with Rock on the other side.

After a while we reached the war memorial (apologies for the for the spots on my camera lens)

Now we followed the meandering path always with the sea on our right. The Rainer Rocks can just be spotted out to sea.

Large areas of sand were exposed as the tide went out.

 

We followed the path overlooking the sands and overcoming minor concerns about the precise route to reach the Coastwatch Station. I walked a little further to look again at the Daymark.The Daymark is a rather pleasing structure. It was possibly built in the early 19th century and was originally whitewashed. Its function of course was to guide mariners entering the Camel Estuary. The unexpected thing about it was the two small gothic style windows on the seaward side

After a while we headed back, with larger areas of sand now exposed. The wonderfully named Doom Bar sandbank was still clearly visible in the centre - the safe passage for ships is the wide channel to the left. Now we understood where the Doom Bar beer you see everywhere in North Cornwall got its name.

Heligan (The lost gardens)

 A fine Rododendron on Flora's Green

Reverend Henry Hawkins Tremayne (1741–1829) was a member of a landed family in Cornwall, and owner of the Heligan Estate near Mevagissey. He is credited with initiating the creation of the set of gardens around Heligan House that are now known as the Lost Gardens of Heligan. Things changed after World War 1 when the the then owner, Jack Tremayne, rented out the estate and moved to Italy. The house was rented out and the estate entered a period of decay. In the 1970s the House converted to flats and sold off.  The long decline of Heligan was only arrested from 1990 onwards.

We walked into Floras's Green but decided to walk away from the formal gardens (of which we have seen a lot lately) and explore the Lost Valley. We walked along the Lower Sunken Lane and the Georgian Ride ...

 

 ... to emerge by the site of the intriguing Charcoal Sculpture. It was commissioned in 2011 from local sculptor James Eddy to  celebrate 21years since the Garden was rediscovered. The sculpture is expected to change and decay over time.

 

Not far away is a second installation: In nature's hands.  It is the work of Jasmine Fassenfelt and Rebecca Knight and was installed in June 2021. It is a wonderful thing, especially when viewed in the right perspective.

 

We walked along Butler's Path and skirted Heligan House. I felt I had to take a sneaky photo to get some sense of what it was like.

At the beginning of Woodland Walk we stumbled on the wonderful Grey Lady. It consists of a wire framework with plants climbing up, making an ever-changing image.

 

 

 A little further along the path we came to the surprising Mud Maid. It was created by Sue and Pete Hill in 1998. There is a framework of timber and netting covered with mud, cement and sand.

We didn't see the final sculpture, the Giant's Head, but I thought it would make sense to include it in this post.

To complete our walk we returned to the Flora's Green area and passed what seemed to be a mangrove swamp.

And then to the delightful Northern Summerhouse, accessed through this inviting gateway.

The final picture is of this hedge, shaped to provide a viewing point down to the sea.

Falmouth and Pendennis Castle

 Looking across the River Fal

We crossed the Fal in May 2014, but didn't really have much time to explore Falmouth. Today we saw a bit more starting in the administrative centre with the fine Municipal Buildings on one side of the square known as the Moor.  The foundation stone was laid in 1894 and opened in 1896. The council chamber and the municipal offices were in the wing on the left, the free library was in the central section and the science and art school was in the wing on the right. The Council offices later moved to separate location and the building now houses just the Library and the Art Gallery.

Facing the Library across the square is the rather grand Methodist Church. The original building on the site dated back to 1791. This was followed by a further building in 1837, with the basis of the existing building completed in 1876, before major reconstruction during the Second World War when it was bombed.

In 2021 the church announced that the problems with the chapel roof were "beyond us" and that the church would look to move out of the current building and sell it. The roof was damaged in gale back in 2008, which also revealed other repairs that needed to be done.

To the left as you look at the Library is this interesting structure, which turns out to be the 19th century Market Fountain.

 

I headed towards the harbourside and walked along Market Street passing the wonderful St George's Arcade. It was built in 1912 as a cinema.

Further along on the left was this interesting tableau.

Market Street runs into Church St where the Church of King Charles the Martyr stands at the top of a hill. It was originally built in 1661-5 by Sir Peter Killigrew and partly funded by Charles II. All sorts of changes were made subsequently, especially by John Sedding in the 19th century.

I should probably have continued along this route, to see more of the town, but we also wanted to see Pendennis Castle which we had skirted in 2014. We drove to the castle site and parked, but were disappointed to find that the castle was closed. All we could do was circumnavigate the high walls. This is the entrance.

On the way round the scale of the walls - brick covered with grass - became clearer.

Towards the end of the circuit some buildings poked up above the walls.

 

 

 If we are ever this way again we will be sure to get inside the castle precincts!

Glendurgan

 More lovely Rhododendrons

Soon after seeing Trebah, we moved on to nearby Glendurgan, a National Trust garden.  The garden was laid out by Alfred Fox in the 1820s and 1830s. It has the same character as Trebah in that two loosely parallel paths lead downhill through a valley to the Helford River. 

The feature which is distinctively different is the Maze. The original maze was laid out in 1833 to keep the Fox children amused.

 

More recently a major restoration of the Maze has been completed. The steps and paths were improved to make them more robust. The 173 steps within the maze were replaced with durable stone alternatives.  The wet Cornish climate and well-trodden paths were causing water to build up and floods in places, these areas of the path were restored to cope with the 80,000+ visitors each year. 

We naturally tried the maze but found it to be very challenging and neither of us could find the way to the middle (the circular hut in the photo above). We didn't notice any other adult do it either, but we did see two young kids complete the maze - somehow following instructions from their father who was standing in a strategic position outside the maze.

We headed on downhill, passing these intriguing shoots ...

... to briefly leave the grounds of Glendurgan and reach the Helford River and the hamlet of Durgan.

We had been this way before in 2014 when we were doing the Falmouth to Helford Passage section of the Coast Path. I couldn't resist taking the same picture of the Old School House that I took in 2014.

After a short while on the beach we headed back into Glendurgan and follow the other path uphill. We were delighted to our first Peacock butterfly of the year.

 

This is the view as we neared the Maze with the Manor House in the background.

Trebah

 The initial view of Trebah

Trebah is a 26-acre sub-tropical garden, near Glendurgan Garden (see separate post) and above the Helford River. The Helford River is a large estuary which nestles snugly between the western edge of Falmouth Bay and eastern side of the Lizard Peninsula. Once you enter the garden you see the mansion house ...

... and a sloping site which descends to sea level on two distinct paths, right hand and left hand. We decided that the right hand path was the more appealing and off we set quickly being overtaken by dense exotic foliage ...

... such as these delightful Tree Ferns.

As you go further downhill the left hand path comes into view with an extremely rich gathering of XX flowers.

At the bottom there is a lake with Koi Carp and a pretty bridge across the narrow end of the lake.

You leave the bottom of the site to visit the small but attractive beach and to take refreshments. Then back into the site to this time follow the opposite path, now on your right. Now it possible to see the XX flowers in all their glory.

It remained only to amble back uphill to the inevitable plant shop.