Directions to Limestone from the rock, it was built in the Civil War Caerhays Castle and sand and seaweed from (when some stretches of the Caerhays Estate the beach were so important Cornish coast were defended) St Austell Cornwall for improving the quality of or when the French were farmland that in 1822 they swarming is as yet uncertain. were offered as a benefi t that To its west stands a now those who took the lease of roofl ess Georgian Watch Caerhays Barton would enjoy. House with pointed arched More recently, the gardens openings giving those within Porthluney at Heligan have benefi ted views east and west along the from seaweed collected from coast and south to the sea was Porthluney. linked to other Napoleonic War stations at Nare Head, Times of war the Dodman, and nearer to hand on Greeb Point, to the Peaceful Porthluney may east of Porthluney. The Watch have seen little military House may at least hint that action, but over the last the battery was built around two hundred years or so it the turn of the nineteenth has often been prepared to century. receive and repel threats. From Truro: fi rst turning right From St Austell: fi rst turning Dense blackthorn prevents us off the A390 after Grampound after the end of Sticker by- Early in the Second World War checking whether there are (signposted to Tregony and St pass (signposted to Tregony most of Cornwall’s beaches remains of an artillery battery Mawes) then follow signposts - B3287) turn right at fi rst were considered vulnerable on the western point of the to Caerhays. junction and then follow to German landings and cove. This is known locally signposts to Caerhays. considerable efforts were From St Mawes & King Harry as Battery Point and the expended in defending them. Ferry: take right turning From Mevagissey: head for nicely engineered nineteenth The western of concrete pill from A3078 (signposted to Gorran Churchtown and look century pleasure boxes built at each end of Veryan) and next turning left for signpost to Caerhays at walk out to it was Porthluney beach survives. signposted to Caerhays. Gorran High Lanes. called Battery Storms borne on southern Walk. Whether Admission winds can rip away much Opening Dates of the beach’s sand and Gardens Gardens Open expose the surviving traces Adults £5.50 18th February to 1st June of tubular scaffolding poles Children under 16 £2.50 10.00am - 5.00pm that were used to create Children under 5 free 7 days a week ranks of beach defences House (conducted tour only) (Last entry 4.00pm) running across Porthluney, Adults £5.50 House Open preventing landing craft Children under 16 £2.50 10th March to 30th May and tanks from making Children under 5 free 12.00am - 4.00pm easy headway. Mines were Gardens & House Monday to Friday also planted in the area Adults £9.50 (inc bank holidays) now used as a car park. Children under 16 £3.50 It is said that during the Reservations Children under 5 free war, local children would recommended scramble through the rolls of barbed wire to get down Caerhays to the beach to play. The beach has been used Castle & Gardens occasionally in more recent years for mock landings. Gorran, St Austell, Cornwall PL26 6LY Tel: 01872 501310 / 501144 Email: estateoffi [email protected] Overgrown folly Supported by the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty – above Porthluney www.caerhays.co.uk Sustainable Development Fund’ Porthluney Time and tide people could take a boat up to Tubb’s Mill give an Beaches are characterised indication of the length of the by change. At Porthluney the detour! waves and tides roll in and out, scouring, shaping and Winds whip sands a little way depositing, working alongside inland, forming tiny towans, if not in harmony with the smothering and smoothening doings of the river that rises the contours of the world seven miles inland. Over the here. millennia this has cut itself a deep and twisting steep- Vastly deeper time depth is sided valley and now scribes revealed by exploration of braided shallow channels the caves at the eastern end into the gravels and sands as of Porthluney beach. Here in it empties itself into the sea. the sedimentary rocks may be Porthluney pillbox The river is likely to have once found tiny fossils of the Lower been a tidal creek over its last Devonian Age, reminding us one and a half miles, perhaps fi rst that there has been life Caerhays Castle Few fail to be moved by the as recently as the Roman hereabouts for around 400 period. A hoard of 2500 third In the mid-Victorian period the view from the coast road as million years, and then that century Roman coins, carefully Williams family, newly installed it approaches Porthluney the geological framework Fruits of the beach - placed within a pot wedged in Caerhays Castle, enhanced from the east. There stands into which sea and river eat seaweed and sand between three stones set their view to the sea by slicing turreted and crenellated is itself much less timeless or in sandy soil, was found in a broad notch through the low Caerhays Castle, a pale unchanging than it might at November 1865 by workmen rounded hillock backing onto pile set against the glossy fi rst seem. Porthluney has the largest expanse clearing a drain beneath the beach. Their predecessors, darknesses of the Victorian the Old Park Wood, a mile Lime, sand and weed of sand between Carne and Vault The Bettesworth Trevanions, rhododendrons, camellias upstream from the beach. Beaches and being at the mouth of a had already drawn the sea and laurels. Pink and purple The geology includes a small and beach into the designed fi reworks of colour, magnolias We should probably imagine patch of limestone east of the valley has one of the widest breaks in landscape of Caerhays by joining the rhododendrons, beach that may have been camellias and azaleas, this part of Cornwall then the cliff line on this stretch of coast. being more diffi cult to quarried to feed the lime kiln move around than now, with that once stood towards the Few fail to be moved by the view travellers either making a western end. This existed This break opens up views family beaches. A small lengthy detour or taking a by 1822 and was shown on from the beach inland, and in beach-shop at Porthluney is from the coast road as it approaches short ferry at high tide and the parish Tithe Map of 1840 return from the valley to the discreetly located and the Porthluney from the east being confronted by the but was demolished by 1879. sea. Beach and views together bans on the use of speed familiar banks of mud at low Fragments were re-discovered have made Porthluney a place boats and jet-skis are intended tide. The old stories that during excavations to extend of pleasure. Throughout the to ensure that beach-lovers running an ornamental walk, illuminate the woods in the the beach’s car park in 1969. year the beach draws people are not unnecessarily Battery Walk, along the top early spring. John Nash, the escaping a more mundane disturbed. of the cliffs on the west side architect of Regent Street, world. They come on foot, by of the beach. This walk, now no less, was commissioned in wheel, and on horseback (to largely lost to scrubby growth, 1807 to draw up the designs canter and gallop when the was also reached by a bridge for the ostentatious show of sands are clear). They come over the coast road that led wealth and taste that set the for relaxation and excitement; to a folly, an arch supporting Bettesworths on their road they laze and they rush, get some ragged masonry, meant to bankruptcy. Half a century wet and get warm, and leave to look like the remnant of later the Williams family Porthluney fi lled with fresh a larger, grander building. arrived to pick up the place’s air and thoroughly beached. There may also have been a pieces and establish Caerhays Porthluney and the two Porthluney beach monument to a member of as one of Cornwall and Porthollands are old-world and Caerhays castle the Bettesworth family on one Britain’s greatest gardens. of Porthluney’s Points. Cut to beach from Caerhays castle.