The road less travelled: East Cornwall

The journey may be long, but East Cornwall is all dreamlike gardens and military history, says Mike Higgins
Mike Higgins12 July 2013

East Cornwall is the sleepy end of the county, content to put its feet up and watch the emmets (tourists) spin by, bent on the well-worn charms of St Ives, Helford Passage and all points west. Sleepiest of all is the village of Millbrook, dozing away on the Rame peninsula. Why? Reaching it is a faff, to be honest: take the Tamar Bridge from Devon into Cornwall then double back after ten miles; or board the ‘leisurely’ car ferry from Plymouth to Torpoint. Which is just as it should be because, in all but July and August, not too many holiday-makers can be bothered to seek out its swooping cliffs and coves, and its fishing villages.

Venton House was our home for the weekend, a detached Georgian house in the centre of the village. It swallowed up four kids, four parents, four grandparents and an aunt with room to spare. The décor was kid-friendly ramshackle with four-poster beds and a rocking horse in the nursery. Soon after we arrived late on a Friday night, the children were in bed and plans for the weekend were being hatched over a bottle of whisky.

Millbrook sits on a creek opposite the naval dockyards of Devonport, but if you want to feel the sea air, best get yourselves over the other side of the peninsula to Kingsand and Cawsand. These villages are postcard-pretty but it’s only in the past few years that the telltale Farrow & Ball paint jobs have started popping up along the winding streets. Out of season, the cute beaches, unpretentious pubs and cafés make for a lovely half-day.

A 15-minute spin, and a world away, is Antony House, the seat of the Carew Pole family for 300 years. It’s a National Trust property now, so has been nipped and tucked heavily, but not even that can do away with the beguiling combination of the house’s austere, 18th-century stone façade and dreamlike gardens. To the north are Humphry Repton’s landscaped lawns, rolling to the Lynher river; to the west are yew trees and hedges that have been snipped into imposing topiary boxes and cones of Euclidean precision. (If you know Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, you’ll have caught glimpses of the Antony gardens — it was filmed here in 2008.)

Back at Venton House that night, for a long, wine-fuelled dinner, and then... a discovery. Ye olde party basement! While the grandparents washed up, we secreted ourselves underground with the pool table, the dartboard and one of the house’s more significant historical artefacts: The Greatest Synth-Pop Hits Ever! The dancing started in 1981 and ended at around 2am.

The next morning brought heavy heads but light hearts for we were off to Mount Edgcumbe Country Park, the dramatic grounds of the house of the same name, which hug the easternmost point of Rame peninsula and give a spectacular view of Plymouth Sound and, if you squint, at least 500 years of British military history. From Edgcumbe you can see the backside of Drake’s Island, where Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite privateer ‘hid’ in his Golden Hind until he was assured of a warm reception from his sovereign, with its terraces of gun emplacements that guarded the entrance to the dockyards from the threat of old Boney’s gunships. Access roads built by US forces during the Second World War, as they rehearsed the D-Day landings, bisect the Edgcumbe estate.

Facing us across the water was Plymouth’s Royal William Yard, built two centuries ago as the Royal Navy’s state-of-the-Georgian-art victualling yard, and about to serve the same purpose for our crew. Our journey there was short, fun and appropriately maritime — a ten-minute passenger ferry crossing from Cremyll then a short walk to the yard. It’s the epitome of Noughties redevelopment. Where naval officers once oversaw the provisioning of their ships, tourists now wander among the Grade I-listed warehouses; there are posh flats, galleries and restaurants, and yachts bobbing in the docks. We popped into the Royal William Bakery, where we tucked into chunky vegetable soup and freshly made bread.

But wait a moment — we were in Devon! Quick, to the Cremyll ferry, over the water and back to Venton House for one last snoozy round of tea and buns. Then into the cars and on to the long road home, with one last look over our shoulders at a forgotten corner of Cornwall that was, thankfully, all too memorable.

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Venton House costs from £2,496 per week, through Classic Cottages (classic.co.uk)

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