Any Fort in a storm

Interesting coastal houses for sale include a formerly piratical home on the Helford, a hidden, creekside recording studio and three Napoleonic-era forts

- Penny Churchill

TODAY sees the launch onto the market, for the first time in 41 years, of historic, Grade II-listed Trerose Manor at Mawnan on Rosemullion Head, which overlooks Falmouth Bay and the Helford River estuary in Cornwall. For sale through Falmouth-based Jonathan Cunliffe (01326 617447) at a guide price of £1.95 million, the story of Trerose Manor is the story of the families—some distinguished, others less so—who have owned it over the years.

Smuggling and piracy were a way of life for many of Cornwall’s great seafaring families

The ancient manor of Trerose—‘the house on the headland’—once included much of Mawnan parish and extended upriver. Here, following the departure of the Romans from Britain, Helford’s heavily wooded creeks and inlets provided a safe haven for the native Cornish, who dodged the advance of Anglo- Saxon invaders by stealthily escaping, under sail or oar, via the Helford to Brittany. Centuries later, some returned with William the Conqueror to reclaim their stolen lands.

Smuggling and piracy were a way of life for many of Cornwall’s great seafaring families,among them the Killigrews of Arwenack in Falmouth, who acquired Trerose in the late 1500s. Despite their notoriety, the Crown was usually prepared to turn a blind eye to such activities in return for Cornish support when invasion threatened.