Cotehele House

Cotehele is one of the most remarkable houses in England — a medieval manor of extraordinary completeness, resting in a valley above the River Tamar in south-east Cornwall, where history has been preserved by a combination of family loyalty and geographical isolation that makes it genuinely unlike anywhere else in the National Trust's care.

The house was the home of the Edgcumbe family from the late fifteenth century, and its extraordinary character derives above all from the decision of successive generations not to update, modernise, or demolish what their forebears had built. The result is a house that retains its medieval and early Tudor fabric almost intact — the great hall, with its high stone walls and ancient roof timbers, the solar block, the chapel, and the various courts and outbuildings that together compose one of the most complete medieval domestic complexes surviving in England. A house of this completeness would be remarkable anywhere; set in the lush wooded valley of the Tamar, approached through ancient gardens and orchards, it achieves a quality of atmosphere that must be experienced to be understood.

Whatr makes Cotehele most astonishing is that it retains its original furnishings in situ. The hall, the chambers, the chapel, and the service rooms still contain the tapestries, armour, weaponry, furniture, and textiles that have hung on and stood against these walls for four, five, or even six centuries. There is no electricity in the house — the rooms are lit only by the light entering through the small medieval windows — and in the dimness the tapestries glow as they would have glowed when they were hung, and the armour gleams as it gleamed when it was polished by domestic servants in the Tudor era. It is an experience unlike any other historic house open to the public in England.

The gardens at Cotehele extend down the steep valley sides in a series of interconnecting levels, descending to the River Tamar below. Formal gardens near the house give way to a valley garden of extraordinary natural beauty, where rare and ancient trees, woodland flowers, and the sound of running water create an atmosphere of deep rural calm. In spring, bluebells, primroses, and wild garlic carpet the woodland floor, while in autumn the valley blazes with colour.

Cotehele Quay, on the Tamar below the house, preserves a remarkable survival: the last remaining Tamar sailing barge, the Shamrock, moored at the ancient quay where generations of boats loaded and unloaded the goods that sustained this corner of Cornwall. A small museum at the quay tells the story of the Tamar's maritime economy, while a working mill, cider house, barn, and dovecote complete the picture of a self-sufficient historic estate.