Perched on the furthest West Cornish coastline, Lower Porthmeor is a farm hamlet typical of this area. The houses represent a tradition as old as the tiny stone hedged fields in which they stand, fields that have hardly changed since the Iron Age. Such settlements are dotted all along the green coastal shelf running west from St Ives, bounded on one side by a ridge of high moor, on the other by the Atlantic cliffs.

There are two such houses in our care, separated by the farmyard, both south-facing and both with its own granite-walled garden. Across the road is a third Landmark, a formerly unsympathetically converted chapel and smithy which we have returned to an appearance more in keeping with this ancient landscape. With lovely Zennor just across the fields and the surf and sophistication of St Ives around the headland, Lower Porthmeor remains a remarkably peaceful and timeless spot in this much-loved part of Cornwall.

The Captain’s House is simpler than its companion, The Farmhouse, and dates from the 1840s. It, too, has a massive kitchen fireplace and a snug parlour. There were once two houses, but the lower half was long ago given over to animals. This was the childhood home of Arthur Berryman, the last of the Lower Porthmeor Berrymans, who was both farmer and Captain in a local tin mine. His forebears settled here before 1600, and cousins still farm Higher Porthmeor.

Sleeps: 4