Cotehele

Often a day trip involves crossing the border from one county to the next. That's not usually a big thing - barely noticeable, in fact, except when you cross from Devon to Cornwall and back along the A388, then it's very noticeable. On our trip to Cotehele, a National Trust property, traffic backed up as we waited to cross over the Tamar Bridge. There was no toll to pay on this side, just when you cross back into Devon, but it really felt like a major border crossing.

We then went through a tunnel

and came out onto a road that looked like any other, with scenery similar to what we'd just passed through. A border? Yes. Much difference? No. When we left the A388, the roads got smaller and smaller as they often do when we're headed to National Trust properties.

We crossed over a single lane stone bridge, then through a stone gate barely wide enough for our small rental car, the warning tone on the car screeching all the way. We found the car park and made our way to the visitor center at Cotehele (pronounced co-teal) House and Gardens.

Cotehele is a rambling granite and slate-stone manor house on the banks of the River Tamar that has changed very little over five centuries. It's a medieval house with Tudor additions and is one of the least altered of the Tudor houses in the United Kingdom. When Sir Richard Edgecumbe fought on the side of Henry Tudor in the Battle of Bosworth, he was gifted with money and the original Manor House and estate; he then proceeded to build Cotehele. Following generations of Edgecumbes all contributed to remodeling, extending and furnishing the house that we see today.  

The house itself is a bit of a hodge-podge, architecturally. The first room we entered was the Great Hall. It has a huge vaulted ceiling and is filled with a collection of bits and pieces that were meant to impress. There's a stuffed baby rhinoceros head on one wall, underneath which is a set of giant whale jawbones.

On other walls are animal horns, old weapons and a collection of 3/4 scale armor which was made purely for display purposes. The ceiling is fabulous.

The chapel, first consecrated in 1411, was squashed into a corner of the building when the Great Hall was enlarged.

The volunteer in the Great Hall assumed, I suppose, that we knew nothing about English history because we're from the US, so he kept peppering his narrative with phrases like, "Well, you won't know about this, but..." When he mentioned that the body of Richard III (who was defeated at Bosworth) was found buried in a car park in Leicester, I told him that we'd actually seen the grave when we were there. I don't think it altered his perception of us, though.

As we were leaving the Great Hall, he said that Cotehele was typical of Tudor buildings: cold, dark, damp and uncomfortable.

Adjacent to the Great Hall is the Dining Room. Like many of the other rooms in the house, its walls are covered in tapestries.

Just off the dining room is the part of the chapel that remains from the enlargement of the hall. It's quite small, but has some fascinating pieces in it.

There's a tiny organ on the left side that couldn't have more than 5 octaves, the front is covered in silk and it is thought to have been built in the 1830s. The floor tiles date to the chapel's consecration in 1411.

In an alcove at the very back of the chapel you can see what looks like a collection of gears.

It's actually a turret clock with a verge escarpment and foliot, which essentially means that there is no pendulum, but a weight-driven vertical wheel rotates to drive the gears. The clock has no face and the only time that is marked is the hour, when the mechanism would ring a bell in the turret. It's likely that the clock was installed at the chapel between 1493 and 1521. One of the volunteers told us that the clock was overhauled in 2002 for Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee, and it worked for a while, though it was generally off by 12 minutes per hour. It has since stopped functioning altogether.

Off the other side of the dining room is the Punch Room

which was once combined with the dining room to form the Parlor in Piers Edgecumbe's early 1500s house. His great grandson, also called Piers, remodeled the house in 1652, separated the two rooms again, and referred to the Punch Room as the Little Parlor. When King George III and Queen Charlotte visited Cotehele in 1789, this room was used as their dressing room. In the late nineteenth century, William, 4th Earl of Mount Edgecumbe, renamed it the Punch Room and created a wine cellar in the corner of the room.

In a corner of the ground floor is the White Bedroom which dates to the 1550s.

The date of the ceiling decoration is unknown but it is thought to have been inspired by a similar ceiling in Horace Walpole's house, Strawberry Hill, which I visited last year. Unusually, it has two closets, which would have been hidden by tapestries. One was for clothing, but the second was a china closet.

Down the stairs from the White Bedroom were the Red Room

and the South Room, later known as the Best Bedroom. It would owe this status to the light, warmth and relative dryness resulting from two large south-facing windows.

Near the window is a small alcove called the Squint which contains a tiny window that looks down onto the great hall. This allowed the occupant to spy on whomever was down there.

Up a short flight of stairs is the Old Drawing Room with its collection of dark, elaborate furniture

such as this desk, with its hidden drawers

The two cushions on this fabulous wooden settee were embroidered with the names of King George III and Queen Charlotte, and the date 1789.

The volunteer in the room told me that Queen Victoria also visited Cotehele, but didn't like it, so she only stayed for an early lunch and then went on her way.

Up a flight of stairs to the top of the tower, we came to the Queen Anne Room

and the King Charles Room.

The photographs make the house look quite light, but I'm afraid that's a trick of the camera on my phone, something I find mildly annoying. The house is as promised by the first volunteer we met: cold, dark, damp and uncomfortable, made marginally more livable by the use of all the tapestries.

Once back downstairs and into the light of a small yard, we found a metal trough dated 1639

just outside of the Tudor kitchen.

We were the last people allowed into the kitchen because the volunteer was about to go home. On a desk near the back of the room, she pointed out an interesting item in a plexiglass case, a sixteenth century mechanical hand, a precursor to modern prosthetics, complete with spare finger.

This is a reproduction, but we saw the original hanging in the Great Hall as we exited. The mechanical hand enabled the wearer to be able to hold the reins of his horse. I suppose this would be handy if you were a knight about to go into battle and you needed your other arm to hold your sword. Prosthetics in the 1500s - who knew?

One thing I found interesting throughout the property was the use of signs showing the names of things in the Cornish language.

It seemed to me, from my limited time as a student of Welsh, that the Cornish language bore a striking resemblance to Welsh. In fact, I discovered that they're related Celtic languages, but the speaker of one wouldn't be able to understand a conversation in the other. As it stands, I can't understand either.

There's a lovely formal garden outside the house with a view to the valley below in the distance.

Just a short drive down the hill from Cotehele House is the Cotehele Mill. A walkway near the car park led us past what used to be a thriving river port on the River Tamar, though all that remains here is a replica boat and a rusty winch.

Signs directed us down a long path through the woods on the edge of a stream.

Crossing a small footbridge, and through a wildflower meadow,

we reached a cluster of small buildings which were originally used as stables, cowsheds, a hayloft and a ‘cherry house’ for storing cherries. They're now set up as a selection of estate and craft workshops. There's a blacksmith,

a wheelwright's workshop,

and a saddler's workshop.

The chairmaker's workshop is a working shop but he wasn't in that day.

Mills have worked in the Tamar Valley since medieval times and the Cotehele mill dates to the 19th century.

It would once have been used to grind corn. From 1880 through WWI it was a flour mill with a bakery on premises.

In the 1930s it ground animal feed. It was converted back to a flour mill and was a working mill producing whole wheat flour until torrential rain in 2020 destroyed the weir on Morden stream, stopping water flowing into the mill stream.

We visited the upper floors to see where wheat would have been loaded into the hopper and fed to the millstones below.

It was interesting, but sad to think that it's unlikely that the mill will run again.

We walked back through the woods by the stream to the car park

and drove back home passing the town of South Pill along the way, which made me smile.