Mount Edgcumbe, like Venice, is best approached from the sea – though in this case you’ll board the Cremyll Ferry (foot passengers only) from Plymouth, rather than a cruise ship. An eight-minute journey on the Edgcumbe Belle whisks visitors from the jerry at Admiral’s Hard in Stonehouse to the single street and one pub that constitute the Cornish hamlet of Cremyll. Alight from the small vessel, and the 350-hectare grounds of Mount Edgcumbe stretch out before you.
The house, described by Samuel Pepys as “a most beautiful place as ever was seen”, was built by Sir Richard Edgcumbe in the mid- 16th century, his father having acquired this tranche of land on the Rame Peninsula through a canny marriage. The Edgcumbes – politicians and landowners – lived in some splendour here until the Second World War, when the house was ravaged by German bombs. Much changed after Georgian additions and that wartime damage. The house stands at the head of a gentle incline overlooking Plymouth Sound, and displays treasures collected on grand tours, alongside tapestries and family portraits including one by Joshua Reynolds. But it is the wider estate – the gardens, the coastline, the views – that make a day here so special.
Sprawling across the eastern expanses of the Rame Peninsula, Mount Edgcumbe gazes south towards the Atlantic, and east across Plymouth Sound to the crags of Dartmoor beyond. Naval history spreads out before you: Drake’s Island, the Hoe, the Devonport dockyards and the forts built to forestall Napoleon – right down to the massive bolts and chains drilled to enable ships to moor to beachside boulders, which have been left there to fascinate children and accumulate rust.