Lower Porthmeor is a township, or farm hamlet, typical of this area of West Penwith, where sometimes as many as four houses are grouped round a single farmyard. The houses are not themselves of great age, but they represent a tradition as old as the tiny stonehedged fields in which they stand, fields that have scarcely changed since the Iron Age.

With their pleasant sturdy buildings, such settlements can be seen 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. We bought the farm, which had been derelict for some years, in conjunction with the National Trust. There are two houses, separated by the farmyard, both facing south, and each with its own granite-walled garden. Nearby across the road there is a third, not part of the farmstead, but which formerly played a part in the small community as a Nonconformist meeting place.

From their back doors, it is a short walk across fields to where a little valley cuts through the cliffs to form a rocky bay.

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