The Central occupies a prominent position in Newquay’s old centre, where the town’s streets meet. Its story reaches back before the large resort hotels and the passenger railway, when an inn served a smaller working community.
An 1802 account by the Methodist Richard Treffry describes lodging with a Mr Carter at Newquay. Richard was not Joseph Thomas Treffry, the industrialist later associated with tramways and harbour plans. Sharing a surname is not a licence to hand one man the other’s biography.
Later names and alterations belong to the building’s own history, including its period as the Commercial Hotel. The full article follows those changes and asks what an inn meant before Newquay became a place of large-scale holiday accommodation.
Sources
Cornwall and Scilly Urban Survey: Newquay: https://newquayplan.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/csus_newquay_report.pdf Cornwall Heritage: Richard Treffry diary transcription: https://www.cornwallheritage.com/ertach-kernow-blogs-2026-2027/small-cornish-archives-saving-local-knowledge/ Cornish Memory: Central Inn, 1926: https://www.cornishmemory.com/item/WAT_14_017
Connected subjects
Read on
- The Pub That Was Here Before Newquay Became Newquay
The Central Inn sits in the older town beneath Newquay’s resort story. Its history is useful precisely where the record refuses to be tidy.