A seventeenth-century former farmhouse behind Holywell beach; the setting for Tim’s childhood passage memory.
The Treguth Inn is at Holywell Bay, south-west of Newquay. Historic England dates the surviving former farmhouse mainly to the early seventeenth century, with later additions. Its recorded through-passage is an architectural feature of the house. Tim remembers being shown a hidden or partly blocked feature as a child and being told it was for smuggling; that function remains unproved.
Sources
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1141576
Connected subjects
Read on
- I Went Looking for Cornwall's Smugglers' Tunnels
I remembered a smugglers’ tunnel under a Cornish pub. The records confirmed the building, not the smuggling—and that became the more interesting story.
- The Railway to Holywell Bay That Never Was
I grew up walking this coast with a surfboard. A Victorian railway and harbour scheme makes me wonder whether I might have caught the train instead—and what would have been waiting when I got there.
- Seven Bridges, the Smugglers’ Den and the Railway in the Valley
A pub with a tunnel story sits beside a landscape of old mineral routes. The interesting part is working out which connections belong together.