Frederick William Baker wanted an Italian villa on the Cornish coast. The piece of coast he chose did not offer a ready-made site, so he had part of the cliff blasted away.

A difficult site can make you reconsider a building. Baker had the cliff reconsidered instead.

The house is below Lewinnick Lodge, the restaurant and hotel on Pentire Headland, beyond the western end of Newquay’s Fistral Beach. Look down towards the northern side of the headland and there it is, fitted into the rock with its terraces and little seawater pool. Its proper name is Lewinnick Cove House. It is better known as Baker’s Folly.

I can see the appeal of the setting. Being close enough to hear the sea is one thing; arranging your home so that the Atlantic is practically another member of the household takes it considerably further.

Newquay Museum dates Baker’s purchase of the land to July 1910. He had a particular villa in mind, one he had seen in Italy. Newquay Museum’s account describes Italian builders and materials brought over for the project, with the cliff cut back to make a level base. This was going to require rather more than a few pots on the terrace.

Lewinnick Cove House below Lewinnick Lodge, with white buildings, terraces and the Atlantic beside the cliff.
Lewinnick Cove House beneath Lewinnick Lodge, photographed on 5 September 2019.

“Lewinnick Cove House” © John Allan, via Geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0. Unaltered source photograph. View the original photograph and larger versions.

A house, and then another one

Baker came from a British family established in Constantinople, now Istanbul. His working life took him to London: the 1891 census records him as a solicitor, while the family history remembers his ability in finance and fortunes which went up as well as down.

He was married to Winifred and they had four children.

The larger scheme went well beyond the northern cliff. Anthony Armitage Bishop, who knew members of the family, later recalled a second house planned for the south side of Pentire, joined to the first by a tunnel roughly a hundred yards long.

Most of us move a chair when we want the sun. Baker’s proposed arrangement involved a second property and an underground passage.

Neither the tunnel nor the southern house was built. But even the part which did get started would take years longer than the purchase date might lead you to expect. The museum’s account says the First World War interrupted construction, leaving an unfinished house in a very conspicuous position.

And an unfinished house gives other people plenty of time to decide what they think of it.

A solid brass house key rests on dark rock beside the pencilled outline of a second key.
Editorial image: a completed home and a second house that remained a plan.

The story gets there first

By March 1916, the name Baker’s Folly had reached the pages of The Avenue, the magazine of Friends’ School in Saffron Walden, Essex. Nina Townshend, a pupil at the school, used it as the title of a literary piece about a visit to the site.

Her narrator makes a descent past cut stone, rusty rails and a discarded pickaxe. There are terraces, red marble fountain basins, a blue-tiled swimming bath and windows without glass. It is a vivid picture of an ambitious place caught halfway through becoming a home.

The piece turns into a dramatic dream, so its story about the owner cannot be taken as his biography. But there is no mistaking the title. Baker’s house was already a folly in print while it was still waiting to be finished.

Townshend did rather well out of it. That December, the school’s Literary Society named her work among its best essays of the year.

The building project was taking its time. The essay was already a success.

Except the work did start again. According to the museum’s chronology, construction resumed after 1926 and the house was completed around 1927.

On that chronology, about seventeen years after buying the land, Baker had his villa.

A rusted pickaxe handle transforms into a fountain pen, its nib touching a blank booklet.
Editorial image: an unfinished building became the subject of a school-magazine essay.

Somewhere to sit

A photograph captioned 1934 shows the frontage: an arched doorway, shutters beside the upper windows, a small planted bed and a white bench against the house.

That bench is the detail I keep coming back to. After all the blasting and building, there was somewhere simply to sit down.

Another family photograph has “Lewinnick Cove 1938” written beneath it. Four Baker brothers stand on the stone steps in suits and ties. The collection identifies Frederick as the second from the left. One of his brothers holds a hat. They are gathered for a photograph, with the house serving as the background.

By then the villa had a life which the unfinished building in Townshend’s story could not have had. There were people to visit, steps to pose on, a terrace to enjoy. Baker had got far enough for the ordinary business of a home to take place.

The position still had its difficulties. Bishop’s later recollection describes winter seas breaking windows and sending water through the house. In an undated family photograph, white water spreads across the lowest masonry beside the pool.

Having the Atlantic immediately outside is a considerable attraction. Having it come through the windows is a less satisfactory arrangement.

Bishop also remembered swimming in the pool. The sea made demands on the property, but people continued to enjoy being there.

Then another war brought a new reason to do so.

Four or five strokes

In autumn 1940, the Bergman Österberg Physical Training College evacuated from Dartford in Kent to Newquay. It trained women to become physical education teachers, and its students needed places to practise as well as rooms to stay in.

The college’s swimming history records a practical offer from the owners of Baker’s Folly: the students could use their private pool.

It was hardly an indoor teaching bath. Former students remembered cold, breezy lessons and staff coaching with the Atlantic behind them. Nor did it solve every problem. By 1943, the principal was reporting that swimming had suffered in Newquay; students spending a term in London could get further coaching at Eltham baths.

But the little pool remained part of college life.

Hazel Chapman joined in September 1944. Her memoir begins at Paddington, catching the 10.30 train to Cornwall. She arrived at a college spread across four hotels, with Fistral Bay Hotel as its main base. Gymnastics took place in a converted garage, where finding room for a run-up could be a problem.

Alongside these makeshift arrangements, there was swimming at Baker’s Folly. Hazel remembered a pool so short that four or five strokes carried you from one end to the other. They held competitions and fun days there, and took Bronze Medallion lifesaving and instructors’ examinations.

An open exercise book becomes a small pool, with a woman swimming and a teacher watching beside an oversized whistle.
Editorial image: wartime swimming lessons in an improvised teaching space.

Baker’s grander scheme had stretched across the headland: two houses, with a tunnel between them. The students’ requirements were rather smaller. They needed somewhere to practise, and the owners let them in.

The second house never appeared. Down beside the first one, there were lessons to get on with.

Four or five strokes, turn, and back again.

Sources and further reading

Image credits

The main image is an AI-assisted editorial adaptation of “Lewinnick Cove House” © John Allan (5 September 2019), via Geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0. Recomposition, print styling and torn-paper effects added. The adaptation is shared under CC BY-SA 2.0; no endorsement is implied. This credit and licence apply to both the landscape and portrait main images.

The three inline illustrations are separate conceptual editorial images. They do not depict Baker’s actual keys or plans, Townshend’s personal belongings, named students or the pool’s exact shape. The main illustration interprets the modern site, not its appearance during construction.