Mevagissey Clare
I moved to Mevagissey in 2012 and during that time have been favourably impressed with how the village has improved. Your 2005 review no longer reflects how the village is, so I thought to offer an update. Shops and cafes are now of much higher quality: Tea on the Quay, The Teapot and She Sells all offer top quality food and home-made cakes. Gift shops no longer sell tourist tat, but are largely craft based and tasteful including the Roberts Cooperative of Craftspeople. There is a high quality deli too. There are some fine restaurants with good reputations: The Salamander is very high quality. The experienced couple who took over The Sharksfin on the harbour 5 years ago serve interesting fresh food all day, excellent staff and service, tasteful arty seaside decor. They have also opened The Longstore (yes, Jane and I liked it) in neighbouring Charlestown. The Alvarado, run by Antonio from Portugal, using the catch from his own fishing boat is right on the harbour and is authentic and excellent. There are now 13 restaurants and 6 pubs in Mevagissey plus several tea shops and cafes. The chef-run Fisherman’s Chippy is is excellent: griddled fish (garlic scallops for example) as well as the usual deep fried fish. Mevva has a lower percentage of 2nd home ownership than most Cornish coastal towns. As an active fishing port there is a thriving community of young families and even in winter it is a nice place to visit because it isn’t “dead” thanks to the high proportion of permanent residents. In the summer it is busy: people come for boat trips on the fishing fleet or on the beautiful, recently refurbished Seas the Day but, unlike Padstow or St Ives, the village doesn't get overcrowded. Many people visit Mevagissey because it's near The Lost Gardens of Heligan, walking distance up an attractive valley. The TIC is in Hurley’s Bookshop; Liz Hurley is very well informed as author of several walking guides and local history books. The volunteer-run Mevagissey Museum celebrates 50 years in 2018 and now has official museum accreditation. Mevagissey Feast Week in June and the Christmas Lights and New Year celebrations are all run by volunteers with voluntary contributions and are very successful. Visitors enjoy Mevva for its authenticity as a working fishing harbour, for being less touristy and over-gentrified than some of the other seaside fishing villages, for its wide choice of good restaurants, cafes and pubs and for its good quality accommodation including super B&Bs.
Mevva harbour from Middle Wharf
The Ship Inn in Mevva
Photographs
More in Towns & Villages
Millbrook
On a soaking wet late November Saturday I had an outing down south-east. I went to Millbrook first where I had hoped to look inside All Saints Church. Unfortunately it was firmly locked so I had to content myself with exterior photos, the church looking very gloomy and foreboding on such a dark and rainy day. Millbrook is quite an interesting village, centred as it is around a large lake. It has quite a history, having once had a fishing fleet, a tide mill, a gunpowder factory, a ropewalk, lime kilns, boat building and a large brewery. I had hoped to look inside late Victorian All Saints Church but it was firmly locked. From the outside impressions are of a massive and rather gloomy looking building, built of a dark grey stone. Pevsner describes it as follows: "solid but dull Perpendicular and built of Plymouth limestone with Polyphant dressings." Ceilings are wagon roofed in the late medieval style. Stained glass is all of the turn of the 19th century. I hope to find an occasion when the church is open; if so, I shall report further.
Mitchell
Although Mitchell never benefitted from Cornwall's many mining booms, in its time it was a town of some importance. Set in a rich lowland farming area, it was also an important staging post on the main coach road from London. From the look of them it's a reasonable assumption that both the attractive Plume of Feathers inn and nearby Raleigh House were once coaching inns. There are other attractive buildings in town, too: the delightful Georgian Wellesley Farm and a row of cottages on the main street. Politically, Mitchell also once had its importance. You may wonder at the names Raleigh and Wellesley in a minor Cornish town but there is, in fact, a very simple if surprising explanation. From 1547 to the Reform Act of 1832 it was a 'rotten borough', it's very few property owning voters returning two members to parliament. Indeed, in 1593 Devon born Sir Walter Raleigh was one of these as in 1807 was Arthur Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington. I remember well when the main road to holiday country of St. Ives and Penzance passed right along Mitchell's main street. Then the holiday season must have made it a traffic nightmare for its residents; now Mitchell is bypassed by the modern A30 and is a sleepy attractive village.
Mithian
A small village, population only around 500, Mithian lies just over a mile to the east of St. Agnes and is signed from the Chiverton Cross to St.. Agnes road soon after the Chiverton Inn. It is an attractive village with two notable buildings. The pub, the Miners Arms, has quite a history. Built in the 16th century, it has had a chequered career as courthouse, coroners court, smugglers lair and even apparently a house of ill-repute. The other notable building is Harmony Cot (just out of the village) which was the birthplace of John Opie, the famouir Cornish society portrait painter. A self-taught prodigy, by the age of twelve he had not only learned to draw but had apparently mastered Euclid and was teaching writing and arithmetic - and all this while apprenticed to a wheelwright. Harmony Cot is a private home and not open to the public. There is no Anglican church in the village and the former parish church of St. Peter is over two miles away at Chiverton Cross. Built in 1861, by architect William White, in 2006 it closed, faced with a repair bill of almost �1 million. I had expected to see it crumbling but, in December 2016, after a visit to St. Agnes, it appeared to be undergoing restoration. Oddly, the primary school is also out of the village, at Barkla Shop. The Miners Arms pub in Mithian (pictured left) is strongly recommended: young enthusiastic staff who happily prepared me a not-on-menu bacon sandwich.