Cozy Cornwall Beckons

If you want to experience England’s rugged Cornwall in luxury, stay at Well House in St. Keyne, near Liskeard.

Proprietor Nicholas Wainford will welcome and cosset you. He’ll ask you to share his beautiful old house, along with his chef, who was formerly with the Capitol in London and whose kitchen is one of the best.

The view from any of the seven bedrooms is not the bleak cliffs of the Cornwall coast of literature. It is an estate of rolling lawns, along with birch, alder, box, oak and holly trees on the hills in which it nestles. There are the seasonal flowers that only the English gardener seems to grow effortlessly, and the cow that lives next door.

Rooms are in a wallpaper pattern chosen from a country garden, and definitely cozy. In each attached bath the view from the bedroom is continued, and there’s the always-welcome warming rack for towels against the risky weather, a comfort one wishes our ancestors had remembered to take to the Colonies.

Magnet for British

Traditional Cornwall is perhaps 20 minutes away. Looe (pronounced Loo) and Polperro are small fishing villages only a few twists and turns down to the sea from Well House.

There is an East Looe and a West Looe, with a bridge, perhaps a block long, connecting them. They are twin villages of crooked lanes, built on crooked hills, sharing the same river banks. You can watch the West Looe River flow into the English Channel from the bridge.

In summer the tourists swarm, not Americans but British. Cornwall is to the English vacationer what Cape Cod is to the American. At low tide the fishing boats lie on their sides along the steep-slanted river bank, looking like toys left by children. There are cobblestoned streets between plentiful small shops in which you can buy sheep-lined slippers sheared from local sheep.

Denizens of the Sea

At teatime the English go indoors, and it’s easier to hear echoes of the fishmongers who once hawked their wares in the winding streets. Now you can fish for your own wares. The seafaring Cornishmen have learned that they can make money renting their boats, letting tourists catch the exotic shark that roam in channel waters and other denizens of the sea.

The ferry that runs from Looe to Polperro is a perfect way to see the serrated shore of Cornwall, with its high, unclimbable cliffs.

One glance explains why smuggling once was the chief income in Cornwall. The constabulary might spot smugglers from the cliffs, but getting to them was risking life and limb. Luck was always with the smugglers, as they could get rid of the evidence quickly. Any manor house worth its name kept a hidden tunnel to the shore.

“Four and twenty ponies,

trotting through the dark.

Brandy for the parson,

‘backy for the clerk . . . “

There seems to have been a rollicking pride in being a smuggler, and Kipling reflected it in rhyme. That pride can be seen in the Smuggler’s Museum in Polperro. Everything from French wines to French brides were smuggled, what with Brittany just across the Channel from Cornwall.

The Cornish are more kin to the French than to the English. Contraband traffic between them was family business until not so long ago.

Polperro is banned to any but those on foot, or in a “taxi.” Taxis in this area are high wooden carts pulled by sturdy farm horses that amble through the narrow lanes of town at a pace that ensures passengers will see everything. It’s the more imaginative way of getting around.

If you come for a visit, bring a camera; Polperro is reputed to have the most photographed harbor in the world.

The damp, briny air of fishing villages vanishes when you go inland to Liskeard, only about 10 miles from St. Keyne.

It’s a vanishing phenomenon, one of the oldest active market towns in England. Twice a week horses, sheep, goats and pigs are auctioned, and poultry, seed, plants and farm products are sold. Handlers trot the livestock in a circle while an auctioneer chants the bids to farmers sitting on bleachers. Even today the auctioneer singsongs the bidding.

The marketplace is not on the outskirts of town but in a large tract of land directly behind the main street. It’s as conventional a part of the lives of the farmers, breeders, gardeners and townsfolks as the supermarket is in ours. In Liskeard, Gypsies tell fortunes in the “supermarket.”

At the Crossroad

At Well House, the stone well for which it is named stands at a crossroad near the entrance, covered in lichen and moss.

You’ll soon discover the spell that St. Keyne cast. She was the daughter of a King of Brecknockshire by the name of Brechan who had 26 children. (Monty Python didn’t invent him, but he could have. Cornwall is where the zanies have filmed much of their stuff.)

King Brechan died in the 5th Century, brokenhearted, it’s said, because only 16 of his brood became saints.

St. Keyne’s spell is that whoever was to drink first of the water in the well, be it man or wife, would be master for life--an equal opportunity saint.

If you visit in summer there’s a swimming pool at Well House. Also a pond in the upper garden. Wainford may ask you to help herd the ducks as the sun goes down, which can be a humbling experience.

After you’ve had a drink in the snug bar where Wainford keeps his stock of 32 Scotch whiskies, you’re ready for dinner, courtesy of chef David Pope.

Your first course might be a tatette of wild mushrooms with quail’s eggs, coated with a bearnaise sauce. The main course could be a pan-fried fillet of beef with a brandy and green peppercorn sauce, always with two vegetables. A selection of three cheeses, some native to Cornwall, with rosemary and walnut bread, follows.

For dessert there’s sticky toffee pudding with a hot butterscotch sauce. The setting is country-house elegant and the appointments and the service are a match. Coffee is taken in the parlor, British-style.

Prices at the seven-room Well House are 65 per night double occupancy, 45 single. You can drive, fly or take a train or bus to Plymouth to reach Well House. The address is St. Keyne, near Liskeard, Cornwall PL14 4RN, England. Any questions can be answered by Nicholas Wainford, Esq.

For more information on travel to Great Britain, contact the British Tourist Authority, 350 S. Figueroa St., Suite 450, Los Angeles 90071, phone (213) 628-3525.