Qualla: Burgh Island

Burgh Island: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mick Knapton, CC BY-SA 3.0. Twice a day the sea returns and Burgh Island becomes an island again. For the six hours of high tide, the only way across the 270 yards of water from Bigbury-on-Sea is the sea tractor: a Fordson-powered contraption that drives across the submerged sandy bottom with its wheels underwater while passengers ride a platform high above. When Agatha Christie wanted to strand ten strangers on a remote island in 1939, she didn't have to invent the geography. She knew this place. She had a beach house here, built as her writing retreat, still standing on the island today.

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Image: Mick Knapton | CC BY-SA 3.0

Burgh Island: Soldier Island and the Pilchard Inn

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Christine Johnstone, CC BY-SA 2.0. Christie used Burgh Island twice. It became Soldier Island in *And Then There Were None*, where her ten guests are picked off one by one, and it served as the setting for the Hercule Poirot mystery *Evil Under the Sun* in 1941. The 2001 television adaptation of *Evil Under the Su...

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Image: Christine Johnstone | CC BY-SA 2.0

Burgh Island: A Place of Many Names

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shaun Ferguson, CC BY-SA 2.0. The island has been called many things. Early records knew it as St Michael's Island. Maps from 1765 hedge their bets with 'Borough or Bur Isle.' An 1908 postcard called it Burr Island. As late as 1947, the Ordnance Survey was still labelling it Borough Island. The current name, ...

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Image: Shaun Ferguson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Burgh Island: Art Deco on the Sand

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. The hotel that dominates the island today was built in the 1930s and remains one of England's most complete Art Deco buildings: white walls, curved balconies, peacock-feather motifs, the whole vocabulary of inter-war glamour set against a backdrop of Devon weather. During World W...

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Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0