Qualla: Looe

Looe: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. In June 1625, Barbary pirates rounded the headland and rowed into the cobbled streets. They had come from North Africa, two thousand miles across the sea, to raid an English fishing port. Looe had been forewarned - villagers were already scattering into the orchards and meadows when the raiders arrived - but the pirates still managed to seize eighty mariners and fishermen, chain them, and march them back to their ships. The captives were taken to North Africa and sold into slavery. The town itself was set on fire. Four centuries later, Looe is two small towns built into a steep V where the East and West Looe rivers join the sea, connected by a nine-arched Victorian bridge built in 1853 to replace a stone medieval bridge that had stood since 1436. Pleasure boats now share the harbour with the working fleet. Some of the descendants of the men taken in 1625 are likely still here.

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Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0

Looe: Two Towns, One River

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alistair Young, CC BY 2.0. Looe developed as two separate settlements, East Looe and West Looe, each with its own borough charter and its own parish church. West Looe was chartered by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, sometime between 1225 and 1257. East Looe gained the right to hold a market by 1189 and was taxe...

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Image: Alistair Young | CC BY 2.0

Looe: Ictis, Maybe

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Just off the coast lies Looe Island, a small green hump in the bay that has been called many things. Some time before 1144, Benedictine monks settled there, built a chapel, and set up a rudimentary lighthouse using beacons - one of the earliest navigation aids on the Cornish coas...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Looe: Lead, Silver, and the Banjo Pier

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. By 1800 Looe was in decline. The Napoleonic Wars and the blockade of 1808 had cut off the fishermen from their pilchard grounds. Storms and flooding battered the town in 1817. Then the copper boom on Bodmin Moor's Caradon Hills opened a new market. The Liskeard and Looe Union Can...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Looe: Katherine Mansfield in Red

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Atkin, CC BY-SA 2.0. In the spring and summer of 1918, the New Zealand short-story writer Katherine Mansfield came to Looe to recover from tuberculosis. She joined her long-time friend Anne Estelle Rice, an American painter living in the town. While Mansfield rested, Rice painted her - a vivid portra...

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Image: Tony Atkin | CC BY-SA 2.0

Looe: Fancy Dress and Shark Fishing

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Johnson [1], CC BY-SA 3.0. Modern Looe lives between two reputations. It is still a fishing town - a fleet of small boats lands fresh fish daily on the East Looe quay, and the town hosts the Shark Angling Club of Great Britain - and it is also a tourist resort, with hotels and guest houses crowding the ste...

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Image: David Johnson [1] | CC BY-SA 3.0