Qualla: Mount Edgcumbe Country Park

Mount Edgcumbe Country Park: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anthony Volante, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 27 December 1831, HMS Beagle weighed anchor in a quiet, deep-water cove tucked under the cliffs of a Cornish estate, raised her sails, and slipped out into the English Channel. Her captain was Robert FitzRoy. Her resident naturalist was a 22-year-old Charles Darwin, embarked on what would become the most consequential five-year voyage in the history of biology. The cove was Barn Pool, sheltered behind the Rame Peninsula on the western side of Plymouth Sound, and it belonged then as now to the Mount Edgcumbe estate. The Vikings had used the same anchorage in the year 997. Eight centuries later, a young man who would change the way humans understand themselves looked back at the formal gardens climbing the slopes above the water, then turned his eyes forward toward South America.

Image: Anthony Volante | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mount Edgcumbe Country Park: Henry VIII's Deer Still Roaming

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Darren Rosson, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1515, King Henry VIII granted Sir Piers Edgcumbe the right to empark deer on his land. The descendants of those Tudor fallow deer still roam freely across the Rame Peninsula today, more than five centuries later, browsing in the same copses their ancestors knew. They are not a...

Image: Darren Rosson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mount Edgcumbe Country Park: Follies Built from Sacred Stone

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Darren Rosson, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1747 the Edgcumbes built a folly on the highest point of the park, an artificial ruin designed to look pleasingly ancient from a distance. The stone they used was not new. It came from the demolished churches of St George and St Lawrence in Stonehouse, across the water in Plym...

Image: Darren Rosson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mount Edgcumbe Country Park: A Garden in Four Languages

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Atkin, CC BY-SA 2.0. Between roughly 1750 and 1820, the Edgcumbe family created a sequence of formal gardens that read as a tour of European taste. There is an Italian Garden, with its Orangery built around 1760 and now serving as a fully licensed restaurant. There is an English Garden, a French Gard...

Image: Tony Atkin | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mount Edgcumbe Country Park: Milton's Temple and Queen Adelaide's Cave

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. Scattered through the grounds are small follies and pavilions, each with its own borrowed atmosphere. Milton's Temple is a circular temple built around 1755, its inscribed plaque carrying lines from Paradise Lost: "overhead up grew, insuperable heights of loftiest shade..." Thoms...

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mount Edgcumbe Country Park: A Park That Belongs to Everyone

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ashley Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0. The 7th Earl of Mount Edgcumbe sold the estate jointly to Cornwall County Council and Plymouth City Council in 1971. The park and formal gardens have been free to enter ever since, open from 8 am till dusk every day of the year. The villages of Kingsand and Cawsand sit within the...

Image: Ashley Smith | CC BY-SA 4.0