Qualla: Polperro

Polperro: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada, CC BY 2.0. Half a mile of village clings to the sides of a single steep combe, the River Pol running down its centre, and at the bottom is a harbour barely wider than a city street. No cars are allowed past the car park at Crumplehorn at the top. Visitors walk down, or take a horse and cart, or ride one of the milk floats disguised as small trams. By the time they reach the water, the cottages have closed in around them - whitewashed walls, slate roofs, fishermen's stores at ground level and living rooms above, packed so tightly that the streets become more like staircases. In the 1970s, Polperro received about twenty-five thousand visitors a day during summer. The houses have been there since the thirteenth century, the smuggling tradition since around the same time, and the harbour since at least the early 1500s when John Leland first described it.

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Image: Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada | CC BY 2.0

Polperro: Pyra's Cove

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smoobs, CC BY 2.0. The name comes from the Cornish Porthpyra - the harbour named after Pyran, possibly the same saint who gave his name to St Piran's flag of Cornwall. The linguist Eilert Ekwall doubted the personal-name origin and suggested Perro might simply be a name for the stream. The earliest...

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Image: Smoobs | CC BY 2.0

Polperro: The Smugglers' Banker

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Law, CC BY-SA 2.0. By the late eighteenth century, Britain was at war with America and then France, and the taxes on imported goods had risen so high that smuggling became almost rational economics for any fisherman with a boat and nerve. Brandy, spirits, tobacco, tea, silk - all of it landed on Co...

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Image: Richard Law | CC BY-SA 2.0

Polperro: The Storms of 1817 and 1824

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Jeffery, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 19 and 20 January 1817, a hurricane-force storm tore through the south coast. At Polperro, thirty large boats, two seine-netters, and many smaller craft were destroyed. The village green and Peak Rock were partially consumed. Houses were swept away. Damage was estimated at two...

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Image: Peter Jeffery | CC BY-SA 2.0

Polperro: Couch's House and Kokoschka

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pm.thoma, CC BY-SA 4.0. Jonathan Couch was Polperro's village doctor for decades in the early nineteenth century. He wrote a natural history of British fish, two series of articles for Notes and Queries titled The Folklore of a Cornish Village, and a history of his village that his son Thomas Quiller Co...

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Image: Pm.thoma | CC BY-SA 4.0

Polperro: Marooned

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pyrotek at English Wikipedia, Public domain. In 1807, a man from Polperro named Robert Jeffery served aboard HMS Recruit under Commander Warwick Lake. Jeffery had been born in Fowey, moved to Polperro, joined the merchant navy, and been press-ganged into the Royal Navy. One night he stole his midshipman's beer. Lake, in a f...

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Image: Pyrotek at English Wikipedia | Public domain