Qualla: St Mary's, Isles of Scilly

St Mary's, Isles of Scilly: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Bagshaw, CC BY-SA 2.5. Six and a half square kilometres of granite, gorse and white sand sit thirty miles off Land's End - that is the largest island of the Isles of Scilly. St Mary's is small enough to walk around in a day and busy enough to feel like a working town, with a harbour at Hugh Town, an airport carved out of a farm, an eight-pointed star castle on the western headland, and a lifeboat station that has been launching crews into the Atlantic since 1837. The Cornish name means island of Saint Mary, but the place feels older than any saint: prehistoric burial chambers at Innisidgen, a coastguard tower where Marconi caught radio signals from Cornwall in 1898, and a quiet cove at Porthellick where an Admiral of the Royal Navy was found dead in the surf after one of the worst maritime disasters in British history.

Image: Daniel Bagshaw | CC BY-SA 2.5

St Mary's, Isles of Scilly: Hugh Town and the Harbour

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Electric Antiquarian, CC BY-SA 4.0. Hugh Town occupies a narrow sandy isthmus at the western end of St Mary's, with Porth Cressa beach on one side and St Mary's Harbour on the other. From the harbour the Scillonian III - a passenger ferry operated by the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company - leaves for Penzance every...

Image: Electric Antiquarian | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Mary's, Isles of Scilly: The Garrison and Star Castle

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Park, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the high western headland called the Hugh, an eight-pointed stone star rises out of the gorse. Star Castle was built in 1593 by Robert Adams, the Queen's Surveyor of the Royal Works, on the orders of Queen Elizabeth I. The Spanish Armada had been beaten back in 1588 and Englis...

Image: Colin Park | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Mary's, Isles of Scilly: The Lifeboat and the Bravery Medals

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. St Mary's has had a Royal National Lifeboat Institution station since 1837 - one of the earliest in Britain. The first crews kept their boats on the town beach at Hugh Town. After a closure between 1855 and 1874 the station reopened, moved to Porth Cressa, then in 1899 to a purpo...

Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Mary's, Isles of Scilly: Porthellick Cove and the Admiral

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. At Porthellick Cove on the southeast coast, a simple stone memorial marks the spot where Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell's body washed ashore on 22 October 1707. The night before, four Royal Navy ships - HMS Association, HMS Eagle, HMS Romney and HMS Firebrand - struck the Western...

Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Mary's, Isles of Scilly: Telegraph Tower and Marconi

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. On Newford Down stands a stubby stone tower built in 1814 as an Admiralty Telegraph Station - a relay in the semaphore chain meant to get news from Plymouth to London faster than a horse could ride. It closed by 1816, was reused by the Coastguard, then by the Marconi Wireless Tel...

Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0