Qualla: Tregarthen's Hotel

Tregarthen's Hotel: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unbekannte Autoren und Grafiker; Scan vom EDHAC e.V., Public domain. The first guests at Tregarthen's Hotel had no easy way home. Captain Frank Tregarthen ran the only regular sailing packet between Penzance and the Isles of Scilly, the cutter Ariadne, and from 1849 he also ran the only hotel on the islands - his own house at the foot of Garrison Hill. He counted heads before leaving Penzance, loaded provisions accordingly, and then his guests stayed in Hugh Town until he chose to take them off. As one nineteenth-century account put it, the visitors were 'rounded-up like sheep in a South American corral, and there were no means of escape unless one swam across.' The weather, naturally, never set fair until the larder was bare. The hotel still operates today, with 31 bedrooms, six cottages and four waterfront lodges - and the modern guests, now with daily Skybus flights to the airport a mile away, may leave whenever they like.

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Image: Unbekannte Autoren und Grafiker; Scan vom EDHAC e.V. | Public domain

Tregarthen's Hotel: Captain Frank and the Ariadne

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian S, CC BY-SA 2.0. Until 1849 there was no regular transport between the Isles of Scilly and mainland Britain. The Scillonians decided to fix this themselves by commissioning a sloop, the Ariadne, and finding a skipper willing to make the unpredictable run from Penzance. Captain Frank Tregarthen to...

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Image: Ian S | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tregarthen's Hotel: The Little Western

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian S, CC BY-SA 2.0. Tourism on Scilly began in earnest in 1859, when the Cornwall Railway line from London reached Penzance. Suddenly the islands were within reach of a Londoner who could spare a few days. The Ariadne was replaced by the steamer Little Western - a small steam-packet boat with a crew...

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Image: Ian S | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tregarthen's Hotel: Tennyson, Crippen and Royals

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian S, CC BY-SA 2.0. The hotel's guestbook reads like a chapter from a novel that could not quite decide what kind of book it wanted to be. Wilkie Collins stayed one night in 1855 during a twelve-day cruise around the Scillies. Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote much of Enoch Arden during his stay in 1860 -...

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Image: Ian S | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tregarthen's Hotel: The Admiralty Years and the Fire

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian S, CC BY-SA 2.0. The hotel had one near-disaster and one wartime requisition in its first century. On Sunday 26 February 1905 a defective chimney caught fire and the blaze spread to an adjoining bedroom; the damage came to fifty pounds, and the hotel reopened. During the First World War the Admir...

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Image: Ian S | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tregarthen's Hotel: The Gigs

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian S, CC BY-SA 2.0. Tregarthen's has been a quiet patron of Cornish pilot gig racing since 1999, when the hotel donated a six-oared gig - named Tregarthen's - to the Isles of Scilly Rowing Association to mark the hotel's 150th anniversary. The Cornish pilot gig is the open rowing boat that nineteent...

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Image: Ian S | CC BY-SA 2.0