Trelewack Cottage, Crosswyn, St Ewe, St Austell, PL26 6EX

This charming Christian holiday cottage, Cornwall, is a Grade II Listed retreat tucked into the hamlet of Crosswyn, on the edge of St Ewe, a few miles inland from the sea on Cornwall’s south coast. Fenced by garden, apple trees and its own wildlife pond, Trelewack Cottage is the sort of place built for slowing right down — birdsong instead of traffic, a wood-burner for cooler evenings, and a short walk to The Crown for supper when you’d rather not cook. It’s an easy, unhurried base for a proper week off, whatever season you choose to visit.

St Ewe itself is a tiny parish with an outsized history. Its parish church, All Saints, stands on ground that’s been used for worship for around 1,400 years, and is dedicated to a little-known Celtic saint — St Ewe, believed to have been a woman, though almost nothing else is recorded about her. The church you can visit today is Grade I listed, with a carved rood screen reportedly hidden from Cromwell’s soldiers during the Civil War, and a churchyard that hosts the St Ewe Country Fair most Augusts.

The cottage also sits within the old parish boundary of Heligan, seat of the Tremayne family for around 400 years and now home to the Lost Gardens of Heligan. The gardens fell into disrepair after the First World War, when many of the estate’s gardeners never returned from the front, and lay hidden under bramble for over seventy years until they were rediscovered in 1990 by Tim Smit — later the founder of the nearby Eden Project — and painstakingly restored. Today the gardens include a sub-tropical valley known as The Jungle, productive Victorian kitchen gardens, and one of the largest garden restoration projects in Europe, all just a short drive from the cottage.

Just down the valley is Mevagissey, a working harbour village first recorded in 1313 and named after two early Cornish saints, Meva and Issey, whose names merged into one when two small settlements grew together. For centuries it was one of Cornwall’s busiest pilchard ports, its twin quays built in the 1770s under an Act of Parliament to shelter the fishing fleet. Today the same harbour is better known for crab boats, art galleries and fresh fish suppers than for shoals of pilchards, but the walk down into the village from St Ewe remains one of the loveliest short strolls in the area.

For those wanting to explore further, two of Cornwall’s best-known trails are within reach. The South West Coast Path runs along this stretch of coastline, part of a 630-mile waymarked route tracing the whole of the south-western peninsula from Somerset to Dorset. A little further afield, the Saints’ Way — Forth an Syns in Cornish — follows a 30-mile route from Padstow to Fowey, believed to retrace the paths used by early Christian missionaries and pilgrims crossing Cornwall on foot to avoid the treacherous seas around Land’s End. Closer to home, the coves and bays around Mevagissey and Portmellon offer some genuinely quiet swimming spots, well away from the busier beaches further along the coast.

This Christian holiday cottage, Cornwall, is perfect for:
Clergy and church workers wanting a proper break from routine
Families or two couples sharing, with room for four
Dog owners — well-behaved dogs are warmly welcome
Anyone happy with quiet walks, coastal air and an evening by the fire

For more Christian-friendly places to stay across the South West, browse our South West England properties. And if the Lost Gardens of Heligan are on your list during your stay, Heligan’s own website has visitor information, seasonal highlights and opening times.

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