Crebawethan Cottage is ideally located, halfway around the St Mary’s coast path from Hugh Town and in the perfect position for a lunch break for hungry walkers. (Please leave muddy boots in the porch.) Alternatively, take an afternoon stroll across the island for a cream tea. For the less energetic, the bus stops at the corner. When storms sweep in across the Atlantic, take refuge in our cosy tearoom. The original inglenook was uncovered during recent renovations and has now been restored.
Upstairs is a self-catering apartment for four, reached by a flight of stairs behind the cottage.
The sheltered garden is our main attraction, with plenty of picnic tables for eating outside on sunny days and a swing for children and the young at heart.
Ground-floor plan, showing the tearoom, kitchen, toilet (with baby-changing facilities) and enclosed porch, complete with muddy boots. The original shell is outlined in red.
First-floor plan, showing the self-catering accommodation. The kitchen has a cooker, microwave and fridge. Well, technically, a mini-fridge, which makes a bit of a nonsense of the cooker from a gameplay point of view but looks right – in my experience, fridge-freezers are as unusual as dishwashers in self-catering places. There is only one wardrobe, strictly speaking, but there are two dressers as well, and Karen ruled that they counted.
Roof plan, showing the whole plot. I’m not even going to try to highlight the original plants
Notes
One of the reasons why I chose Scilly as the destination was being able to build in a familiar British style but with a pretty free choice of landscaping: because the winters are so mild, Mediterranean and subtropical plants grow outdoors quite happily in sheltered spots. The starting point for this round was perfect for constructing a typically lush island garden (so thanks, Karen ).
I knew I wanted to make a tearoom at some point, cream teas being an essential part of so many people’s Cornish holidays, but it wouldn’t fit the café/restaurant requirements – I’ve seen a few licensed tearooms recently but none with a bar. Hence the self-catering accommodation upstairs. I’ve borrowed the location and some of the landscaping from the real-life Carn Vean Café, although the building is based on a much older cottage.
On which subject, I spent altogether too much time playing around with CFE and flooring patterns trying to construct an authentically saggy and lichen-spotted old roof (I really wish you could use terrain paint on roofs) before reluctantly concluding that a standard one looked better . Maybe they’ve just had it replaced.
Great and Little Crebawethan (spotting a pattern here?) are part of the Western Rocks, beloved of seal-spotters and birdwatchers and a notorious graveyard for ships. Crebawethan is also one of my favourite words ever .
9th Jun 2016 at 10:35 AM
Crebawethan Cottage (Home from Home)
. Maybe they’ve just had it replaced.