A resort hotel fit for the world
WITH the news that world leaders will hold the 2021 G7 summit in Cornwall, we look at the history of the luxury hotel where delegations from France, Germany, the United States, Canada, Italy, Japan, the European Union and of course the UK will stay: Tregenna Castle Resort.
If you have never been to Tregenna Castle, in St Ives, it is worth the look as it commands some of the most amazing views over St Ives and Carbis Bay, and is a small haven of peace where Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Joe Biden will be able to relax and appreciate some of the best views in Cornwall.
Built in the 18th century by Samuel Stephens, the hotel, with its 72-acre estate and three 18-hole golf courses, is named after the hill in St Ives which it was built upon. It was in 1871 when the estate was sold and became the grand hotel it remains today.
It is understood that Tregenna Castle was designed by renowned Victorian architect John Wood the Younger, and was later extended as the needs of the owners and as a hotel grew.
Put up for sale at auction on October, 1871, the Grade Two listed property was described then as an ‘imposing castellated edifice, very substantially built of granite’, something it has retained to this day. It was acquired by the Bolitho family, a descendant of whom is Colonel Edward Bolitho, the Lord Lieutenant for Cornwall and a representative of Her Majesty the Queen in the Duchy.
The place is grand beyond grand and one of the biggest hotels in Cornwall, with 98 bedrooms – a far cry from its humble beginnings as a castle when it was a family home with ‘only’ 12 bedrooms.
Back then, a station hotel became a ‘must-have’ for any aspirational town so, once the tracks were laid down, it did not take long for Tregenna Castle to become a railway hotel. By 1913, railway companies owned 93 hotels between them.
The Great Western Railway (GWR) opened its St Ives branch line on June 1, 1877, and leased the property as a hotel the following year. Early railway hotels had only been situated near large terminals or junctions, but this one was the first intended by the GWR as a holiday destination in its own right. The GWR purchased the hotel outright in 1895 and even named two of its locomotives after the hotel. Sir Daniel Gooch, the chairman of the GWR, is said to have stayed at the hotel a few weeks after it opened to the public and recorded in his diary that “the situation of this house is very fine; it is a castle within its own grounds of about 70 acres, a great part of which are gardens and woods with pretty shaded walks. The house feels more like a private house than a hotel; the views from it are very fine, looking over the town and bay of St Ives and along the coast as far as Trevose Head.”
As a destination hotel, Tregenna had more to offer than a standard railway hotel. Plans for a golf course were discussed in 1888 and came to be in 1929. The first golf course was a nine-hole course, swiftly followed by a croquet lawn, three tennis courts, a badminton court, and a squash court.
Today, the golf course has expanded to an 18-hole President’s Course. There are two swimming pools on site and two restaurants and the hotel can accommodate up to 250 guests for wedding receptions within its four indoor and two outdoor venues.
The English guitarist and composer Anthony Phillips is said to have been a frequent visitor to St Ives with his family in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and in 1972 composed a guitar duet entitled Tregenna Afternoons. He recorded the piece in 1976, and it was released on his 1979 album Private Parts and Pieces.
Blackhurst Estate, one of the settings in the 2008 novel The Forgotten Garden by Australian author Kate Morton, is rumoured to be loosely based upon Tregenna Castle; with the fictional village of Tregenna, which sits under Blackhurst, said to be a fictional version of St Ives.
Over the years, the hotel and its grounds have also been used as filming location by German television channel ZDF for its adaptations of Rosamunde Pilcher’s books.
Upon announcing that Cornwall had been chosen to host the G7 summit, Malcolm Bell, chief executive of Visit Cornwall said: “Cornwall has been voted the best holiday region in the UK for ten out of the last 11 years in the British Travel Award, but it is a hidden gem to so many potential visitors from outside the UK.
“The G7 leaders’ summit will focus the world’s press and TV on this very special place and this exposure is promotion we could never buy. It will not only showcase the beauty of Cornwall but give us the opportunity to communicate our heritage, culture and the connections to each country which will help drive growth in international visitors over the next decade.”
Any of the G7 delegates staying at Tregenna Castle will be sure to have one of the bests seats in the house, when it comes to enjoying Cornwall’s beauty.