The loveliest houses currently for sale in Cornwall
There is no denying that Cornwall is one of the loveliest places in the UK, offering sandy beaches, clear blue seas and some of the best weather in the summer months. It still preserves much of its fishing heritage and the seaside villages and ports are amongst the most charming there are, full of characterful cottages and clifftop houses with sweeping sea views. Whether you're in search of a holiday oasis or a full-time family home along the seaside, we've found the finest Cornish properties to scoop up from Truro to the Lizard.
Discover the loveliest houses for sale in Cornwall right now
1/10Parc Behan, Truro
Originally built in the Regency era for local Cornish vicar Jeremiah Trist, this unique, Grade-II listed house is a true gem of the south-west's property market. The house was lovingly restored first by the National Trust and later by its current owners, who purchased Parc Behan from the organisation in 2001. The primary house is well-equipped and modernised, complete with eight large bedrooms, five reception rooms and a slate-floored kitchen that features a recessed 4-oven Aga and integrated Belfast sink. Original features are also on display throughout the house, from the Delft tiling in the study to the original Adam fire surround in the games room. Also on the 12.5-acre property is a three-bedroom cottage, ideal set amidst the estate's impressive English garden. Indeed, there is more than enough history to go around at Parc Behan, and with plenty of space to make your own.
Listed with Savills for £3.5 million.
2/10Chymder Farmhouse, Helston
Forty minutes from Truro, sitting on the rising hills overlooking Pedngwinian Point on south Cornwall’s Lizard peninsula, Chymder Farmhouse’s plain granite exterior belies a bright and airy house with all the trappings of modernity. Built in the 18th century, the 2,300-square-foot farmhouse has four large bedrooms and a separate open-plan barn conversion annexe, plus an acre of grounds in which to loll when not surfing, swimming or walking the coast a mile or so away. Per Inigo, this is a house which “combines old-world charm with contemporary flourishes”: think a flagstone-and-Aga kitchen, whitewashed rafters and underfloor heating. They suggest the house is a great choice of base for anyone who enjoys the outdoors, and we can’t help but agree.
Listed with Inigo for £1.8 million.
3/10St Catherine’s Cove, Fowey
Cornwall is well known as an historic hotbed of smuggling, and St Catherine’s Cove offers the perfect landing point for anyone bringing contraband into the West Country, with its own private access to the Fowey Estuary mere yards from the back door. Or you could just use it for swimming; your choice. As for the house, it’s an ex-fisherman’s cottage turned into a residential house in the early 1900s, and entirely extended and renovated in 2009. Three bedrooms and extensive, comfortable living spaces are complemented by a seaside garden and a hidden terrace perfect for entertaining, but let’s face it – most of the time, you’re going to be on the beach.
Listed with Savills for £2.25 million.
4/10Treventon, St Columb
We lead these listings with pictures of the exterior of each house, but really, it’s Treventon’s interior which has to be seen to understand why it’s on the market for a million and a half pounds. This five-bedroom Victorian house has been artfully designed with vivacious but clever colour throughout, somewhat modernised without losing what gives it its charm and whimsy in the first place. It sits in just under two acres of garden in the quiet town of St Columb Major near Newquay (you’ll face a ten-minute drive to the sea), and was designed by the Cornish architect Silvanus Trevail. At 4,515 square feet, the house boasts all sorts of flourishes including a music studio, a sauna and a one-bedroom annexe at the end of the wooded gardens.
Listed with Inigo for £1.49 million.
5/10Rose Cottage, Gweek
It’s all Gweek to us: this charming little cottage in the village of the same name – Cornwall is a goldmine for idiosyncratic toponyms – is the very picture of what one imagines when one imagines living in the county. A deceptive three bedrooms are contained within Rose Cottage, replete with original features like exposed beams and a wide fireplace which will handily heat the cottage’s cosy main living room. The space is modern and cleanly designed, and the fact that it sits on an elevated site means that there are sheltered gardens both to the front and the back.
Listed with Inigo for £550,000.
6/10Oke Cottage, St Tudy
Appropriately for a county which has a sub-tropical climate in parts, there is something almost a little Mediterranean to the inside of Oke Cottage, with its exposed lime plaster walls and muted colour palette. The outside, though, is all English, a bucolic, rose- and wisteria-adorned façade under a slate roof. Self-contained and consciously designed, we can picture an artist or a couple of creatives settling in here in the centre of Cornwall.
Listed with Inigo for £380,000.
7/10Penwarne, Mawnan Smith
Penwarne is an elegant, listed Georgian house with views over Falmouth Bay, set amid astonishing grounds whose outbuildings include a stable block, two cottages and a former coach house. Originally home to the local Penwarne family, the estate was sold to John Russell of Falmouth in 1729, and then to Michael Nowell, also of Falmouth, in 1786, around when the current five-bedroom house was built. Classical features abound, including a porch with Ionic columns and a triangular pediment, and high-ceilinged rooms, as do original features like mahogany panelled doors, plaster ceiling cornices and sash windows. A grand setting for a grand house.
Listed with Savills for £5 million.
8/10Machan, Gillan
Interesting modernist buildings are scattered pretty liberally along the Cornish Riviera, if we’re allowed to call it that, but few of them really compare to Machan, the restored Art Moderne waterfront villa looking out across Falmouth Bay. Dating back to the 1930s, Machan is a house done backwards: it has curved walls and flat roofs. Its renovations between 2000 and 2007 have been documented in the New York Times, and is among the finest Art Moderne houses in the UK. Sitting on the Lizard peninsula on 9.35 acres of gardens and grounds, it has been configured so that the living spaces overlook the mouth of the Helford River – perhaps the only view that could reasonably distract from the house itself.
Listed with Knight Frank for £5 million.
9/10Cartuther Barton, Horningtops
A few hundred yards into the countryside outside Liskeard sits Cartuther Barton, a five-bedroom house dating back to the late 17th century. Grade II-listed and detached, it still boasts many of its original features, including stone elevations and tall sash windows, all alongside more than 10,000 square feet of outbuildings. The house itself is some 5,700 feet, decorated in a fairly traditional style with character features including a 15th-century medieval granite fireplace now home to a log burner, centuries-old flagstone floors and ornate panelling and cornicing.
Listed with Knight Frank for £950,000.
10/10Trewartha Gallery, Carbis Bay
Lots of the notable houses for sale in Cornwall are advertised as one-of-a-kind, but Trewartha Gallery really is a space that is unlike almost any other nearby. It’s a four-bedroom house – plus a one-bedroom annexe – which has been carefully designed to modernise and sympathetically incorporate its Cornish stone by its architect, the St Ives-based Jacob Down, and its current owners, a photographer and film maker. The palette, in particular, is soft and calming, with textural lime plaster walls in soft charcoal in the entrance hall and poured concrete underfoot. The footprint is centred around private courtyards, decked terraces and gardens, making the most of the wide, open views across the nearby fields towards the sea. St Ives is ten minutes away, the beach a twenty-minute walk.
Listed with Inigo for £1.6 million.
