Port Eliot

En un regard

Le château en bref

On the banks of the Tiddy estuary, at St Germans, Port Eliot is one of the oldest inhabited houses in Cornwall. The house grew out of the buildings of the priory of Augustinian canons adjoining St Germans Church, the former episcopal seat of Saxon Cornwall. After the Dissolution, the estate passed to the Champernownes, who sold it in 1564 to John Eliot, a Plymouth merchant: his descendants, who became Earls of St Germans, still live there. Its present appearance owes much to the early 19th century. Sir John Soane rebuilt and reclad the 18th-century house in the Gothic style in 1804-1806, giving it notably a circular drawing room, and Henry Harrison then added a new entrance and a service wing in 1829. All around, Humphry Repton remodelled the park from 1792; his "Red Book" was completed the following year. The estate is also known for its cultural life: it hosted the Elephant Fayre in the 1980s, then a literary and music festival from 2003 to 2019. Open to the public since 2008, the gardens can be explored during the day, while the interiors, rich in family portraits, can be discovered on guided tours by reservation.