Mount Edgcumbe House

En un regard

Le château en bref

Facing Plymouth across the mouth of the Tamar, Mount Edgcumbe House gently overlooks the eastern tip of the Rame Peninsula. This square-plan Tudor mansion, flanked by four octagonal corner towers, was for four centuries the principal residence of the Edgcumbes, a Cornish gentry family who became barons and then earls of Mount Edgcumbe. It replaced Cotehele, their medieval home in the Tamar valley, as the family seat. The house visited today is nevertheless largely a reconstruction: in March 1941, German incendiary bombs aimed at Plymouth reduced it to its outer walls. Rebuilt between 1958 and 1964 on the old masonry, with reused or copied windows, it lost its west wing and its conservatory, and its sandstone rubble façades were left unrendered. Its interiors were recreated in the spirit of the 18th century. The mansion is inseparable from its estate: a Grade I registered landscape park, with Italian, French and English gardens, an orangery, follies and coastal walks, stretching over some 360 hectares as far as Rame Head. Sold in 1971 by the 7th Earl to Cornwall and Plymouth councils, the whole estate is jointly managed by the two authorities as a country park. The house opens for guided tours in the summer season, while the park is freely accessible all year round, notably from the Cremyll foot ferry.