Sturt and Splicer 1793
Mount Edgcumbe Estate holdings on the Rame Peninsula in 2001 © Visit UK Heritage 2001
Edgcumbe Estate
What we now know as the Mount Edgcumbe Country Park started off as a deer park, enclosed by Sir Piers Edgcumbe in 1515. Sir Piers Edgcumbe had acquired the land on the Rame peninsula when he married Joan Durnford in 1493, and it was he who bestowed the name Mount Edgcumbe on the eastern end of the Rame peninsula. The main seat of the Edgcumbe family was then at Cotehele, higher up the Tamar river. After inheriting the estate in 1539, Sir Piers’ son Richard built a house on the site. Initially, this was used as a hunting lodge and contemporary accounts speak of the prodigious coneys (rabbits) and the plentiful deer, which roamed right up the house.
The house then became the Edgcumbe family’s main residence. The pleasure grounds, plantations and rides in the parkland were developed over three centuries by successive proprietors. No landscape architect or gardener was employed to oversee the whole. And as landscape historian Kate Feluś comments, Mount Edgcumbe is unusual in that elements of the landscape have expanded further and further outwards. In many other locations, layers of design typical of a certain period have tended to be overwritten by designs favoured in subsequent periods. The result is that within the Mount Edgcumbe Country Park, certain elements of key periods remain relatively intact. Throughout its history, from the 16th through to the mid-20th century, the design and setting of Mount Edgcumbe was greatly admired and lavishly praised. Royals and other dignitaries from near and far queued to visit.
Manors, farms, mines and more
The Edgcumbe family estate was once very large indeed. By 1671, when Sir Richard Edgcumbe, the father of the first Lord Edgcumbe, married Lady Anne Montague daughter of the Earl and Countess of Sandwich, he owned the mansion house and barton (farm) of Bogrugan near St Austell with 500 acres and approximately a dozen other manors and farms further into Cornwall, as well as lands, manors and houses in Maker, Mount Edgcumbe with its deer park, Cotehele with its house, park and farm, lands in Sussex, 400 acres at Ashey near Ryde in the Isle of Wight and, of course, the Cremill (Cremyll) Ferry, most of Stonehouse and a considerable number of tin mines and smelting works.
Two hundred years later in the late 19th century, the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe was the owner of more than 18,000 acres of land, the third largest holding by a Cornish family estate, although by then a quarter by area was in Devon and tin and other mining operations produced a very significant proportion of total income.
Elizabeth Hervey describes visiting copper and tin mines on a trip from Mount Edgcumbe to Cotehele on 1 and 2 August, 1792. She left by the Crimble (Cremyll) ferry landing at Mutton Cove and then via Tavistock set out for Cotehele. On land owned by the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe and the Duke of Bedford, she writes:
“We alighted here to see a copper mine, but we only saw people employed in breaking the ore, amongst whom I perceived the loveliest girl imaginable – Mary Rose in all the bloom of 16 with regular features, blue laughing eyes, a well turned nose, a mouth rather wide, but full of smiles and very agreeable; with coral lips and white even teeth, cheeks like opening roses and brown glossy hair of a chestnut colour waving on a very white neck, which occasionally the wind discovered by blowing it aside. This girl had a huge mallet in her hand which I could scarcely lift, while she with the greatest facility heaved it incessantly to break the lumps of ore before her. Nine hours does she stand thus employed every other day, and her day of rest that intervenes she sits and picks the pieces. What a subject this scene would have been for a painter!”
“Thence we went to see a tin mine at a little distance from that of copper we saw Yesterday. We saw more of the tin mine than we did of the copper mine for though it was exceedingly hot and very rough bad walking, owing to the earth and stones by up round the mine, we went on fully determined to go down and see the men digging in the bottom. We descended when the opening of the mine formed a vast cleft in the rock, and soon found it quite cool and shady. My two beaus (Earl of Mount Edgcumbe and Lord Charles Cadogan) could only take care of themselves and indeed the path was so narrow that nobody could assist me, so I trusted to a stick for support, had that failed I must have fallen down a deep abyss that made one giddy to look into. However I got along safely and returned as happily. After buying some small lumps of virgin tin and specimens of ore, we went back to Cotehele when we dined and seemed quite accustomed to all the old fashioned things about us.”
Landing craft and US troops at Barn Pool in Mount Edgcumbe during WWII. Photo kindly made available by Brian Rayden.
During WWII troops were stationed in the park and gun emplacements and tank roads were installed. In 1941 an incendiary bomb intended for the Plymouth dockyard destroyed all but the outer walls of the house and all its contents. The fifth Earl had died without leaving an heir and the title and estate passed to a cousin, Kenelm, then living in Germany. It was he, as the sixth Earl, who supervised the reconstruction of the house between 1958 and 1964. Kenelm’s only son was killed in action during the second world war and in 1965 the estate passed to a cousin from the New Zealand branch of the family who moved to Cornwall from New Zealand.
At its peak, the estate had presided over great wealth and controlled thousands of acres in Devon and Cornwall. Its fortunes declined dramatically in the 20th century, not least because of the punitive taxes imposed on country estates after WWI. By 1971 the Edgcumbe Estate holdings on the Rame peninsula comprised 2400 acres / 971 hectares. At this point Mount Edgcumbe House and 865 acres of gardens and parkland were transferred into public ownership.
The accompanying photo shows landing craft and US troops at Barn Pool in Mount Edgcumbe during WWII. Tidal eddies create deep water very close to the shore in Barn Pool. Wooden jetties were built and the beach was covered with a mesh of concrete on wires to allow for heavy vehicles. Remnants are still visible at low water.
The estate, since 1971 known as Mount Edgcumbe Estate, continues to own areas of the Grade I listed landscape of great historical interest. The most important of these consists of the kitchen gardens and associated buildings at Empacombe. There is also an area of ancient woodland to the southwest of the deer park on the western side of the road to Picklecombe, which – like Empacombe – is part of the registered Grade I land but is not in the country park.
The Coach House & Folly Wall at Empacombe © M Corber 2023
Empacombe and Home Farm 1884