The Beach

Skim stones, have a paddle and ramble around rockpools

Trebah’s sheltered and secluded beach at the bottom of the garden, Polgwidden Cove, provides the perfect place to while away an hour or two.

Here you can find our Boathouse beach cafe, serving hot and cold drinks, snacks and delicious Roskilly’s ice cream, made on the other side of the river. The cafe open every day from spring to autumn, weather permitting, and the beach is open year round.

As the jewel in Trebah’s crown, Trebah Beach is one of the top secret beaches in Cornwall and can be found a few miles outside of Falmouth, on the Helford River.

Polgwidden Cove is the perfect place to take in the stunning coastal views of the Helford, enjoy a picnic or take a cooling dip in summer months.

Our cove is for exclusive use of visitors to the garden and is only accessible through the garden. There is plenty of seating accross the beach, with picnic benches as well as wall seating.

Please note, there is no access to the beach from the coast path and landing on Trebah Beach by boat or any other watercraft is strictly prohibited.

A brief history of Polgwidden Cove

The name Polgwidden Cove is made up of Pol, meaning pool, pond or lake and Gwidden, meaning white, possibly because of the light sand and rocks.

It is situated on the Helford River – a relic of an older, wilder Cornwall and an area of outstanding natural beauty. The name Helford derives from the Cornish word Heyl, meaning estuary.

Used for thousands of years for fishing, farming, and collecting oysters, it became a centre for industry in the 19th century with nearby Gweek distributing tin all over the globe.

When the garden was developed around 1850 a boathouse was constructed on the west side of the beach.

During WWII Polgwidden Cove was selected as a D-Day embarkation point. The beach was overlaid with concrete, the boathouse was dynamited and jetties were constructed to allow the 100m flat-bottomed landing craft to moor. On 1st June 1944, 7500 American troops from the 29th US Infantry Division embarked for Operation Overlord, the biggest amphibious landing in history.

During the 1960s Trebah became the home of racing driver and designer of Healey cars, Donald Healey. He obtained a grant from the government to remove the wartime infrastructure and concrete. He used the granite found below the concrete (most probably from the old boathouse) to build the existing boathouse.