The Summerhouse, or Lookout Tower, Boscastle, Cornwall

On a promontory overlooking the harbour at Boscastle stands a squat white building bedecked with flags and antennas. It started life in the middle of the 18th century when it was erected as a summerhouse and eye-catcher by Cotton Amy, whose Botreaux Castle estate included the harbour and lands around it. In 1821 the land was purchased by Thomas Rickard Avery, a local merchant and, depending on who you believe, a ‘notorious wrecker’.

In 1764 a passing tourist noted the ‘summerhouse’ that Mr Amy had built as a ‘landmark’, but we know little more about its early history other than that it was named as ‘Pleasure House’ on the 1813 1st series Ordnance Survey map. The harbour it overlooks was originally known as Botreaux Castle Quay, but Botreaux Castle was soon shortened to Boscastle, as the village is known today.

The summerhouse’s story becomes more lively after its purchase by Avery (1785-1858). He was a Cornish boy and a major employer in the area — on his death in 1858 it was said that a ‘great number of people’ would lose their income as ‘Mr Avery carried on an extensive business’. Avery was also a Deputy Lieutenant of Cornwall, a Magistrate and a Land Tax Commissioner, as well as chairing local business forums.

But this pillar of the community was alleged to have a much darker side: his Summer House (as it was named on the 1842 tithe map) was apparently a base for smuggling, gambling, drinking and womanising, and Avery was said to spend the evenings walking the cliffs looking for wrecks.

Although much of this history was recorded long after Avery’s death, there is a contemporary account. Avery died on 20 December 1858 and Reverend Stephen Hawker, the vicar of Morwenstow, recorded in his diary a few days later that there were violent storms in the days following Avery’s death, and the locals associated this phenomena with the death of the ‘notorious wrecker’. It should be said that Avery was not accused of deliberately luring ships onto the rocks, rather his ‘crime’ was to profit from being first on the scene to salvage the wrecked ships.

In Avery’s defence, in 1843 the former Master of the barque ‘Sedulous’ wrote to the local paper to thank the coast-guard stations at Bude and Boscastle for coming to the rescue of his stricken ship. He was ‘particularly indebted’ to Mr Avery for his ‘able superintendence’ of the situation. So was Avery the model citizen, or did he have his eye on the prize? We shall probably never know the whole story, but many years after Avery’s death the little tower played its part in avoiding further wrecks when the coastguard began to use the tower as a lookout.

This use continued until the 1970s, and the tower then stood empty until 2002 when the volunteer National Coastwatch Institution moved in. Read more about their excellent work here

The Boscastle Estate was sold by Avery’s heir in the 1880s, and in 1956 Boscastle Harbour and 146 acres of land, including the summerhouse, passed into the care of the National Trust

There are clifftop walks to the Lookout from the lovely little harbour at Boscastle.

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