In our ongoing series, Millie Walton selects and explores the world’s best art hotels. This month, she finds herself at Hotel Tresanton in St Mawes, Cornwall.
Make your way along a single coastal road, around the corner of the bay, past a castle and you’ll find yourself in the pastel-painted village of St Mawes. There, set among leafy gardens, a sprawl of whitewashed buildings tumbles down the hillside. Here is Hotel Tresanton.
Once a yacht club, the property was bought by Olga Polizzi (sister of Sir Rocco Forte, founder of Rocco Forte Hotels) more than two decades ago and gradually renovated to become one of Cornwall’s most beloved hotels. Polizzi has since expanded her collection with Hotel Endsleigh in Devon and The Star in East Sussex, but Tresanton remains her first love, with little updates being constantly carried out from switching the wallpaper to updating the bathrooms. The Dog’s Bar (so-called because you can bring your four-legged friends in with you) is next on the list for a makeover.
The Concept
Like all of Polizzi’s hotels, Tresanton is designed to feel like a home – though not just any home: one that is steeped in the life and history of St Mawes. That atmosphere is built through intimate, cosy spaces, filled with art and curious objects, open fires and plump sofas and armchairs. It’s the first hotel we’ve visited where the lounge area – or sitting room – is actually used by guests, warming up after a brisk walk, enjoying some reading or playing games.
Many of the staff have been at the hotel since its opening and are deeply embedded in its story. Small details carry these personal connections: the same florist has arranged the hotel’s flowers for two decades and there are paintings of the buildings throughout their lifespan, including in the early years of construction, by Yvonne Fuller, a friend of Polizzi.
The Collection
Tresanton houses over 200 pieces of art, all from Polizzi’s private collection, and all bearing some connection to St. Mawes or Cornwall. As you’d expect, there are a lot of boats, depictions of the sea and less conventionally, chickens. ‘Olga has a bit of an obsession with chickens,’ the hotel’s GM Karen Baxter explains.
Among the most prominently featured artists are Julian Dyson, who lived and worked in St. Mawes as a dentist before he found success through his art, and the renowned abstract artist Terry Frost who worked in Newlyn. There’s a gorgeous gouache painting by Patrick Heron currently hanging in the hallway and three works by Barbara Hepworth, tucked away in The Aegean Suite. ‘We often receive deliveries of new works from Olga that we are tasked with distributing until she comes down to rearrange,’ says Baxter. Beyond the canvases, there’s a vast array of objects and sculptures, ranging from ammonite fossils to lighthouses and a jumping sheep by Nicola Hicks that greets guests as they enter reception.
The Design Details
Photo by Hugh Hastings
Polizzi’s style is eclectic but well judged – she knows exactly how to strike the right balance between homely and cluttered. Walls are painted in coastal blues and grey, lemon and palm green. The Beach Club, over the road from the main hotel, was added in 2018 and channels the Amalfi Coast across three staggered terraces with blue-and-white stripped parasols, sun loungers, bar stools and a snack shack serving shell on prawns, hummus and bread, and a ‘posh burger’. You used to be able to access the sea directly from here, via a rather treacherous scramble over some rocks, but now it’s best advised to go for a dip at the neighbouring beach.
The Rooms
Photo by Paul Massey
Each of the 30 bedrooms is unique and all have a view of the sea – if you’re a regular to the hotel, you’ll have your favourite reserved every summer. We stayed in Room 22, in Upper Tresanton, one of five buildings that comprise the hotel. Upper Tresanton is the highest, sitting just behind the main house and accessed via stairs that lead up through lush gardens filled with flowers and fig trees. This is the largest family suite in the hotel, with two double bedrooms, a bunk room for kids, two bathrooms, a living room and a large terrace where we spent a blissful afternoon dozing in the September sun while our toddler ran excitedly up and down spotting boats coming into the harbour.
The Food & Drink
Photo by Nathan Rollinson
Meals are served on the terrace during the summer months or in the serene wood-pannelled dining room. For breakfast there’s homemade granola, fresh fruits, seeds and a selection of cooked dishes, including Cornish kippers, while seafood steals the show on the lunch and dinner menus – oysters, crab, lobster, a variety of whole cooked fish, all as fresh as can be and perfectly cooked.
Art in the Neighbourhood
There are four small art galleries in St Mawes itself, but to really dig your teeth into the region’s artistic legacy, hop on the ferry across to Falmouth where the Falmouth Art Gallery is a good place to start. The gallery houses over 2,000 pieces ranging from Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces and British Impressionist paintings to contemporary prints and photography. Further afield, Newlyn and St Ives are essential pilgrimages – the former home to the Newlyn School of Painters, the latter to the St Ives Group and Barbara Hepworth, whose house and studio are now a museum. There’s also the Tate’s excellent Cornish outpost, which currently has an exhibition of installations and light works by American artist Liliane Lijn (until 2 November).
Images credit to Hotel Tresanton, St Mawes
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