Renovated Porthledden, in the Arts-and-Crafts style, overlooks the Irish Sea and the Atlantic Ocean at Cape Cornwall, near St Just. £5m
WHEN young Cornishman Francis Oats left school in the early 1860s, he became a miner, as did many of his classmates in west Cornwall. Yet, with an eye on a bigger prize, he would walk the seven miles from his home in St Just across the fields to Penzance, in order to attend evening classes in mining engineering. His efforts paid off. After excelling in exams, he was offered free tuition at the London School of Mines and was made a local mining captain at the age of 20.
Moving to South Africa, he became chairman of De Beers and a close ally of Cecil Rhodes, accruing a significant fortune in the diamond mines and gold fields along the way. In a reallife echo of Winston Graham's 'Poldark' saga, he championed the welfare of the Cornish tin miners who had followed in his footsteps to South Africa and convinced De Beers to pay annual leave for every expat miner.
Cape Cornwall is a headland about a mile east of St Just, which juts into the point where the Irish Sea and Atlantic Ocean meet. At the height of the mining industry, it was heavily industrialised, but, today, it's a rugged and wild piece of coastline. When it came up for sale at the beginning of the 20th century, Oats snapped it up and commissioned the building of his family house, Porthledden. Constructed between 1907 and 1910, the large Arts-and-Crafts house occupies an elevated position looking down on the Cape.
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