The coast is clear

The buoyant Cornwall market offers a bit of everything for the country-house buyer, from spy novels to spectacular sea views

IN the late 1960s, the author John le Carré (born David Cornwell, but forbidden from writing under his own name when employed by MI5 and MI6) was staying with an old friend, the Cornish artist John Miller, at his house in West Penwith in Cornwall's far west, on a sparsely populated peninsula ringed by high cliffs and surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean. One day, when walking along the cliffs at Tregiffian, near the village of St Buryan, le Carré passed three derelict fisherman's cottages and a barn overlooking the coast between St Loy and Lamorna.

Armed with the proceeds of The Spy Who Came in From The Cold (1963), the second of his bestselling espionage novels set against the backdrop of the Cold War, le Carré tracked down the owner of the property, a local farmer, and bought the cottages, together with 27 acres of land, including a mile of coastline, much of which he later donated to the National Trust. Over the years, le Carré and his wife, Jane, restored and adapted the cottages and outbuildings into the comfortable, but unpretentious coastal retreat that was to be their family home for more than 40 years, until his death, from pneumonia, in December 2020. Jane died from cancer two months later, in February 2021.

Tregiffian Cottage, where, according to one obituary, 'Mr le Carré charmed the armies of interviewers who came to his cliff-top home', is now for sale, on behalf of the Cornwell family, through Chris Clifford of Savills in Exeter (01392 455743). Mr Clifford quotes a guide price of $3 million for the 5,071sq ft main house, its detached annexe, studio, offices and outbuildings, the whole set in just under 3½ acres of gardens and grounds, with direct access to the South West Coast Path.