The second largest harbour in Cornwall

A village that lit its own streets

Mevagissey sits in a valley that people have lived in since the Bronze Age. It built an inner harbour in 1778, wrote its own harbour laws in a pub four years before that, printed its own bank notes, and was one of the first villages in Britain to light its streets by electricity — from a power station on the quay that burned oil pressed from pilchards.

Explore the bay

Mevagissey at dusk, drawn: the village stacked up the valley with its windows lit, the harbour arms reaching out, and the lamp burning on the pier head.

The bay

Start anywhere

Every pin is a page. The map is the menu for people who would rather look than read a list.

1The harbour 2The quay 3The pilchard cellars 4Camp Hill 5The cliff barrows 6Pentewan Sands 7The Fowey ferry 8The first lights

The harbourInner harbour, 1778 The quayFish, chips and pubs The pilchard cellarsWhere the catch was pressed Camp HillHill fort ruins The cliff barrowsBronze Age burial mounds Pentewan SandsTwo miles north The Fowey ferryAcross the bay in season The first lightsOne of the first villages in Britain with electric street lighting

The long year behind it

The village year, and the long one behind it

This is the history — the thousands of years that made the village. For the recurring year a visitor can plan around — the festival, the fishing seasons, the choir on the quay — see The year in Mevagissey.

The year in Mevagissey →

Bronze Age

Settlers take the valley. Their burial mounds still stand on the cliffs south of the village, and the hill fort ruins on Camp Hill with them.

5th–6th century

The age of the saints. Two settlements — Lammorick, and Porthhilly, a fishing community.

1733

Fishing alone no longer puts bread on the table. Smuggling is rife, with Roscoff the primary stop.

1774

The Harbour Trust rules are written in the Ship Inn, and bound not in cow leather but in the skin of a ling.

1778

The inner harbour is built. The outer wall follows a century later and takes the worst of the storms off it.

The 1960s

The modern Feast Week is devised — music, fish, exhibitions, flora dances and choirs.

And the tales

The village keeps two other kinds of story, and is honest about which is which.

Myths, legends & superstitionsOld Cornish myths, readapted for Mevagissey — the Lost Child among them.Time travel: 1888Creative writing set in a March storm, not a record of one.

Community

A working village, not a set

Mevagissey is unusual in that the fishermen own the seabed around the harbour, which is normally the Duchy's. The village is a place of work first and a view second, and the guide is written that way.

The fishermen own the seabed

Around the harbour, where it would normally belong to the Duchy of Cornwall.

Its own money

Mevagissey printed its own bank notes at one point.

Its own light

One of the first villages in Britain to have electric street lighting — powered by pilchard oil.

Mevagissey Harbour — a guide to the village, the bay and the people who worked it.