A pair of original millstones stand by the entrance to this luxurious cottage that sits inland from the North Cornwall coast, west of Padstow and east of Newquay. But it is a mere five-minute walk, through a meadow designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, to a surfing beach. Appropriately, it is a dog friendly beach for a dog friendly cottage.

Those millstones are evidence of a water mill whose history, so far, has been traced back to 1242. Then, it was given romantically as part of a marriage contract to one of Cornwall’s great families.

Just beyond the cottage’s existing boundary lies a narrow packhorse bridge that would have taken milled corn on the first stage of its journey to the old coastal road. An ancient leat, the watercourse that fed the mill through Tudor days, Stuart days and beyond, runs through the cottage garden,

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