Holywell Bay

Holywell Bay is one of Cornwall’s most beautiful family beaches. With its towering sand dunes, trickling stream and the stunning Gul rocks you are sure to be impressed by the beauty of the area.

Holywell Bay beach

Highlights include:

• Relaxing on the beach
• Searching for the colourful limestone pools of the ‘holy well’, reputed to have healing powers. The well can be found in a cave at the North end of the beach and only accessible at low tide.
• Enjoying food/drinks at one of the two pubs/bars in Holywell Bay
• Swimming and bodyboarding during summer lifeguard hours
• Playing in the shallow waters of the stream – especially popular with young families
• Learning to surf at one of the village’s two surf schools Holywell Bay School of Surf
• Walking the coastal footpath – the views are spectacular in all directions
• Making photographic memories – the area is a photographers paradise, very popular with film and TV crews due to its natural beauty and relative seclusion
• Taking in the wildflowers on the headlands in spring
• Spotting the remains of Argentinean coaster SS. Francia. She was wrecked in 1917 and is visible at low tide
• Rock pooling for marine life
• Testing your golfing skills with a relaxed round of ‘mini golf’ or ‘pitch and putt’ at Holywell Bay Golf. Or for the more experienced, take on the ‘Par 3’ course.

RNLI lifeguards patrol daily between mid-May and the end of September, from 10 am to 6 pm. They offer advice about the daily conditions. In addition to setting out red and yellow flags marking out the safest bathing area, they set out black & white flags marking a surfing area for novice surfers.

Local walks

There are many local footpaths, offering inland as well as coastal walks. Head north on the coastal footpath to the beaches of Polly Joke, Crantock and Newquay. Or head south, past the old army camp and Penhale Sands nature reserve to Perran Sands and Perranporth. Seals are often spotted from the cliffs, and Holywell also attracts the occasional pod of dolphins. Always exercise caution near cliff areas, keeping children close and dogs on leads.

Another popular walk is to the Lost Church, the church of the patron saint of Cornwall, Saint Piran.  For many years, the church was buried beneath the dunes that stretch from Holywell to Perranporth, before being uncovered in 2014. Legend has it that a whole lost city ‘Langarrow’ is also buried under the sands, after being overwhelmed in a great sandstorm.

Holywell Bay: its social history

Historically, Holywell was little more than a few cottages with farming and mining as the mainstay.

The cliffs used to have spectacular engine houses on them for the silver lead mines which dotted the area. Today little remains as they were demolished by the army during World War II as they were considered them to be landmarks for German bombers looking for the nearby army camp (now closed). However the entrances to tunnels the miners dug; the adits can still be seen in the cliff as one walks the coastal footpath to Perranporth, as can the old Count House on the edge of the cliff at Penhale from where the miners were paid.

The beach has grown in popularity since the early 1930’s. It was one of the first beaches in the country, if not the first where Malibu stand up surfing was tried. The earliest film of this is by Lewis Rosenberg who built his own Malibu after seeing pictures of Hawaiian surfers at the cinema and brought it to Holywell Bay to try it out. The film can be seen on You Tube, ‘Lewis Rosenberg 9.5 mm. films part 2’.

The film also shows Penna’s Tea Rooms, advertising 1/6 d for a ‘sumptuous tea with splits, Cornish cream and saffron cake’. The tea rooms were in the building opposite to The Treguth Inn. The film is a fascinating insight into holidaying in the early 1930’s, but beware the opening sequence has a few seconds of nude frolicking on the beach; presumably they were the only ones there!

Holywell Bay: film fame

If Holywell Bay seems familiar to you, you may well have seen it before! It is a very popular destination for film and advertising companies. Possibly its first use was by the BBC, in the 1960s for Treasure Island (with Patrick Trowton later to be Dr. Who).

More recently the beach was used for: the opening sequence of the James Bond film ‘Die Another Day’ (2002); ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ (2010); a German TV screening of works by Cornish novelist Rosamunde Pilcher (2011); ITV’s Jamaica Inn production (2014); BBC’s Poldark (2015 – 2019); and HBO’s House of the Dragon (2022).