CASE STUDY A DRAMATIC RESCUE


A cottage in the Cornish village which hosted Poldark saw its own share of drama when it was rescued from the point of collapse by Mark Semmens


TEXT ALEXANDRA PRATT IMAGES CORNISH GEMS


I


n 2018, a tiny cottage in a Cornish village made famous by the Poldark TV series was well-known locally for all the wrong


reasons. Derelict for two decades, the cottage was rooess, windowless and the first-oor bedroom – complete with bed – had ended up in the ground-oor living room. eminders of the home’s former occupants were poignant; personal belongings ravaged by time and water ingress spoke only of decay and neglect, where once there was a family.


“We had been trying to buy it for 20 years,” says Mark Semmens, who runs a fuel supply company with his father, Stephen, in the county. “My parents live very close by and cared for the former owners Mr and Mrs Farrar before they passed away.” The cottage was subsequently neglected by the elderly couple’s son, who lived elsewhere, and Mark was were repairing it at his own expense [with the owner’s permission] before they even bought it, “to stop debris from hitting my parents’ home.” He remembers


With the chimney having collapsed, the lean-to kitchen detached from the main structure, and ivy everywhere, it was a challenging renovation


42 www.sbhonline.co.uk may/jun 2024


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