A lifetime of Islands: Island 46 - Tresco, Isles of Scilly

Tresco is 2 miles long by a mile wide. It is located to the north of St Mary's, east of Bryher and west of St Martin's. I like Tresco a lot and spent a week there in March 2002 and another week in March 2003. However it has always seemed a bit too tidy and unreal and it has become even more so in the last decade.

My next visit was not until March 2014 when I visited on a day trip from St Mary's. There have been quite a few changes in the New and Old Grimsby areas in the last 9 years. The shop is now in a different location and is more than double the size it used to be. It was always well stocked but is now more of an upmarket delicatessen/farm shop than a village store. Several new houses have been built at New Grimsby and the lovely café at New Grimsby Quay is no longer there. There is instead the Ruin Beach Café at Old Grimsby, which is more of a restaurant than a café. The notice inside the door said "Please wait to be seated" and I realised that this wasn't somewhere I was likely to get a cheap cup of tea to take away!

The north end of Tresco is covered in a heath of low growing heather and gorse. There is a Bronze Age chambered tomb on Tregarthen Hill near the northern tip of the island. The remains of Iron Age field boundary walls and hut circles can be seen around Pentle Bay and Bathinghouse Porth.

Tresco and its neighbouring islands were granted by Henry I to Tavistock Abbey and in 1120 a Benedictine priory was established on Tresco. It lasted until the Dissolution in 1536/7. Tresco was also used by pirates until the 17th century and in 1209 12 pirates were beheaded on the island.

Tresco Abbey Subtropical Gardens are the main attraction on the island. They were created by Augustus Smith, who leased the island from the Duchy of Cornwall in 1834. He was originally a banker from Hertfordshire. He lived on Tresco from 1853-1872. He built himself a house – Tresco Abbey – and started to construct a garden around the remains of St Nicholas’s Priory. He also improved agriculture, built a school and planted hundreds of trees around the gardens to act as windbreaks. Four generations of the Dorrien-Smith family have since developed the garden in their own ways. Augustus Smith's nephew Captain Thomas Dorrien-Smith enlarged the abbey and gardens and introduced commercial flower growing. The garden is planted with trees, shrubs and flowers from Brazil, Burma, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and South America. There is an exhibition of shipwrecked figureheads on display in the gardens at the Valhalla Museum. It is interesting but slightly spooky.

The gardens are well worth a visit. However in 2014 the entrance fee for adults is £12, so to get your money's worth you need to have a few hours to spare to make you visit worthwhile. It is free to visit the very smart loos however, should you be in need. Having spent 40 frustrating minutes rummaging around for a geocache in the woods above the gardens I decided that I would rather walk round the north end of the island than pay to visit the gardens.

Pentle Bay

Old Grimsby

Old Grimsby and the Blockhouse

16th Century guntower protecting Old Grimsby - used during the Civil War

New Grimsby

There are 3 quays on the island - New and Old Grimsby and Carn Near at the south west tip of the island. They are used at different states of the tide.

Abbey Gardens

Abbey Gardens looking towards the Shell House

Gaia

Shell House, Abbey Gardens

Dorrien-Smith Monument

Cromwell's Castle

On the clifftop above it is King Charles Fort, a mid 16th Century coastal artillery fort garrisoned by Civil War Royalists. Tresco was captured by Admiral Blake for parliament in 1651. Cromwell's Castle and Oliver's Battery were built after 1651 to protect the island against the Dutch navy.

King Charles' Castle

Cromwell's Castle

From the 18th century the population of Tresco declined, as it was hard to make a decent living from fishing and farming.

During the First and Second World Wars the island was used a base by the Special Operations Executive and flying boats protecting the Atlantic convoys.

British International Helicopter

This is the quickest but noisiest way to get to Tresco. The island has had a heliport since 1975. The service stopped running in October 2012 and a Sainsbury's supermarket was built on the site of Penzance Heliport. The service started up again in 2020 from another site in Penzance.

The Great Pool is an SSSI and a great place to watch migrating birds at certain times of the year. It has three bird hides. There is another smaller freshwater pool called Abbey Pool.

Piper’s Hole is on the north coast of Tresco. It is a hole in the rocks leading to a sea cave.

Tresco has a pub called the New Inn and the Island Hotel. Most of the other self-catering accommodation on the island is organised on a time share basis.