A Private View: an 18th-century cottage on the edge of Cornwall’s Lost Gardens of Heligan

“It just felt like this wonderful, peaceful, tranquil place that was deeply connected to nature and particularly to the Lost Gardens of Heligan,” says Peter, on laying eyes on Rose Cottage for the first time. Situated in the “last vestiges of the Atlantic temperate rainforest on the south coast of Cornwall”, Peter explains that the utterly unique landscape is home to the most amazing wildlife and birds. Set at the end of a long, private track, the cottage is one of only a few on the 200-acre Heligan estate. “The peace and quiet here is really one of its defining characteristics and one which I’ve always found incredibly reinvigorating when you want to recharge.”

As Creative Director of the nearby Eden Project, Peter was responsible for the programme of arts and live music there, along with collaborations with artists, scientists and designers to create work with an environmental narrative. Many of the ideas behind Eden Project and Heligan (which was co-restored in the 90s by Tim Smit having fallen into long-neglect after the first world war) were formed "either around the kitchen table at Tim's farmhouse up the road, or at Rose Cottage” says Peter. The cottage was often full of the design team or different artists coming here “to dream up different ways to excite people," he recalls.

Indeed, the cottage has long been a place to come and work for people who have been “very passionate – artists and environmentalists”, says Peter, who recalls stories of David Hockney coming there to paint as a student at the Royal College of Art in the early 60s. “Even before I moved here there were stories of Ralph McTell, one of the greatest folk singers of the English tradition, writing music here in the 70s.” More recently, the singer-songwriter Nick Mulvey recorded an album there, while the artist Andrew Gifford “created the most amazing paintings in response to the challenge of maintaining the Atlantic temperate rainforest and rewilding this part of England”.

Peter took on the challenge of the old three-bedroom stone cottage. “It was a basic cottage, we set about designing a grand extension which would turn it into a house.” For this, he pulled on his work connections – in this case, the interesting craftsmen and artisans he met through the Eden Project. “All of that artistry and craftsmanship means that 25 years on you’ve got a place that still looks as good as new," says Peter. "Everything has this very fine, very close attention to detail.”

The extended section of the house features, as a natural centrepiece, a large woodburning stove housed within a stone and granite fireplace. Thick beams run overhead, French oak floors underfoot. The expansive gardens – around an acre in size – were designed by Dominic Cole, landscape architect to both Heligan and the Eden Project. They include stone terraces, seating areas, a beautifully restored glasshouse and, on an upper terrace, a shepherd’s hut, backdropped by the ancient woodland, where Peter practices meditation. They are, as you might imagine, a quiet haven for the local wildlife and birdlife.

It is truly, as Peter says, “Recognised by those who know it as one of the most beautiful places in Cornwall ... This house has seen and witnessed so much, both my boys were born here, I met my wife Amie down here in the woods for the first time. The happy ending is to find somebody or a couple who fall in love with it the way that I have fallen in love with it.”