thumb|Sketch map showing Polzeath and the surrounding area

Polzeath (; ) is a small seaside resort village in the civil parish of St Minver in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is approximately north west of Wadebridge on the Atlantic coast.

Polzeath has a sandy beach and is popular with holiday-makers and surfers. The beach is wide and extends from the seafront at low water; however, most of the sand is submerged at high water.

Dolphins may sometimes be spotted in the bay and the coastline north of Polzeath is a good area for seeing many types of birds, particularly on migration but also including occasional puffins nesting on the offshore islands.

The main street runs along the seafront and has a parade of shops catering for holidaymakers and residents. There are pubs, cafés, restaurants, a caravan site and several camping sites in the immediate area. The road rises up steep hills at both ends of the seafront, towards the village of Trebetherick to the southwest and New Polzeath to the northeast.

Geography

The catchment surrounding Polzeath is approximately 40,900 hectares and is drained by several streams. The Polzeath Brook stream rises near St Minver to the east, and with several tributaries drains farmland before flowing through the middle of the Valley Caravan Park campsite and into the sea across Polzeath beach. The Trenant Stream is 900m long

Until 1934, the main street through the village crossed the stream by means of a ford and a footbridge was provided for pedestrians, although this was sometimes washed away by winter storms. For vehicles, the road surface stopped short of the ford, and cars splashed through the water on a sandy area, occasionally causing vehicles to become stuck in the sand. In 1934, the current road bridge was built, with a low wall separating the road from the sandy beach.

The winter storms of 2014 changed the topography of the beach, creating a sand bar up to 1m high, located at approximately the high tide mark, a feature that was not previously recorded. This was gradually washed away, so that by 2019, the beach had returned to the even slope visible in pictures up to 2014.

Economy

Tourism developed in the 19th and 20th centuries to be the most significant part of the local economy. UK prime minister David Cameron and his wife holidayed there between 2010 and 2015.

The beach is a favourite destination for wealthy teenagers from independent schools who often engage in anti-social behaviour. In July 2022, police imposed a two-day 10pm curfew after drunken late-night beach parties of around 200 teenagers consistently got out of hand. Residents found broken prosecco bottles littering the beach, bonfires on the beach that were made from benches, fences and shed doors stolen from local houses and emergency life-saving equipment was vandalised. Local resident Andy Stewart, a former police officer, said the teenagers were often children of million-pound second home owners in the nearby village of Rock. He said, "They don't realise there is excessive drinking, cocaine, nitrous oxide, underage sex and big fires." Stewart has refused to identify the schools where many of the teenagers study, though he has been in contact with their senior staff. In 2023 a CCTV camera system was installed to watch the beach, along with rechargeable floodlights.

Bathing water quality is measured at Polzeath by the Environment Agency, with measurements being taken between May and September each year. The quality was rated as "excellent" in 2020, based on measurements taken between 2016 and 2019. Another poet, Laurence Binyon, wrote the Remembrance Day ode For the Fallen in 1914 while sitting on Pentire Head, Polzeath (or "Polseath" as it was called), during World War I.

In the first of Enid Blyton's Famous Five novels, the eponymous children express disappointment that their holiday will not be spent at Polzeath as usual.

The cartoonist Posy Simmonds created a fictitious place in Cornwall called "Tresoddit". When the BBC made the short film Tresoddit for Easter in 1991, it was filmed in and around Polzeath.

The original 1975 BBC adaptation of Winston Graham's Poldark series of books filmed some scenes at Pentireglaze. In his book Poldark's Cornwall, Graham described this as "an area which could hardly have changed in a century".

Notable people

  • Edgar Anstey (1917-2009), Civil Service psychologist, lived in Polzeath from 1977 until his death.

See also

  • Trebetherick
  • Wadebridge
  • Pentire Point
  • River Camel

References

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  • Local government census report, 2004
  • Cornwall Record Office Online Catalogue for Polzeath
  • l St Minver Highlands parish council