The Huer’s Hut, Newquay

You’d be forgiven for thinking this little gem of a building was a whitewashed chapel in Santioni or southern Spain. In fact, it used to be a place for spotting pilchards in Newquay, Cornwall.

Said to date from the 14th century, when it might have been a hermitage and a lighthouse, by the 16th century it was being used by a ‘huer’, someone who would make a hue and cry when they’d spotted pilchards in the bay. Once the shoals of fish were located, the huer would cry out to the fishermen waiting in their boats, shouting ‘heva, heva!’ (‘here they are!’), and directing them to the the fish by waving gorse bushes wrapped in cloth. I’d love to see a re-enactment.

The Grade-II* listed circular building has a large chimney and narrow stairs leading up to a flat roof, where presumably the huer would do his cry. In the early 20th century it was used as a public shelter but the doors and windows are now locked with iron gates.

The hut is situated on Towan Head, a stone’s throw from the Headland hotel, the location for Nic Roeg’s excellent adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches, filmed in 1990.