Minack Theatre

From Newlyn, we took the Land's End Coaster bus 🚌 to Porthcurno to visit the Minack Theatre. It was quite a climb up to the theatre from the bus stop, but it was so worth it!

The Minack Theatre is a spectacular open-air venue perched on rugged cliffs with stunning ocean views. It has the appearance of having been there for thousands of years, but it has existed for less than a hundred. When you learn this fact, you assume it is the result of the work of many people using huge machinery. The reality is that the theatre is here because of the vision, dedication, and sheer hard graft of one extraordinary woman!

Rowena Cade was born in 1893 and brought up in a genteel Edwardian family in Cheltenham. In the early 1920s following the death of her father, she bought the Minack headland for £100 and moved to Cornwall with her mother. She built Minack House, which still stands proudly on the approach to the theatre.

In 1929, Rowena got involved with an open-air production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was such a success that the company repeated the show the following year. They then wanted to stage The Tempest and Rowena offered them the use of her cliff garden for the performance. She then had to create a practical acting area and somewhere for the audience to sit. Rowena and her helpers worked only with hand tools to shape the theatre we see today.

Building the Minack took Rowena the rest of her life. Most of the structures were created from concrete mixed with sand from the beach, which she carried by herself up the cliff in sacks. She deliberately made the mix dry so she could etch Celtic designs into it with an old screwdriver. She carved the names and dates of plays performed here into the backs of the seats. Rowena continued working on her theatre until she was well into her eighties. She died in 1983, shortly before her 90th birthday.

The Minack Theatre is now run by a charitable trust and continues to develop along the lines Rowena established. Today, it stages over 200 performances and attracts over a quarter of a million visitors and playgoers every year.

It is a truly memorable place!!Read more