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The site of Bottreaux Castle is at the top end of the village dating back to 1100AD, the views over Boscastle are quite magnificent when approaching from this direction. The castle of Bottreaux, from which Boscastle gained it's name, has alas, vanished but it is said that much of the village was built from it's stone. The novelist Thomas Hardy fell in love with Boscastle when working as an architect on the renovation of nearby St.Juliot church, he also fell in love in Boscastle with Emma Gifford, whom he married after a four year courtship. Sadly the relationship ended in tragedy after 30 years, Hardy was not daunted but returned to the land he loved to write some of his most moving works. A copy of "A Pair of Blue Eyes" will describe all the valleys and cliffs up to High Cliff (731 ft) the highest in Cornwall.
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Boscastle Harbour Behind Forrabury church are the ancient "stitches", a relict of the medieval system of farming large open fields communally. Each of the stitches is 60 ft wide and 300 ft long - the amount a team of oxen could plough in a day. The silent tower of Forrabury, echoed by the white 19th century disused lookout tower originally a "summer house" perched upon Willapark lends itself to a legend.....a bell, lost at sea on transit, may be heard tolling on stormy nights.
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