Charlestown is a village on the south coast of Cornwall, near St Austell, and it is built around a harbour that time has been kind to. The Georgian quay, the stone walls and the storehouses were laid out in the 1790s by Charles Rashleigh, and the village takes his name. Ships left here with china clay for years, and when that trade ended the harbour found a second life: film crews come for the same reason visitors do, because the place still looks exactly like what it is.
The harbour
The inner and outer harbours sit behind a narrow entrance, with the village rising in a single street behind them. The quay, the walls and the storehouses still stand together around the water, which is why period dramas are filmed here.
The village
Between the harbour and the cliffs there is not much more than a street, a church and a beach that appears at the right state of the tide. That is the whole of it, and the whole is the point: Charlestown has kept its proportions.
Sources
Last checked: 2026-10-11