Aim

Our aim is to raise £10,000 to allow for much needed maintenance on the Huer's Hut, a Grade II* listed building in Newquay, Cornwall. The building is a vital part of the town's history & heritage and is of huge importance as one of the building blocks that helped to develop the town. It has fallen into disrepair and we are in talks with Cornwall Council to get it repaired, but we need this project to allow us to keep it looking the way it should in the future.

 SAVE OUR HUT!

People of Newquay, residents of Cornwall, holiday makers, history enthusiasts and you, can help save Huer’s hut! We need to raise £10,000 to save the hut.

Newquay's historic Huer’s Hut needs saving by the people of Newquay and beyond, with a little support and a few pledges the community can regain control over the 14th century building.

Cormac [Cornwall Council contractors] have visited the hut and made the area safer and removed blocks from the roof (covered it in concrete). The hut was refurbished in spring 2012 but unfortunately it is really suffering at the moment due to its exposed position. 

The state of the Hut is really bad, it needs specialist treatment as it is made of Lime mortar and can only be done by people able to use Lime. The building needs to be able to 'breathe' and the weather has made the hut deteriorate so badly and the funds have not been in place to regularly maintain it.

The money will be used to help repair the building and to fund the ongoing maintenance.

A little history

Huer’s Hut is situated on Towan Head in Newquay, Cornwall, and is a building, steeped in history and heritage for the town and the fishing industry in Cornwall. The present building has been there since the mid 19th Century, however it is believed the history goes back as far as the 14th Century.

It was built as a shelter for a man known as a ‘Huer’ who was a very important person in the fishing industry of the time. It was his job to spot shoals of fish, more often than not pilchards, and to sound his horn and to shout ‘HEVA HEVA’ (“Here they are”) to alert the fishermen in Newquay harbour.The seine boats would then launch and would be guided to where the fish were by the Huer on his high vantage point, he would use two furse bushes covered in cloth to use an early form of semaphore signalling to guide them in and they would use long nets to catch the fish. This was the commodity that the town was raised on, many believe that the town owes it’s existence to the hut, as if the fish were not caught the town may well of not been able to grow through it’s great source of fishing at the time.

It is thought that previous to its use by the Huer, the hut may have been a hermitage with the hermit entrusted to lighting a shipping beacon to guide shipping. The building is on lease and owned by Cornwall Council but has fallen into severe disrepair and the Council cannot find the funding to repair it. This is where we step in and as a community, we raise the money with the hope of ‘match funding’.

The Beatles even visited Huer's Hut on their Magical Mystery Tour

Who owns the building now?

Huer’s Hut is currently leased to Cornwall Council who sadly no longer have the funds to repair the building. Newquay Town Council want to change this by crowdfunding the needed funds to repair the hut and gain control. This can only happen with the help of the community.

Our supporters

This project closed unsuccessfully on 26th February 2014