Artist Residence Cornwall

Chapel Street in Penzance has had an Egyptian House at numbers 6 and 7 since about 1835, painted in deep reds and ochres, so the Georgian townhouse at number 20 is not the first building on it given over to people with ideas. Here every room went to a different artist. In one attic that means old roof timbers flaking black and white paint, a woven sun on the wall, and through a doorway a copper bath on tiles striped pink and white. Elsewhere a gold bath stands against dark panelling under a framed map lettered Cornwall is always a good idea, which from a hotel in Penzance is hardly a neutral opinion. The Cornish Barn, the all-day bistro and bar, has its own smokehouse for curing meat and fish, and a terrace garden of rattan chairs under a fringed orange parasol against old stone walls.

Recommended for couples and families happy to trade a pool and a spa for a room an artist got to first. Ask for the Lookout, a suite under exposed beams with a log-burning stove. Families have the Cottage next door, three bedrooms for six, or the Mini Lookout for three, and the children's menu is called Little Artists, which is a lot to live up to in this house. The hotel has no car park; the public ones nearby will have to do. As for the missing pool, the Jubilee is two minutes' walk away, an Art Deco seawater lido on the promenade, which runs on along the shingle to Newlyn's fishing harbour. At low tide the boats there rest on the sand below the stone wall and wait for the sea to come back for them.