Port Hellick Beach

Port Hellick Beach sits in a sheltered tidal inlet on St Mary’s south coast and the beach at low tide offers a wide expanse of sand and rocks. This is not really a location for sitting on the beach but offers a great natural landscape.

A shingle bar provides a freshwater pool (Higher Moors and Porth Hellick Pool)  behind the beach that is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) for the ″wide diversity of habitats with several rare and notable plant species″and making this an important stop-off for migrating and wintering birds.

Sir Cloudesley Shovell, Admiral of the Fleet was temporarily buried on the beach after he was washed up here when his ship struck the rocks on 22nd October 1707, with the loss of her entire crew of about 800 men. Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s body, along with the bodies of his two stepsons and that of Captain Edmund Loades, were washed up on Porth Hellick Cove the following day. The body was subsequently exhumed by order of Queen Anne and finally laid to rest in Westminster Abbey on 22nd December 1707. A small memorial marker marks the site where he was washed ashore.

The beach has no facilities.