estateCountry House Rescue · Season 1, Episode 6 · Aired January 13, 2009
Pentillie
St Mellion, Cornwall
Yes. This one is still open.
On the show
Season 1, Episode 6 · January 13, 2009 · country house
revisited in Country House Rescue Revisited (2011-09-01)
What happened after
Family-run 1698 castle operating as a wedding/events venue, Visit England Gold-accredited self-catering holiday accommodation, and corporate/wellness retreat destination on a 1,500-acre estate.
What happened on the show
Pentillie is a seventeenth-century castle on the River Tamar near the village of St Mellion in Cornwall, and it had been the Coryton family seat since 1698 when Ted and Sarah Coryton inherited it in 2007. Their first instinct, after a run of family disputes, was to sell the whole thing. Then the place worked its charm on them, and they decided instead to fight for it, calling in Ruth Watson for a way to make the estate pay rather than a way out. Her suggestions were the classic levers of a house this size: renovate the interiors for a bed-and-breakfast business and exclusive private hire, and open the estate's gardens for guided tours so the grounds earned alongside the rooms. When Ruth came back for the Revisited episode, the question was simply whether the Corytons had put those ideas into practice and whether the visitors and guests had actually come to St Mellion.
After the cameras left
Pentillie is thriving, and it is one of the show's genuine triumphs. As of our latest verification pass the family-run castle operates as a weddings and events venue, offers self-catering holiday accommodation that carries a Visit England Gold rating, and hosts corporate and wellness retreats across a fifteen-hundred-acre estate. We fetched the official site directly, twice, and found live booking content and current contact details, so the trading is not in doubt. The Corytons who once meant to sell near St Mellion built exactly the layered hospitality business Ruth sketched out, rooms and gardens and events all pulling their weight, and the estate they nearly walked away from now supports itself.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.