An old lighthouse stands above St Agnes, the southernmost inhabited island in the Isles of Scilly, home to around 85 people, a working farm and Britain’s most south-westerly pub. Boats from St Mary’s land at Porth Conger, on the north side of St Agnes. Built in 1680, the lighthouse was one of the first Trinity House ever built; the light went out in 1911, when a new one took over on St Mary’s, and the tower is now a private house. Nearby, the Troy Town Maze, a stone labyrinth on the clifftop, dates at least to 1729, though it may be far older. On Wingletang Down, heathland at the island’s southern tip, more than 40 Bronze Age cairns, stone burial mounds, sit among the gorse. At low tide, a sandbar called the Bar connects St Agnes to Gugh; check the tide times before you cross, and don’t attempt it once the water is over the sandbar, as the currents through the gap run fierce. On Gugh, the Old Man of Gugh, a nine-foot Bronze Age standing stone, stands on the heath above the shore.
