Tidal Island - Burgh Island

We all know that Isolation is a feature of many a traditional murder mystery.. What better location, then, an island that is accessible only by a causeway and is completely cut off an high tidy. Here Agatha Christie wrote and set two of her novels “And Then There Were None” and “Evil Under The Sun”

Burgh Island is a tidal island on the coast of South Devon in England near the small seaside village of Bigbury-on-Sea. There are several buildings on the island and the largest being the Art Deco Burgh Island Hotel.

The short walk across the sands at low tide from Bigbury-on-Sea to Burgh Island takes you back to the era of the 1920s and 1930s. It was here that the millionaire Archibald Nettlefold built the luxury Burgh Island Hotel in 1929. Created in Art Deco style with a natural rock sea-bathing pool, this was the exclusive retreat of figures such as the Duke of Windsor and Noel Coward. The restored hotel is worth a visit to see the photographs of its heyday and the Art Deco fittings.

Everything about Burgh Island enters into the spirit of the Jazz Age and the “bright young things” of Agatha Christie’s youth.

Burgh Island and its eponymous hotel have long been celebrity haunts – the Beatles where among its guests, and prior to D-Day Churchill and Eisenhower met here. At low tide, you can walk to the island; at other times , it is accessed by a 1969 restored sea tractor.