Flushing: The Village Across the Water, Kiln Beach and Getting There from Falmouth

Flushing is a village of 670 people on the far bank of the Penryn River, an arm of the Carrick Roads, and the place you look at from Falmouth’s waterfront. It sits in the civil parish of Mylor, and much of its appeal is that reciprocal view: from the village you look back at Falmouth Docks, the Carrick Roads and St Anthony’s Head.

The straight-line distance from Falmouth is 1.5 km, closer than anywhere else in this guide, with the estuary in the middle of it. no road figure to Falmouth; it places the village 3 miles (5 km) east of Penryn and 10 miles (16 km) south of Truro. Flushing lies within the Cornwall National Landscape (AONB), a designation covering almost a third of Cornwall and carrying the same status and protection as a National Park.

It is a small place, and worth saying so. Most residents live on Coventry Road, Kersey Road and St Peter’s Hill, with a thinner line of housing along Trefusis Road out as far as Kiln Beach. it now as principally a commuter village for Penryn, Falmouth and Truro, with some commercial fishing vessels still based there, several B&Bs, and many houses left unoccupied for most of the year as holiday homes.

Two pubs, a restaurant and not a great deal else

There are two pubs. The Royal Standard is on St Peter’s Hill, and it holds 4.7 from 359 Google reviews, the largest body of opinion attached to anything actually in the village. A visitor in June 2026 put it plainly: “The Royal Standard is a great pub serving a good range of drinks and food in the village of Flushing.” Two July 2026 reviews add the practical detail. One warned, “Was very busy I would recommende booking a table not many tables available”; the other mentioned “a sun trap in the garden.”

The second pub, formerly the Seven Stars and now Harbour House, is on Trefusis Road opposite Fish Cross. There is a restaurant, Tide, on Ferry Quay. The doctor’s surgery is in the Village Hall on Coventry Road. The Church of England school on the same road takes a maximum of eighty pupils and is too cramped for a playing field or a hall of its own, so organised games happen on the Bowling Green at the top of the village.

Two of the highest-rated places listed with Flushing are not in it. Pendennis Castle, 4.6 from 4,906 Google reviews, is on the Falmouth side of the water, and Enys Gardens, 4.7 from 493, is over at Penryn. Within the village the samples are small: Flushing Beach 4.6 from 101 Google reviews, Kiln Sauna 5.0 from 47, Flushing Sailing Club 4.5 from 41, the Bowling Green 4.7 from 11.

Kiln, Jericho and the warm side of the river

Flushing is often called one of the warmer villages in the United Kingdom, a claim that sits with its sheltered position on the creek. The beaches at Kiln, reached along Trefusis Road, are extremely popular in summer, particularly with tourists, for the views out over the docks and the Carrick Roads.

Jericho, further round the coast, is effectively closed to visitors: it can be reached only from the houses directly above it or by rowing boat, and stays a local beach. A brief copper mine once worked at Jericho beach, but extracting the copper proved commercially unviable.

Water is what the village organises itself around. Flushing Sailing Club marked its centenary in July 2021 with a visit from the Princess Royal, President of the Royal Yachting Association, and there are two gig clubs, Nankersey Rowing Club and Flushing & Mylor Pilot Gig Club. Flushing Regatta Week runs annually in late July or early August: bathtub racing, rowing, swimming and sailing races, sand-castle building contests, a mini-marathon through Mylor and Flushing, an open-air church service, a pub quiz, crab catching, and a carnival on the Saturday night.

Dutch quays, packet captains and two mines that failed

Henry VIII meant to build a castle on Trefusis Point to go with those at Pendennis and St Mawes, and could not finance it because of his wars. The village that grew there instead was founded before 1653, and took its name from Dutch engineers — probably directed by Cornelius Vermuyden — who built its two main quays. There is disagreement over whether any late 17th-century houses survive.

What shaped the place was Falmouth’s packet trade. The grand houses on St Peter’s Hill belonged to captains of the packet ships, the mail boats that docked across the water. James Silk Buckingham, who spent his childhood here, wrote that most of the packet captains and officers, their families and the crews lived in Flushing, and that dinners, balls and evening parties were held most evenings at the captains’ houses, with dances for the sailors at the more humble places — much of it paid for by prize money and the profits of contraband carried on the packet ships.

Afterwards the economy ran on fishing, the two farms and former manors of Trefusis and Tregew, and Falmouth Docks. Mining was tried and did not take: Wheal Clinton lead mine opened in 1854 and sank a shaft to 33 fathoms (198 ft; 60 m), but there was not enough ore to profit from and it was wound up in 1858.

Two buildings carry the history. St Peter’s church on St Peter’s Road, Norman in style, opened for worship in February 1842 and was consecrated that August; it is Grade II listed, and a Cornish cross found in a farm building at Porloe in 1891 stands in the churchyard. The Methodist chapel in Kersey Road, built in 1816, is the oldest building in the Falmouth and Gwennap circuit. It closed for public worship in 2016, its 200th anniversary year, as membership declined; its organ, pulpit, font and original 1816 seating went to the Cornish Heritage Collection at Poldark Mine, 11 miles away.

Getting there from Falmouth

No bus or train service between Falmouth and Flushing is established by the sources behind this page. A Flushing Ferry terminal is listed, at 4.2 from 5 Google reviews, and Ferry Quay sits in the village — but no timetable, operating season or crossing time is documented, so check the crossing before you plan around it.

There is no Falmouth road figure to quote. By land the village connects out along Trefusis Road towards Trefusis Farm and the Mylor Bridge boundary.