Port Isaac is a traditional fishing village in North Cornwall.

Port Isaac
Port Isaac (March 2024) is a traditional fishing village in North Cornwall that is home to the TV series Doc Martin starring Martin Clunes and the Fisherman’s Friends shanty singers.
With narrow winding streets lined with whitewashed cottages overlooking a small harbour, Port Isaac is a truly picturesque village. Set amidst rugged and magnificent coastal scenery, you can understand why it’s become something of a film star in recent years.
Is the Doctor home?
Who would have thought in 2000 when the low budget British comedy Saving Grace was released in cinemas, that Port Isaac would become such a popular place to visit? The film about a widow growing marijuana in a small Cornish village featured the actor Martin Clunes playing a doctor.
Inspired by the film, in 2004 Clunes would first appear on our TV screens as Doc Martin, filmed mainly in and around Port Isaac and renamed Port Wenn, it would go on to become such a huge ratings hit, averaging over 10 million viewers in the UK alone.
Visitors to the village can wander around and pick out the locations where scenes were shot, from the Doctor Ellingham’s house on the west side of the harbour, to Mrs Tishell’s chemist shop on Middle Street, Louisa’s home on Fore Street and Bert’s Restaurant.
Away from Port Isaac, nearby locations where filming has taken place include Doyden Castle on the cliffs above Port Quin. This ‘folly’ was built in the 1830’s by a local landowner as somewhere secret to entertain his friends. It’s now a holiday home.
The Fisherman's Friends.
The term Shanty is said to come from the French word to sing ‘chanter’ and a shanty is usually a call and respond tune with a good steady rhythm so it could be sung while sailors were working together on jobs like raising sails. With the introduction of steam ships, the shanties died off, but retired sailors would still sing them in pubs up and down the coast.
Picked up by folk singers, who also included songs written about the sea, they grew in popularity in the UK through the 1950s and 1960s but then went out of fashion as rock music took over. In the 1980s, bands like the Pogue’s included shanties into their repertoire, but these were a far cry from the traditional tunes!
In the mid 1990s a group of friends started singing shanties on the Platt at Port Isaac, the area at the top of the beach, to raise money for local charities. They recorded a couple of CDs and one of these was bought by the DJ Johnnie Walker while he was on holiday in Cornwall. He passed it on to a friend in the music industry and the rest is history.
Port Isaac’s Fisherman’s Friends are now big stars who have sung at Glastonbury Festival, appeared on BBC TV and had two films based on their story released. Despite this you can still catch them singing in and around Port Isaac in the summer months.
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