Book Direct | Self Catering & Holiday Cottages in Tenby

More About Cottages and Self-Catering in Tenby

Walk down through the town and the harbour sits at the bottom of the hill, with a beach on either side of it. Much of what happens here follows the tide, which runs a long way in and out across the sand below the walls.

The Coast Path leaves town in both directions. West it passes Lydstep and Manorbier; east it reaches Saundersfoot and then Amroth, where the whole 186-mile trail comes to an end.

The walled town you rent a cottage in was largely rebuilt for people doing exactly what you are doing, about two hundred years ago. The conservation record puts it plainly.

From the early nineteenth century much of the old town was rebuilt, with many of the new houses providing apartments for summer visitors. The larger houses were laid out for it inside, in ways you can still read in the floor plans.

The street pattern underneath is much older. Tenby was a walled borough of 212 building plots in 1245 and 241 by 1307, each a long narrow strip running back from the street.

After Conwy and Caernarfon it is the best-preserved walled town in Wales. A good deal of the medieval fabric is still there but hidden, in cellars and behind later fronts. So a holiday flat on Crackwell Street can be Georgian at the front and medieval underneath.

The materials are worth knowing, because you will be looking at them all week. Nearly everything is local limestone rubble. From the early 1800s it was rendered smooth and then scored to imitate cut blockwork, which is why so many walls look like masonry until you are close.

Most fronts are painted, and the pastel tradition dates from the same century. Seaward walls are often hung with slate to take the weather.

Then there are the oddities. Round chimneys of medieval date still stand on some roofs. St Julian’s Street has external first-floor privies bracketed off the back walls, known locally as flying toilets. Lexden Terrace, built between 1843 and 1850, carries Regency ironwork verandas. There is a flight in the old town called Deadmens Steps, and Tower Cottage is built into one of the towers of the town wall.

The other thing to know is money, and it explains why the stock is what it is. Pembrokeshire charges a council tax premium on second homes, 125 per cent from April 2026, having been as high as 200 per cent in 2024.

A property let commercially escapes that only by being available 252 days a year and actually let for 182. That test was eased slightly in April 2026 to allow an average across three years.

At the last count the county held 4,662 second homes and 2,003 self-catering properties paying business rates instead. Separately, every provider in Wales must register with the Welsh Revenue Authority from autumn 2026. Councils may also charge a visitor levy from April 2027, though Pembrokeshire has not announced one.