Composite doors in Paul, installed professionally.

Paul sits on the hill directly above Mousehole and Newlyn, and the extra hundred-odd feet of elevation makes a genuine difference to what a front door has to withstand. The harbour villages below get a battering from direct wave spray, but they also have some shelter from the terrain and from each other's buildings, packed tightly along narrow streets. Paul's cottages and farmhouses are more exposed and more spread out — many stand alone or in small clusters with open fields or lanes on more than one side, catching wind from whichever direction it happens to be blowing rather than being sheltered by a neighbouring building on at least one face. We treat every Paul survey as a full wind-exposure assessment, not just a salt-exposure one, because a door here can be hit by driving wind and rain from three sides in a single afternoon as the weather swings round.

That changes the fixing detail more than the finish. We use heavier-duty hinges rated for higher wind load on exposed Paul properties, and where a door faces open ground with no windbreak at all, we'll often recommend a storm-check hinge stay or restrictor as an addition, so a sudden gust catching an open door doesn't wrench it back against the wall or strain the top hinge.

Paul Church, dedicated to St Paul Aurelian, sits at the heart of the old parish and the churchyard and surrounding cottages form a small but distinct conservation character even without a formally drawn conservation-area boundary matching Mousehole's. Properties immediately around Church Town tend to be older granite-built cottages and former farmworkers' housing, and owners here generally want a door that respects that character even where there's no statutory requirement to do so — a traditional panel style in Cream, Black or Chartwell Green rather than a contemporary design that would look out of place next to a medieval church tower.

Further out toward Kemyel, Trewoofe and the scattered farmsteads, the housing is a working mix of converted farm buildings and older farmhouses that have often already had significant modern alteration, and there's more freedom in door style and colour as a result — we fit a broader range out here, including some flush-panel contemporary doors on barn conversions where the rest of the building has already moved away from a traditional aesthetic.

Paul's lanes are narrow in a different way to Mousehole's — not tightly packed street frontages but single-track roads with high hedges, passing places, and long approaches to isolated properties. Getting a van to some Paul addresses means a genuine drive up an exposed lane rather than a short carry, and on a day with a proper gale blowing we plan the route and timing carefully, because a loaded van on an exposed hill lane in a crosswind is a real consideration, not a theoretical one. We check the forecast specifically for wind speed rather than just rain when scheduling a Paul install, and we'll move a booking rather than risk an awkward removal in genuinely dangerous wind.

Once on site, most Paul properties have reasonable direct access for unloading, which is more straightforward than the hand-carry situation in central Mousehole — the trade-off for the exposure is usually easier vehicle access right up to the door.

We've had Paul customers ask whether it's worth waiting for a calm week to book the install — it isn't necessary. A modern composite door goes from old door removed to new door weathered and locked within a few hours on-site, and we simply avoid the specific day if a named storm or a wind warning is in force for that afternoon, rather than needing a settled week.

Every Paul installation gets the same marine-grade fixing spec as our harbourside jobs — A4 stainless hinges, keeps and screws — because salt still reaches this high ground on a strong onshore wind even without direct wave spray. On top of that baseline, we look closely at the door's exposure category on each specific elevation at survey: a door recessed into a porch or set back from open ground behaves very differently in a gale to one standing flush with an exposed gable wall. Where the exposure is severe, we'll spec a heavier gauge multi-point lock keep and, in some cases, an additional deadbolt shoot at the top of the door as extra security against the door being forced or flexed by wind pressure rather than by an intruder.

This level of detail isn't standard on an inland Cornwall quote, and we don't apply it everywhere — it's specifically a response to what Paul's terrain and openness demand, assessed property by property rather than assumed for the whole parish.

Around Church Town, Cream, Chartwell Green and Black lead, matching the older granite building stock and the historic character around the church. Out toward the farmsteads and barn conversions near Kemyel and Trewoofe, Anthracite Grey and Slate Grey are increasingly common as older agricultural buildings are converted to contemporary homes, sitting well against exposed stone or render finished in a more modern style. We see relatively few bright or bold colours in Paul compared with some of the villages below — the exposed setting tends to favour a door that reads as solid and weather-hardened rather than decorative.

Paul isn't one uniform village but a scattered parish, and the appropriate door specification genuinely differs between a cottage tight against the churchyard wall and a farmhouse a mile away on an open hillside. We don't run a single standard 'Paul spec' — every survey here starts from scratch on exposure category, building character and access, more so than in a tightly packed harbour village where most properties face broadly the same conditions. If you're not sure which category your property falls into, that's exactly what the survey is for.

Fitted prices sit within our usual £1,395–£2,895 range. The variables that move the price here are glazing and hardware choice as elsewhere, plus, on the most exposed properties, the additional wind-rated hardware discussed above, which typically adds a modest amount over the baseline marine spec rather than a significant premium. We'll always itemise any additional hardware separately at quote stage rather than bury it in the headline price.

Because Paul sits on the ridge between Mousehole and Newlyn, several properties along the lanes connecting the two get weather funnelled up from both harbours depending on wind direction — a south-easterly drives spray-laden air up from Mousehole, while a south-westerly brings the same off Newlyn. It's an unusual double exposure that we don't see replicated anywhere else on our books, and it means a door survey here often has to consider two distinct worst-case wind directions rather than one prevailing one.

In practice that means we won't assume a single sheltered elevation on a Paul property the way we might on a coastal terrace with its back to the prevailing wind — we check both aspects and specify the fixing and seal detail for whichever is more severe, sometimes reinforcing both faces of the frame rather than just the obvious weather side.

Paul has seen a steady trickle of farmhouses and outbuildings sold and converted over the last couple of decades, some into permanent homes for families wanting space and a view over two harbours, others into holiday lets that stand empty for stretches of the winter. That mix changes what we're asked to fit almost as much as the terrain does. A permanently occupied farmhouse with someone in most days tends to get reported problems early — a seal starting to perish, a hinge working loose — and gets fixed or serviced before it becomes a real fault. A holiday let standing empty through January and February doesn't have anyone to notice a dropped door or a failed seal until the next changeover, by which point a small problem has usually let in enough weather to become a bigger one.

We flag this at survey on any Paul property we know will stand empty for weeks at a time: a slightly heavier-duty seal specification, and a recommendation that whoever manages the changeover checks the door face and threshold each visit rather than waiting for a guest to report a draught. It costs nothing extra to build that habit in, and on an exposed hillside property it's the difference between catching a problem in an afternoon and discovering it's been letting rain into a hallway for six weeks. We've also had a few owners ask whether a composite door needs anything special done to it before a long unoccupied spell — it doesn't, beyond making sure the door is properly closed and locked rather than left on the latch, which is worth saying because we have seen at least one Paul property where a door left ajar for ventilation over a dry week caught a change of wind direction and slammed hard enough to need a new handle set.