St Ives, Cornwall

“ The town takes name from St Hya, or Ia, an Irish virgin and martyr, who is said to have accompanied St Piran on his missionary journey to Cornwall in the 5th century, and to have landed near this place. The Patent Rolls disclose an almost continuous series of trials for piracy and plunder by St Ives sailors from the beginning of the 14th to the end of the 16th century. ”

“ Scarcely a shrub appears to diversify the prospect, and the only living beings that inhabit the mountainous parts are the goats, which browse the scanty herbage.”
66St. Ives is a very antient and populous sea-port town, situated near the north-east angle of a very fine bay, about eight miles from Penzance; seven from Marazion; 13 north-west from Helston; 14 west from Redruth; and 277 from London. In antient records, this town was called Porth-Ia; and it is said to have derived its name from St. Hya, or Ia, an Irish saint, who came over to Cornwall accompanied by St. ”

“ There is one custom at St. Ives, of which the origin and specific meaning are entirely lost. So soon as shoals of pilchards are discovered in the bay, all the people, and more especially the children, run round the town shouting, Heva! Heva! with all their might.
St. Ives was distinguished in the last century by the birth and residence for some years of a very eminent scholar, the Rev. Jonathan Toup. His father, who died in 1721, was lecturer of that Town, as the church being a daughter church to Lelant, is entitled to service from the vicar only once in three weeks ”

“ How large to each man seems his own little world, and what child-like faith he has in its importance to other people! I shall always recall our friend at St. Ives, with his prayer-meetings, his chapel-goings—I concluded he was a Methodist, a sect very numerous in Cornwall—his delight in his successful shop and well-brought-up sons, who managed it so well, leaving him to enjoy his otium cum dignitate—no doubt a municipal dignity, for he showed us the Town Hall with great gusto. ”

“ Return 88s. 0d. 55s. 0d. 50s. 3d.
=Accommodation Obtainable.=—"Tregenna Castle," "Porthminster,"
"Western," "Queen's," etc.
=Alternative Route.=—None.
St. Ives is a quiet, old-world fishing town on the northern coast of Cornwall. The town occupies the western limb of the wide bay of St. Ives. On the narrow neck of land joining the promontory known as The Island to the mainland, most of the houses of the fishing town are packed away in picturesque confusion, while the streets are tortuous in the extreme. ”

“ Ives is on the north side of the rounded western extremity of Cornwall, and from the little green hill, called the "Island," which rises above and partly shelters the town, you look out upon the wide Atlantic, the sea that has always a trouble on it and that cannot be quiet; and standing there with the great waves breaking on the black granite rocks at your feet, they will tell you that there is no land between you and America. ”

“ Cornwall, having deserted hurling for the more modern development of the ball game, has won high position, and these two mining towns are the chief centres of the sport. Something other than football, however, attracts most of those who come to Cornwall, and one such attraction ought to be the lovely view of St. Ives Bay to be enjoyed from the Godrevy headland. The reef of rocks lying off this eastward point of the bay has been a deadly trap for navigation, and the lighthouse, on an island close to the mainland, was first erected in 1857. ”

“ The line of railway which goes to the far west of England is one of the prettiest in the kingdom on a fine day, which we were again blessed with. It had been a wet summer, we heard, throughout Cornwall, but in all our journey, save that one wild storm at the Lizard, sunshine scarcely ever failed us. Now—whether catching glimpses of St. Ives Bay or sweeping through the mining district of Redruth, and the wooded country near Truro, Grampound, and St. Austell, till we again saw the glittering sea on the other side of Cornwall—all was brightness. ”

“ Following the coast, one does not wish them more: the most enthusiastic lover of an incult nature, who delights in forcing his way over rocky barriers and through thickets of furze, bogs and rills innumerable, will find these thirty miles as satisfying as any sixty elsewhere. And the roughest, therefore most exhilarating, portion of the coast is that between St. Ives and Land's End, a distance of about twenty miles. This strip of country has been called the Connemara of Cornwall. ”

“ The church of S. Ives is interesting, and is, like most others in Cornwall, Perpendicular. It is of granite, and contains some fine oak carving in bench-ends and waggon-roof, and a portion of the screen presented, it is supposed, by Ralph Clies, a master smith; also a brass to Otho Trenwith and his wife. The latter is represented kneeling to and invoking the archangel Michael. The head of S. Michael has a comical effect. "Some perplexity may be felt at the appearance of Saint Michael's head, which looks like nothing so much as a Dutch cheese. ”

“ The small harbour, protected by a breakwater, originally built by John Smeaton in 1767, has suffered from the accumulation of sand, and at the lowest tides is dry. The fisheries for pilchard, herring and mackerel are important. Boat-building and sail-making are carried on. An eminence south of the town is marked by a granite monument erected in 1782 by John Knill, a native of the town, who intended to be buried here; to maintain a quinquennial celebration on the spot he bequeathed property to the town authorities. The borough is under a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. ”

“ Ives, standeth the ruins of an old chapel, wherein God was duly worshipped by our ancestors the Britons, before the church of St. Ives was erected or endowed; betwixt which island and the shore is an indifferent roadstead with some winds for ships to lie at anchor.
This town is particularly famous for the art of catching fish; in which trade or occupation of late they have been attended with good success, to the great advancement of their wealth and reputation. The chief inhabitants of which place were Mr. Hitchins, Mr. ”

“ Ives; and stayed there two or three days to look at the pilchard fishery, which was then proceeding with all the bustle and activity denoting the commencement of a good season. Leaving St. Ives, on our way up the northern coast, we now passed through the central part of the mining districts of Cornwall. Chimneys and engine-houses chequered the surface of the landscape; the roads glittered with metallic particles; the walls at their [Pg 182] sides were built with crystallized stones; towns showed a sudden increase in importance; villages grew large and populous ”

“ The chunk or bite out of this island on the east is Porthgwidden Cove, and the Foresand runs from here to Penolva Point whence begin Porthminster Sands. On the hill behind the town rises the hideous Knill monument where the little girls dance around on July 25 every fifth year, in memory of the conventional alderman who left such directions in his will, and yet after all is not buried here.
The impression carried away from St. Ives is of light and freshness and space, and of width of sand that would attract attention anywhere, but which here in Cornwall is phenomenal ”

“ The typical Cornishman has always been a fisher or a tin-miner; and both still flourish.
Picturesque and artistic St. Ives clusters narrowly about the harbour and on the neck of the Island; the more modern residences and lodging-houses stretch above Porthminster Beach, with a popular development at Carbis Bay. More inland suburbs are chiefly devoted to the mining that has suffered so many vicissitudes—flourishing, then decadent, and now flourishing again. One such centre is Halsetown, a mining settlement founded something less than a century ago by James Halse, of the old Cornwall Hals family ”

“ Their arms. Argent, a bend engrailed Azure, between two birds Sable; quartering, Argent, an etoile Gules.
The parish is so called from St. Ivo, or Ives, a Persian bishop, as says Mr. Camden; who, they write, about the year 600, travelled over England with a great reputation of sanctity, all the way carefully preaching the Gospel, and left his name to this place, where he left his body too, meaning St. Ive's, in Huntingdonshire. Perhaps in his peregrination, though vix credo, he might take this place in his way.
Trebigh manor had formerly lords of its own name, from whom is descended the Hon. ”

“ It is also one of the Borough-Towns of Cornwall, and the right of electing the Members of Parliament, is vested in the Corporation and all the inhabitants of the town and parish paying scot and lot. According to the late returns, the parish contains upwards of 3000 inhabitants. A considerable traffic is carried on at St. Ives, with the Bristol merchants, besides the Pilchard Fisheries; but this port, like most others on the north coast, is much incommoded by the quantity of sand driven in by the north-west winds. ”

“ By these two bays this part of Cornwall is formed into a kind of isthmus. A great deal of sand is heaped up in St. Ives' Bay, particularly on the east side, forming small sand hills between Gwithian and Phillack.
The grauwacke slate appears on the right or eastern bank of the Heyl, and continues without interruption as far as Redruth. Nevertheless, we are upon its boundary near Camborne, and I should not be surprised if that place, which lies a little to the right of the road, were on granite, for the ground rises in that direction, and at a small distance the Tors make their appearance. ”

“ St Ives (6699) , a municipal borough on the shore of St Ives Bay, and the terminus of a branch of the G.W.R. from St Erth. The corporation now consists of a mayor, four aldermen, and twelve councillors. The borough formerly returned two members to Parliament. The town is irregularly built with narrow streets and has "a very ancient fishlike smell." The church is interesting, it possesses curious carved bench-ends, and an old cross outside, of an unusually elaborate description. The population is almost entirely dependent on the fishing industry ”

“ Superimposed upon the survivals of a far-off time are those of the last thousand and odd years when Cornwall was struggling with the disabilities of its exposed position, when the Danes fell on the coasts burning and harrying, and corsairs carried off the poor fishermen and sold them as slaves. In 1635 a Turkish pirate ship was brought nolens volens into St. Ives Bay, and the peaceful folk, not immediately recognising her build, were surprised to hear sounds as of guns and firing. ”

“ Ives, was formerly a logan rock, which could only be moved at midnight; and children were cured of rickets by being placed on it at that hour. It refused to rock for those who were illegitimate.
Not far from here is Towednack, and there is a legend to the effect that the devil would never allow the tower of its church to be completed, pulling down at night what had been built up in the day. When a person makes an incredible statement he is in West Cornwall told “To go to Towednack quay-head where they christen calves.” (No part of this parish touches the sea.) ”

“ Local jealousies between neighbouring towns are by no means rare in Cornwall. For instance, there is the old enmity between Zennor and St. Ives. It is said that the fishermen belonging to the latter were greatly annoyed one season by the ravages of the hake among the mackerel. They therefore caught the largest they could, whipped him soundly, and restored him to the water—pour encourager les autres.
When a Zennor man wishes to be disagreeable to a native of St. Ives, therefore, he says: "Who whipped the hake?" ”

“ It contains very fine carved bench-ends and a screen that deserve inspection. The tower of the church is peculiarly beautiful, and the church rises above a grove of the true Cornish elm, growing like poplars, small-leaved.
Carnanton was formerly the dwelling of William Noye, a farmer of Buryan, who was bred as student-at-law in Lincoln's Inn, and afterwards became M. P. for S. Ives in Cornwall, in which capacity he stood for several Parliaments in the beginning of the reign of Charles I., and was one of the boldest and stoutest champions of the rights of Parliament against absolute monarchy. ”

“ Raising people from the dead, and resisting personal temptations of the devil, appear to have been frequent and ordinary occurrences. He died at Tours, in the odour of sanctity, in the year 397, having held the bishoprick 123 26 years. The festival in honour of St. Martin is kept on the 11th of November, but parish feasts are not observed in the eastern parts of Cornwall.
The advowson of this living, appurtenant to the manor of Pendrym, came to the family of Paulet, through the same succession as that which brought Ludgvan Lease, including the high lordship of St. Ives ”

“ Ives in Cornwall, and Lydia Harris, his wife, of Hayne, Devonshire, a descendant of the Nevilles and Bouchiers, was born on 2 Feb. 1695 (Quarterly Review, cxxxix. 367) . First educated at a school in Penzance, he was removed thence to Plymouth in 1709, and placed under a Rev. Mr. Bedford; going afterwards to Tiverton School. In March 1712–13 he was entered at Exeter College, Oxford, where he took his degrees of B.A. and M.A. in due course. ”

“ At Constantine by Padstow as already said the old church is enveloped in sand-hills, so is that of St Enodoc. The Perran Sands have so encroached that they extend over a mile and a half inland and have in process of time swallowed up two churches and a village. The Gear Sands have even climbed a hill to the height of 300 ft. The Godrevy, Upton and Phillack towans have moved inland from St Ives' Bay and engulfed the residence of the ancient kings of Cornwall at Riviere. ”