The Cornwall Coast

by Arthur L. Salmon

CHAPTER IX

THE PENZANCE DISTRICT

Whatever claims other places may set up, Penzance is truly the business capital of western Cornwall, the metropolis of the Land's End district. It is first and foremost a market-town. Of course, it is also a coasting port and fishing port and a watering-place; but none of these things so wholly absorb it as do the weekly markets, when countryfolk from all the neighbouring villages throng Market-Jew Street with their conveyances, their parcels and packages, their cattle, their eager chatter. These people and their forbears have made Penzance what it is; they have not sought to beautify it much—a reputation as a holiday resort has been thrust on the place by its convenience, its commanding position as the gate-town of Land's End; Penzance did little to advertise itself, but the visitors have come, and are coming, and the town is doing its best to give them a fair entertainment. Though from the coast or the sea it often makes a fine appearance, the town is one of utility rather than of adornment. It feels that its existence is fully justified, without having to resort to artificial attractions. It builds no pavilions or glass-houses or aquarium, it needs no constructed lakes to retain its sea, nor towers to emulate rocks that Nature has denied. Primarily a place of business rather than of pleasure, one soon learns to admire and to respect it; there is nothing garish and little that is fashionable about it. Not many of its buildings are calculated to make an impression on the visitor, except the Market Hall that makes Market-Jew Street a rather striking thoroughfare, and the church of St. Mary, which has at least a charm of position. The Municipal buildings are a handsome piece of architecture; but it is not in these features, nor in the Morrab Gardens, in spite of their subtropical vegetation, that the charm of the town lies. That charm is a certain homely friendliness in the aspect of the place, the bustle, the soberness and geniality of its people. Further, Penzance is a good place to get away from—which sounds like a left-handed compliment, but has really quite other meaning; it is a fine centre for the whole far west of Cornwall.

As a town Penzance cannot claim great antiquity, though its district is remarkably rich in prehistoric remains. The name is pen-sans, the "holy headland"; evidently misread by the town authorities as "holy head," when they adopted the head of John the Baptist as the town arms. There was an ancient chapel standing on the present Battery Rocks, and this without doubt was the sacred headland which the title refers to. The mother-parish was St. Madron, about 2½ miles to the north-west; and it is by no means clear who Madron was. Some think he was an Irish Medhran, some a Welsh Madrun; some even assert that he was none other than the great Padarn of Wales. But in 1835 St. Mary's was built at Penzance, on the site of an old chapel to Our Lady, of which some relics are preserved. The town was granted a market in 1332, a charter in 1512, and in 1614 deeds of incorporation. But the most important event in the history of early Penzance was its burning by the Spaniards in 1595. There was an old Cornish folk-rhyme which foretold that—

"They shall land on the rock of Merlin,
Who shall burn Paul, Penzance, and Newlyn";

and perhaps this led the inhabitants to regard the enemy as invincible when they really did land, especially as their descent took place on a rock at Mousehole that bore the name of Merlin. The Spanish were left to do pretty well as they pleased, burning and pillaging Mousehole, Paul, Newlyn, and Penzance, but they thought it advisable to retreat to their galleons in Mount's Bay for the night, and next day, the countryfolk having plucked up some heart, and there being rumours of English seamen drawing near, it was found prudent to decamp altogether. A new town rose from the ashes of the old one, but there was further trouble in the time of the Civil War, and Penzance suffered for loyalty to the King. Under the circumstances we must not look for any remains of great antiquity in the town, though that which is historical antiquity is mere youth in comparison with the immemorial age that invests this farthest corner of Britain with a garb of wonder and mystery. Close to Chyandour (the "house by the water"), and not far from the Penzance terminus, is the Lescudjack encampment, or castle, which carries us back to the early settlement of the shores of Mount's Bay; only about three miles inland are the huts of Chysauster, where there was evidently an extensive village in days long before Penzance was dreamed of. Whether it was that this farthest neck of land became the refuge of driven races, pushed further and further westward by new encroaching hordes, it is certain that the Land's End district offers more relics of prehistoric antiquity than any other equal tract of land can show.

Photo by][Gibson & Sons.