This was a great triumph for the Killigrew family, who had for half a century been endeavouring to found a town on this site, two miles nearer the sea than the old corporate town and port of Penryn. At that period the Killigrews were seated at the mansion of Arwenack, of which some few portions remain near Falmouth railway-station, and they foresaw great profits accruing to them on a town being built upon their land. Penryn had been built in its more inland situation at a remote period when, by reason of raids and invasions, it was dangerous to be seated near the sea, and the position of Arwenack was certainly better for shipping. But the vested interests of Penryn were endangered by the Killigrew proposal, and Penryn, and Truro, and Helston as well, long bitterly opposed it, foreseeing much injury to themselves in a rival springing up. The site of Falmouth was at that time occupied only by two clusters of cottages that could scarce even be termed hamlets. They were named Penny-come-Quick and Smithike, or Smithick. The first of these places took its singular name from the old Cornish "Pen-y-cwm," that is to say, "Head of the vale," to which the Anglo-Saxon "wick"—i.e., "village"—had afterwards accrued. "Smithick" was probably the site of a wayside smithy.
Falmouth town is practically one long, very narrow, and not very clean waterside street of closely packed houses and shops, which shut out all except occasional glimpses of the beautiful harbour, seen from a quay here and there, or framed in by narrow alleys giving upon steps going down to the water. There is much of the nautical Dibdin and Wapping Old Stairs feeling about this long, long street of Market Strand, with the strong sea air blowing in upon the otherwise stuffy thoroughfare through these dark-browed openings. Suggestions, too, of old smuggling days are found in queer sail-lofts overhanging the water; suggestions not without plentiful warranty in old records, for we know that smuggling proceeded impudently and openly at Falmouth in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The sheer matter-of-course of it raises a smile. Men spoke of being—as of in the army or the navy—in the smuggling "service"; which at once shows how widespread and highly organised the operations were. Captain Pellew, brother of Lord Exmouth, sent to Falmouth to put down smuggling, actually found some of his own officers running contraband cargoes of wine, in open port and in broad daylight.
As you go seaward, past the railway station, the almost island promontory of Pendennis rises up, and stretches a much greater distance out to sea than the explorer who seeks to round the point at first supposes. A fine, broad carriage-road describes a loop round this headland. "Pendinas," "the headland castle"—for that was the original form of the name—has been, as the name itself implies, from the earliest times a place of defence, but the only known event of any moment that is remembered in connection with it is the stand here made for the King by Sir John Arundell of Trerice, then in his eighty-seventh year, and known in all these parts as "Jack-for-the-King." It was one of the most memorable deeds done in those troublous, long-drawn contentions between King and Parliament. With the exception of Raglan Castle, in Monmouthshire, which held out to the last for King Charles, and only surrendered on August 19th, 1646, Pendennis Castle was the last stronghold to fly the Royal Standard. It capitulated on August 16th, only three days earlier, after a vigorous six months' siege, and when hunger, rather than any quality of the enemy, had brought the garrison low. Hence the Queen had embarked for France two years earlier, and the Prince of Wales departed for Scilly in February 1646.
The stranger is more likely to be impressed by the ugly lines of sharp-pointed pike railings that surround the precincts of Pendennis Castle, and have been richly tarred, lest by any chance the spikes are not sufficiently formidable, than by any appearance either of strength or picturesqueness that belongs to the place. The military genius that finds a first line of defence in the messy horrors of tar, seems something not much better than the old practice in the Chinese Army, of making horrible grimaces, wherewith to strike terror into the enemy.
You see, on returning to Falmouth from Pendennis, how entirely land-locked the harbour appears to be. Not the slightest indication points to which way the Channel lies. Yet this enclosed water has been ruffled by great and disastrous storms, and in one of them, off Trefusis Point, directly opposite the town, the transport Queen was lost, in January 1814.
The climate of Falmouth is tearful. I may be unlucky in the matter of weather here, but I have never yet been at Falmouth when it did not rain. But it is also phenomenally warm. St. Gluvias, by Penryn, is said to be the warmest place in England. The Sailors' Home, on the quay by Arwenack, gives earnest of these warm conditions. It is a great, grim, eighteenth-century mansion of red brick, but made beautiful, almost transfigured indeed, by a wonderful fuchsia, covering the whole of the frontage up to the first-floor windows.
In the humblest cottage-gardens grows the fuchsia. It flourishes even in the merest cobble-stoned backyards, enclosed within white-washed walls, and neighboured by the washing-stool and tub, and the clothes hung out to dry; and it is amidst such apparently unsuitable surroundings, rather than in the most carefully tended gardens, that this gorgeous alien seems most to prosper. For the fuchsia is an alien, brought into Europe in 1703, from the Pacific coast of South America, and named after an old-time German botanist of the sixteenth century; one Leonard Fuchs. All through the West of England the fuchsia has become—not common; we must not use that word, lest by any chance we should seem to slight so exquisite a plant—but usual, and especially it flourishes along the coasts, and thrives so greatly that it grows in the open all the year round, and frequently attains such dimensions that the stems of old-established plants are not uncommonly nearly as thick as a man's arm.
Yet in 1788 there was but one fuchsia in England, and that was in Kew Gardens. Soon after that date an enterprising nurseryman of Hammersmith, one Lee by name, had secured cuttings, and was selling plants at one guinea each. Thenceforward the spread of the fuchsia was rapid.
The variety seen in Devon and Cornwall is nearly always that with abundance of small blossoms: scarlet petals, and blue or purple sepals.
The parish church of Falmouth is almost the oldest building in the town, but it is hardly venerable. It is galleried within and hangs gloomily upon the narrow street, squalidly mingled with a cab-rank. It was built in 1663, and has the peculiarity of being dedicated to Charles the First, King and Martyr; a distinction it shares with three other churches in England and one in Wales; i.e. those of Tunbridge Wells, Charles Church, Plymouth, Peak Forest, Derbyshire, and Newtown, Montgomeryshire. A further peculiarity is that its tower is not square on plan.