CHARLES CHURCH.
There are many other public buildings in the town, none of much interest; but it is interesting to know that there was once a Mayor of Falmouth who thanked God when the gaol was enlarged. He, or his remark, is quite famous, but I have no record of the period in which this worthy, so thanksgiving for benefits received, flourished. There is, however, no doubt at all that, if it was in the sixteenth century, when such doings as those of the piratical Lady Killigrew (of whom we shall hear at Penryn) were possible, not only the enlargement of a gaol was required, but a special assize as well.
I believe the most interesting place in Falmouth is, after all, not the famous harbour, nor Pendennis Castle, but Burton's Old Curiosity Shop. It is a quite famous institution, and no one who has ever been to Falmouth, and has not explored this home of curios, can really be said to know Falmouth as intimately as he should. This sounds like an advertisement, but Burton's is as superior to puffery as a museum would be; and indeed it is not remotely unlike a museum. True, the exhibits are for sale, but such a large proportion are so eminently undesirable for the private purchaser that they assume the character of museum exhibits unlikely ever to find another home. Such, for example, is the skeleton of a whale washed up some years ago between Cadgwith and Porthoustock. The imagination boggles at any private person buying that. It would seem, indeed, that Burton (who is now deceased, and his son reigns in his stead) had a flair for curiosities and antiques of all kinds, quite irrespective of commerce. He could resist nothing, and was a fine miscellaneous feeder in this sort. But at the same time an excellent man of business, keen on odd and striking advertisement; as when he offered to purchase for £500 Smeaton's old Eddystone lighthouse tower, demolished by the Trinity House in 1882. He proposed to re-erect it on the site of his shop and store it with his curios, but the old tower found a home on Plymouth Hoe instead. One may visit the Old Curiosity Shop and wander at will, unattended, through its many rooms, and never be solicited to buy; and great is the number of those who use this privilege.
Among the oddest of these collections is a strange assemblage of inn and trade signboards, mostly of Cornish origin, most of them so fantastically grotesque in spelling and unconsciously humorous in phrasing, that they would almost appear to be inventions, produced to astonish and to raise a laugh, were it not that they are obviously old, and that the proprietor keeps a register of their place of origin. Thus runs the signboard of Ellen Tone's "Tempurence Hottell," from Herodsfoot, near Liskeard:
"ELLEN TONE, sells here
Lemanade and Gingur Beer,
Cow hels and tripe every fridey