At the fork of the main street there is an open space known as “The Parade,” because it was there that the soldiers used to drill. When the garrison no longer existed this space was used as a dumping-ground for salvage from wrecks, and for years it looked like an untidy shipwright’s yard, with all manner of appurtenances and portions of ships laid out to be sold by auction. In the houses on all the islands you may often come across relics of the wrecks; perhaps a lock from a cabin-door, or even a whole door; and sometimes the partition between two rooms will show clear signs of a nautical origin. “The inhabitants,” says Lieutenant Heath, “have wreck-furniture of various kinds sent them by the hand of Providence.”
Now the centre of the Parade is a grass-plot, surrounded by shrubs and beds of flowers, and is dignified by the name of “The Park.”
Nearly all the houses in Scilly are built of the grey granite of which the islands are formed. They are generally roofed with tiles or slate, to which a hoary appearance is given by the addition of a coat of cement as an extra protection against the weather. The old way of roofing was with thatch, tied on with ropes, crossed in a chessboard pattern and fastened to iron or wooden pegs driven into the chinks of the stone walls a little way below the eaves. This was necessary to keep the roof from being blown away. Still here and there in Hugh Town, and more frequently in Old Town and on the off-islands, these picturesque thatched cottages are to be seen.
Duke Cosmo, to whom a thatched roof was quite unknown in his native Italy, was much impressed by those he saw in Scilly, but he altogether misunderstood their construction! He says: “The house-roofs are nothing but a simple mat, spread over the rafters, drawn tight all round, and fixed firmly to the top of the walls.”
On one of the off-islands there is a very primitive device for weighting down the slate roof of a chapel by the sea—just a stout rope thrown across the ridge, and tied at each end to a large mass of granite on the ground, with sods placed underneath the rope at the sharp edges to prevent its being cut.
It is said that formerly the houses of Hugh Town were built of turf with thatched roofs; but once in the summer, when all the men were out at sea, a fire broke out and the town was burned to the ground; so since then the houses have been built of stone.
The streets of Hugh Town are lighted with oil lamps, for which the necessary funds were partly raised by means of a concert. The inhabitants paid for music, and they got illumination into the bargain! These lamps are not burned in the wasteful way to which we are accustomed in London and elsewhere. I asked a Scillonian, half in fun, whether they always kept their lamps alight as late as half-past nine. He replied in sober earnest: “Oh no, only if there is no moon; and on clear moonlight evenings we do not light them at all.”
But though the lights are put out early, the lamp-lighter is (to use a mixed metaphor) no cut-and-dried automaton, bound with red tape, and devoid of human feelings. If he sees you returning home as he goes his round, he will wait to see you safely indoors before letting the velvet dark drop down like a veil over the streets.
Not far from the quay a steep little hill bordered by trees leads up to the Garrison, which is entered through a strong stone gateway. Above it hangs a bell, used formerly when there was no public clock, to announce the time of day. There is a tablet beneath the bell with the inscription “G.R. 1742. F.G.” Lower down are two larger initials, “A.T.,” those of Abraham Tovey, the master-gunner, under whose direction the works were constructed, and who, being the “man on the spot,” saw to it that his memory should be kept green by letters of a larger size than those which commemorated the King and the Governor.