St. Ives
With its five sandy beaches, maze of narrow streets and picturesque harbour and headland, the attractive fishing and former mining centre of St Ives manages to maintain its distinctive old-world charm, despite being overrun by visitors throughout the summer season.
The settlement takes its name from the 6th cent missionary saint St Ia, who is said to have sailed from Ireland in a coracle, or more fancifully on an ivy leaf, and established a chapel on the ‘Island', that is, the headland at the western limit of St Ives Bay. The fisherman's chapel of St Nicholas now stands on the supposed site, by the remains of an ancient British settlement. A 15th cent parish church standing near the harbour's shorter west pier bears St Ia's name; an impressive building with a soaring pinnacled tower, icontains an unusual granite font carved with stylised angels and lions.
From medieval times the humble pilchard was the keystone of the Cornish fishing economy, and the port of St Ives developed into one of the county's most important pilchard fishing centres, until the industry went into decline early in the 20th century. On the headland is the remains of a ‘huer's hut' from which a local man would direct fishing crews toward pilchard shoals in the bay below, through a loudspeaker trumpet with the cry of ‘hevva hevva' (from the Cornish ‘hesva' meaning shoal). The crews in their 40ft long ‘seine boats' were then guided toward the shoals by the huer using semaphore-type signals with a pair of oval bats known as ‘bushes'. The pilchard shoals could be enormous, perhaps half-a-mile across - a record catch at St Ives in 1868 numbered 16.5 million fish caught in a single seine net strung between three boats. Once the pilchards were brought ashore, they were compressed to release fish oil before being salted and packed into barrels for despatch to southern Europe - jobs usually carried out by the fishermen's wives.
Cornwall's fishing activity accounts for much of the county's character beloved of artistes, visitors and the heritage industry. Its most colourful types, bewhiskered, weather-beaten fishermen and scarlet-cloaked, black-hatted fishwives have disappeared, but the original fisherman's cottages survive - nowhere more picturesquely than in St Ives. Here, the gaily-coloured stone cottages appear to tumble over each other down winding labyrinthine lanes spilling out in a huddle beside the quays. The lower region of St Ives was once a slum known as ‘Downalong', traditionally the homes of fishing families; the houses gathered above them, called ‘Upalong' were primarily inhabited by mining families. Rivalry between the two communities led to much tension, a situation only resolved with the closing of mines and decline of the fishing industry. Like many parts of western Cornwall, the valley surrounding St Ives was once rich in veins of tin, copper and other minerals.
St Ives' decline as a mining and fishing centre was offset in the early 20th century by its increasing attraction to artists, drawn to the town by its picturesque port and the near Mediterranean quality of light found in west Cornwall. The artists who gathered or visited the town were of international standing; the painter William Turner visited the town towards the end of his life, and both James McNeill Whistler and Walter Sickert worked here for considerable periods of time. In the 1930's, an internationally noted artist's colony developed, as Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo and the potter Bernard Leach began to convert disused pilchard cellars and sail lofts into artist's studios, mostly located around the harbour. Thus it was that the St Ives School of artists was established and quickly gained an international reputation.
The renowned sculptress Barbara Hepworth is perhaps the best known artist to have lived in St Ives, where she worked for 26 years before dying in her Trewyn Studio in a fire in 1975 at the age of 72; her living quarters, studio and garden were turned into a museum and gallery to commemorate her life's work. Two particularly poignant features are the little summerhouse where she used to rest and the workshop with unfinished sculptures - both left entirely untouched since her death. The Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden and Museum is administered by the Tate Gallery, which itself has opened a large-scale annexe in the town, dedicated to work of the local St Ives School.
The narrow thoroughfares of St Ives contain an unusual number of museums and galleries. Included are Penwith Galleries founded in 1949, where frequent exhibitions of the St Ives Society of Artists are held. The St Ives Museum, housed in a building which began life as Wheal Dream copper mine, contains a unique collection of artefacts illustrating the natural, industrial and maritime history of the district; tales of fishing and shipwrecks, both a source of wealth and disaster for the townsfolk, are highlighted. Still operating too, is the workshop originally established by the noted potter Bernard Leach.
After the artists arrived at St Ives and ‘popularised' the area, holidaymakers and tourists soon followed; the port's varied attractions fascinated visitors from home and abroad, and so it remains to this day. Activities available locally include water-skiing, paragliding, windsurfing, fishing, pony trekking and golf; sight-seeing trips around the bay to Seal Island are popular, and the dramatic coastal scenery encourages touring or simply walking the many coastal paths. The eastern side of St Ives Bay is lined with one of the finest sandy beaches in Cornwall, a popular spot for windsurfing competitions and wave-jumping. A little inland is Paradise Park, a haven for rare and endangered birds, where displays of eagles and other birds of prey in flight may be seen - there is also an otter sanctuary in the park.