The settlement of St Ives is first recorded in 1284 as "Juxta Sanctam yam Porthia". St Ives is named after Saint Ia who, according to legend, was an Irish princess who arrived in Cornwall in the 5th Century, was martyred, and buried in St Ives on the site of St Ia’s church.
St Ives was the most important fishing port on the North Coast. The pilchard fishery in St Ives was the largest in Cornwall in its heyday during the mid 19th Century. The annual pilchard catch in St Ives frequently exceeded all of the rest of Cornwall combined. The largest recorded catch in St Ives was in 1847 when over 57 million pilchards were caught in a single day. At the end of the 19th Century, the pilchard shoals stopped coming inshore and the industry had died out by the early 1900s.
During the early 19th Century, visitors to St Ives commented on being overpowered by the smell of rotting fish emanating from the town. A number of pilchard cellars surrounded the harbour but by the 1920s these had either been demolished or converted for other uses (the St Ives museum was originally a pilchard curing cellar).
The seagulls in the town are particularly adept at stealing unguarded food or even ice creams from the hands of children. During the breeding season, the birds are incredibly aggressive if they feel their young are being threatened. In 2013, a group of climbers from Newton Abbot were due to do a charity abseil down the church tower but as soon as they stepped out onto the roof, the angry birds dived on them and the event had to be relocated.
There are several reasons why seagulls should not be fed.
One is that human foods are not nutritionally suitable for seagulls but seagulls are not smart enough to know these can damage their health.
Another is that seagulls become dependent on humans and lose the skills to obtain food from natural sources.
The reason most affecting us is that feeding seagulls makes them less scared of humans. Since seagulls do not have have the emotional wiring to empathise with humans, fear is the only thing preventing that interaction being aggressive. Seagulls are innately aggressive when it comes to food as their behaviour with other seagulls demonstrates. There are many examples of children being attacked (who then drop food, reinforcing the behaviour).
The herring gull is the gull most commonly encountered in Cornwall, with a grey back and red spot on their yellow beak. They live for around 12 years and are highly intelligent birds with strong communication and social learning skills. This has allowed them to evolve strategies to obtain food more easily by stealing it from humans, either when briefly left unattended or by swooping and grabbing from unsuspecting hands.
Whilst their pasty and ice cream stealing antics in coastal resorts might give the impression there are lots around, the coastal herring gull population dropped by about 50% from 1970 to the mid 1980s and the decline has continued with another drop of around 50% up to 2020.
Part of the decline in coastal herring gull populations can be explained by a migration of birds inland to urban areas. Birds have been driven inland in search of food and roosting sites due to declining fish populations and lack of undisturbed coastal nesting sites. In urban areas, streetlights allow gulls to forage by night and there is no longer much competition from red kites, which scavenged the rubbish tips in the Middle Ages.
At the time of writing, a survey of the inland populations is being carried out to determine the relative size of these vs the coastal population and if these are stable. The first datasets from some of the devolved UK Nations suggest that is unlikely to explain the majority of the decline. Since the 1990s, 96% of the population in Northern Ireland died out predominantly from botulism. It's thought that birds seeking food on rubbish tips might be bringing this back to colonies.
The herring gull is an example of a "ring species". In Europe, the lesser black-backed gull and herring gull are distinct species, yet as you circumnavigate the globe, the populations become more similar until they merge in the middle as a single species.
Herring gulls are able to communicate nuances both by altering the frequency and timbre of their calls - conveying, for example, the relative severity of a threat in an alarm call. They also analyse and remember the personality of their neighbours, ignoring more skittish birds but taking action when a more trusted bird raises an alarm.
When you reach the crossroads after the Guildhall, the road to the right is called Skidden Hill.
Skidden Hill got its name because carts regularly went out of control here. Spur stones were embedded into the road near the corners of buildings to deflect runaway carts. Some of the stones can still be seen protruding from the pavement.
During Victorian times, open air painting became popular and the scenery and mild climate of St Ives generated a reputation as the ideal place for marine painting (of the decorative rather than boat-keeping kind). Once the railway was completed in 1877, St Ives became more accessible. Around this time, the pilchard industry was in decline which resulted in many unoccupied net lofts, cellars and workshops. These became converted into artists studios, with the first recorded in 1885 which had been converted from a sail loft. In 1920, Bernard Leach arrived and went on to make St Ives internationally famous through his pottery. St Ives has continued to attract artists and is now considered to be one of the most important art centres in Britain. In 1993, the St Ives branch of the Tate Gallery opened (named after the sugar magnate Henry Tate of Tate and Lyle). Since 1978, there has been a St Ives September Festival which runs for 15 days during which many artists open their studios to the public.
St Ives has had a lifeboat since 1840, though the original was a rowing boat launched from the harbour. In 1867, the RNLI relocated it to Porthgwidden beach and built a boathouse for it. This was not well thought out as launching through the surf proved near impossible and so it was quickly replaced by a building in Fore Street. In 1911, a new boathouse was built on the quay which was better suited to launching the lifeboat which had become motorised by this point. This was finally replaced with the station you see today which was built in 1993 to accommodate a larger modern boat.
The Sloop Inn, which lies on the wharf, is dated to "circa 1312", which makes it one of the oldest inns in Cornwall. The building is likely to have been rebuilt a number of times over the centuries and the current structure is thought to date from the 17th-18th century. It is described by Lonely Planet as "a classic old fishermen's boozer, complete with low ceilings, tankards behind the bar and a comprehensive selection of Cornish ales."
Smeaton's Pier was constructed towards the end of the 18th Century and was originally about half the current length, ending with the lighthouse. In the 1860s this was extended by adding a wooden pier (which was even longer than the current one) but this had collapsed within 20 years. The remains of the wooden supports can still be seen at the lowest point of the tide. Finally the stone pier was extended at the end of the 19th Century and the three arches were added so that sand could flush out from the harbour to prevent it silting up.
The chapel on Smeaton's Pier dates from mediaeval times. It is dedicated to St Leonard and fishermen would pray here before going to sea. The friar was paid a percentage of the catch.
Bamaluz beach is little more than some granite boulders at high tide but as the tide goes out, a sandy beach is revealed. On a low tide it joins up with the harbour beach and it's possible to walk along the sand on the seaward side of the pier. The name is from the Cornish bal maen luz which roughly translates as "greystone mine".
For the two months each year where a dog ban is in place on Porthgwidden beach, the path around the top of the beach can be bypassed by walking through the car park and following the tarmacked path leading from the other end of the car park onto the island, rejoining the route either at the coastguard lookout or at the chapel on top of the island.
Porthgwidden is from the Cornish for "white cove". As the white beach huts weren't around in early mediaeval times when the Cornish language was used to name places, the name is likely to be a reference to the colour of the sand. Whilst the sand here isn't a different colour from any other beaches at St Ives, it's possible that the sheltered cove allowed sand to accumulate at the back where it had more opportunity to dry out in the sun.
The Coastguard Lookout is situated on a rock outcrop known as Lamp Rock. The name dates back to the time when there was a tall pole with a lantern here to guide ships landing at Porthgwidden Cove, then the main landing point for St Ives. The Coastguard used the island, and even the Chapel for a while, as a lookout for catching smugglers. The current lookout was operated by HM Coastguard until 1994, when many lookouts were closed. Just five years later, it was re-opened by the National Coastwatch Institution and is now staffed entirely by volunteers.
The stone walls around the coastguard lookout are the remains of fortifications. There are parish records of the site being fortified as far back as 1638 and at one time there were up to 15 guns present. In the 17th Century, the granite walls were built, housing three large cannon positions to defend against a possible French invasion. The coastguard lookout is situated on the outermost of these circular areas. The cottage was originally the barracks and the chapel on the top of the island was re-purposed as a military store.
There has been a chapel on the island at St Ives since mediaeval times and it is thought to date from the 15th Century. During the 18th Century, it was re-purposed as a lookout for Revenue officers. After this, the chapel fell into disuse and was used as a store by the War Office. Not realising its significance and deeming it surplus to requirements, in 1904, the War Office began demolishing it until they were stopped by angry locals. Following a public outcry, it was rebuilt in 1911.
The "island" (which is technically an isthmus) was once known as Pendinas. This is the Cornish for "fortified headland" as there was once a promontory fort here.
Porthmeor is the largest beach at St Ives, and consists of golden sand. There's a beach at all states of the tide although it's quite a narrow strip at high tide. The beach faces north into the Atlantic so it gets some reasonable surf.
The name means "big cove" in Cornish. It is often referred to as "Porthmeor beach" and although the appended "beach" is technically redundant (given that the name already means "cove"), it does serve to distinguish it from Porthmeor Cove, not so far away along the coast near Morvah.
Further along the route you'll come across another name ending in veor, which also means "large". This swapping of an initial letter between two forms (m and v in this case) is a feature of Celtic languages and crops up very frequently in Cornish place names.
In January 1938, the SS Alba was on its way from Italy to Wales and sheltering from a gale but mistook the lights of Porthmeor for those of St Ives and ran aground. The St Ives lifeboat was launched and rescued 23 crew from the ship but then capsized and was washed onto the rocks. The lifeboat crew were all rescued but five of the Alba crew drowned. The boilers from the Alba can be seen on Porthmeor beach at low tide. Bomb disposal experts were acquainted with them in 2012 after they were mistaken for an unexploded sea mine by holidaymakers unfamiliar with Cornwall's metallic shoreline fixtures.
The Holy Well of St Ia (Venton Ia in Cornish) is a spring located opposite Porthmeor Beach, below the churchyard. The spring has been incorporated into the stone walls that surround the cemetery and now consists of two recesses each containing a trough of water. The resulting frenzy of stonework has been described as not one of the prettiest holy wells in Cornwall, despite the effort that must have gone into it. A plaque states "The holy well of St Ia, until 1843, the main water supply to Downalong" (the name for this area of the town).
The St Ives Feast takes place on the Sunday and Monday nearest to the 3rd of February each year. It celebrates the founding of the town by St Ia and includes a procession to the holy well (Venton Ia) and a version of Cornish Hurling described as "much gentler than ... at St Columb Major".
Because bluebells spread very slowly, they're considered to be an indicator of ancient woodland sites. In areas where trees are not very old, the fact there are bluebells around can indicate that there has been a wood on a site for a very long time. Even if there are no trees there at all, bluebells tell us that there was woodland there some time in the past. The bluebells along the coast are a relic of the gnarled oak woodland that used to grow here before it was cleared for grazing. There is still a patch of the ancient oak woodland left along the coast at Dizzard.
Jackdaws are able to recognise eye gestures from humans (e.g. if someone looks at where a food item is hidden). It has been suggested that jackdaws may use this with other birds too and this may be the reason that they have a striking blue eye colour that is easily seen from a distance.
On the far side of the bay to your right is Godrevy Lighthouse.
The Stones Reef off Godrevy Point has always been a shipping hazard and a lighthouse had been considered for a long time, but nothing was done until in 1854, the SS Nile was wrecked with the loss of all on board. The lighthouse was finished in 1859 and is a 26m tall octagonal tower, located on the largest rock of the reef. The lighthouse inspired Virginia Woolfe's novel "To the Lighthouse", despite her setting the novel in The Hebrides. In 2012, the light was decommissioned and replaced with an LED light on a platform facing the sea. The tower is still maintained as a daytime navigation aid.
More about Godrevy Lighthouse and Virginia Woolfe in Cornwall
Research by the Cornwall Seal Group Research Trust has found that the majority of seals in Cornwall are tourists, stopping over on their way to somewhere else. Very few seals spend the whole year in one place and some of those visiting Cornwall have been identified in Wales and others in France.
Early purple orchids can also sometimes be seen on the coast here amongst the bluebells. Again these are more typically found in woodland.
Early purple orchid is the con-man of the plant kingdom, with brilliant purple flowers resembling those of other nectar-rich orchids. When the insects arrive and push through the pollen to investigate the promising flowers, they discover that the flowers contain no nectar.
Jackdaws can be distinguished from other members of the crow family by their short black beaks and grey necks. They are smaller than all the other black birds in the crow family and are only slightly larger than jays.
Hellesveor was originally the larger (veor being the Cornish word for "large") of two tenements that Helles was divided into during the Middle Ages, the other being Hellesvean (as you probably guessed, vean means "small"). The name Helles itself is likely to be from the Cornish words hen lys (sometimes written together as hellys) meaning "old court". The name Helston is from the same origin (with some subsequent Saxon re-branding).
Pen Meneth simply means "top of the hill" in Cornish, although the exact type of hill is selected from a range of options in the Cornish language.
It may be an urban myth that Eskimos have a large number of words for "snow" but it's cast iron fact that there are at least this many words for "hill" in Cornish:
At the top of the hill ahead is Knill's Steeple.
John Knill was a charismatic Collector of Customs at St Ives from 1762-1782 and mayor in 1767. During his Customs role, it is thought that he might have engaged in a little smuggling himself as there are reports of him fitting out a privateer for the purpose. He built his own memorial: the 50 foot high triangular granite obelisk, known locally as "The Steeple". He also devised a quinquennial celebration which consists of a dinner for the Mayor, Vicar and Customs Officer and guests in the George and Dragon Inn. This is followed by a procession from the market house to the monument, lead by a fiddler with ten young girls (who had to be the daughters of either fishermen, tinners, or seamen) dressed in white, and two widows. The mayor, vicar, customs officer, girls, widows and fiddler then dance around the monument whilst spectators sing the hundredth psalm. The first was carried out in 1801, which Knill attended. In his will, he left money for the upkeep of "The Steeple" and for the celebration to take place every 5 years after his death on St James' Day, 25 July. The delightfully eccentric ceremony has been carried out every 5 years for over 200 years, though the changing industries in St Ives have required the constraints on trades of the young girls' fathers to be relaxed, and the Customs Officer now has to commute from Penzance.
A survey of over 5 million clover leaves found that the frequency of four-leaf clovers is about one in 5,000 (twice as common as originally thought).
The world record for collecting four leaf clovers in one hour was set at 166 (in 1998). One very determined collector managed to amass 170,000 four-leafed clovers in a lifetime.
Thistle flowers are rich in nectar and provide an important food source for bees and butterflies. The common thistle was ranked in the top 10 nectar producing plants in two different UK plant surveys. The seeds also provide an important food source for small birds such as goldfinches. The plants themselves are eaten by the caterpillars of the Painted Lady butterfly.
Ivy is a creeping vine which is well-known for being able to climb up almost anything. With good support, an ivy plant can climb as high as 90ft. A plant can live over 400 years and on mature plants, stems can reach a diameter of over 10cm.
Rooks can often be heard in the tall trees surrounding the churchyard.
Experiments have shown that rooks are able to use tools to solve problems, choosing tools with optimal sizes and shapes to solve a problem. They are also able to adapt tools e.g. bending a wire to make a hook to retrieve food.
During late winter or early spring, if you encounter a patch of plants with white bell-shaped flowers, smelling strongly of onions, and with long, narrow leaves then they are likely to be three-cornered leeks. Once you're familiar with their narrow, ridged leaves, you'll be able to spot these emerging from late October onwards.
The plants get their name due to their triangular flower stems. As the name also suggests, they are members of the onion family and have a small bulb. In fact, in New Zealand they are known as "onion weed". They are also known as "snowbell" due to their white bluebell-like flowers.
Green alkanet is a member of the forget-me-not family and has small but striking blue 5 petal flowers with white centres. The plants are often around 2ft tall by the time they are flowering, making them one of the taller plants around in April and they also have hairy leaves that can cause skin irritation in some people.
Green alkanet is native to the western part of the Mediterranean region and prefers sunny spots. It was introduced to the UK around the start of the 18th Century and fairly quickly escaped into the wild where it has become naturalised. As a garden weed, its brittle tap roots make it tricky to eradicate.
The name "alkanet" derives from the old Arabic word for Henna. The "green" in the name is to distinguish it from dyer's alkanet (hence the Henna), to which it is related but minus the dye. The scientific name for green alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens) is based on the Greek for "five tongues" (a reference to the flowers) and Latin for "evergreen" (as the plant often over-winters as a rosette of leaves).
This area was formerly the mediaeval settlement of Hellesvean. A corn grinding stone from the Dark Ages was found in one of the fields here before the estates were built. Also when some work was being done on one of the gardens in 1929, the remains of an ancient building was uncovered with fragments of pottery from the Viking period. The experts at the time dismissed the Viking era for the pottery but more recent analysis has found it to be correct (around 850-1050).
After his warm reception in North Cornwall, John Wesley and his followers found they were met with a somewhat more frosty reception in St Ives, also known as an angry mob. There were two reasons for this. The first was that it was believed Methodists sympathised with the Pope (and Catholicism was definitely out of favour in Cornwall). The second was simply a matter of geometry: in many of the North Cornish parishes, the church was located several miles away from the the village, up a massive hill, or often both! Wesley's form of religion, which could be carried out in the village, was made somewhat more attractive. In St Ives, where the church is alongside the harbour, the religious "playing field" was "level" (which is about the only thing in St Ives that could be described as such).
Despite the inherent incompatibility of Methodism and dockside taverns, Methodism did eventually gain a significant following in the town and several chapels were built, three of which are still in service. The town had its own Teetotal Society and the Temperance movement is even commemorated in the name of Teetotal Street.
Bernard Leach is considered one of the pioneers of the studio pottery movement. After learning ceramic skills in Japan, he set up a pottery in St Ives in 1920. Bricks salvaged from the National Explosives Works at Upton Towans were used for the first kilns and rhododendrons growing near the Steeple were harvested as fuel. Clay from the pits at St Erth was used for some of the pottery. Leach wrote several books on pottery and was influential in promoting the Japanese pottery tradition in the West. In 2008 Leach Pottery was restored and reopened as a museum to celebrate his work and legacy.
The large car park in St Ives was once the site of Wheal Trenwith which was mainly a copper mine, although a small amount of tin ore was also extracted. Amongst the copper ore was a black crusty ore that miners thought was copper oxide, but smelting it proved unsuccessful so it was discarded on the waste tips. It was identified as pitchblende (a Uranium ore, containing other radioactive decay products of Uranium-238) but it was seen of no value. An account from 1843 states:
Pitch-blende occurs in great abundance among the copper ores of Wheal Trenwith, and was long carefully collected, and thought to be black copper ore. The low prices obtained for the ores with which it was mixed, and the inferiority of the metal they yielded, equally disappointed the miner and the copper-smelter; until a specimen of the copper was examined by Mr. Michell of Calenick, and found mixed with uranium in a metallic state. The ores were then inspected, and pitch-blende being discovered among them, its nature and prejudice to the copper ores were explained to the workmen, by whom it has been, of course, since rejected. Was there ever an instance in which an acquaintance with Mineralogy and Chemistry would have been more useful ?
By 1907, the economic value of radium was well understood and waste tips were being worked for this valuable ore; small pockets were also extracted from the shallower areas of the mine. Between 1911-1917 there were 694 tonnes of uranium ore recovered, mainly from the waste tips. There are reports that pieces of the pitchblende ore can still be found around the edges of the car park today. It is radioactive so handling pieces of the black rock is not advised.
Uranium is unstable (aka "radioactive"). Occasionally one of the uranium atoms will fall apart and a particle (which we call radiation) gets flung out from its atomic nucleus. Having lost a bit of its atomic nucleus, what's left behind is often a different chemical element. This element is often also unstable and so has a tendency to fall apart in a similar way. The process repeats until a stable (non-radioactive) element is eventually reached. Uranium's decay chain includes radium (which was sought-after) and this subsequently decays into radon. The non-radioactive element at the end of the chain is lead.
Virginia Woolfe, the modernist 20th Century writer, was strongly influenced by spending every summer in the family's holiday home (Talland House) in St Ives during her childhood. In her own words: "Why am I so incredibly and incurably romantic about Cornwall?" She returned to Cornwall many times in her adult life to spend time walking.
Thrift is a tough evergreen plant which grows on sea cliffs and consequently it's the county flower of the Scilly Isles. To survive in this environment it needs to be able to withstand drought and salt-laden winds. Its long, thin leaves and hairy flower stems have evolved to minimise water loss.
The name "thrift" has been suggested to arise from the plant's tufted leaves being economical with water in the windy locations where it is found. It's common all along the Cornish coast and in April-June produces pale pink flowers, hence its other common name: "Sea Pink". The plant grows in dense circular mats which together with its covering of pink flowers gives rise to another less common name: "Ladies' Cushions".
Thrift is tolerant of metals such as lead and particularly copper in soil so it is able to colonise coastal mine tips. It has been suggested that the heavy metal tolerance may be partly down to not transporting much dissolved metal up the shoot of the plant (since thrift grows in a desiccating salty environment, there is less water to transport it than in many other plants). However thrift also has mechanisms to sequester metals and excrete them through its roots and leaves.
Thrift is known as a "hyperaccumulator" of copper: it can concentrate copper by over 1000 times more than other neighbouring plants. This makes it potentially useful to clean up contaminated land but this be done over many years. In principle it's even possible to mine for minerals by concentrating them in plants and then extracting them (known as "phytomining"). It's currently far from economical to do so for copper but for rarer high-value metals it may become economical, possibly in conjunction with chemical soil additives to increase bio-availability.
During Victorian times, St Ives consisted of two quarters known as Upalong and Downalong, between which there was a fierce rivalry. Upalong, on the higher ground, was an area of farming and mining. Downalong, situated beside the harbour, was the realm of fishermen and sailors.
The residents of St Ives were collectively known by the pejorative of "Hake" or "Hakeies" which is said to be based on the irreligious practice of fishing for hake on Sundays when most other fishermen stayed ashore to go to church.
Hake are members of the cod family although their long body shape and big teeth make them look a bit a cross between a cod and a barracuda. They spend the daytime near the sea bed and gather in shoals at night to feed in shallower water. They each pilchards, herring and mackerel but over 70% of the diet of large hake is made up of smaller hake from the shoal! Night fishing for hake was one of the traditional techniques in the southwest which is why it is known in some places as "Cornish Salmon".
Despite being regarded as a sustainable fish, it suffers from the same two vulnerabilities as the (now endangered) bass - it grows slowly and takes a long time to reach sexual maturity. The population in the Northern Atlantic has nevertheless recovered due to restrictions on commercial fishing.
The game of bowls dates from mediaeval times and was first clearly documented in the 13th Century. From the 14th Century, it was banned along with several other sports for being a distraction from archery practice. However bans on bowling continued long after guns had replaced the longbow due to the disreputable nature of bowling alleys which were often attached to taverns. Until 1845, labourers, apprentices and servants were forbidden from playing bowls except at Christmas under the supervision of their masters!
Turnstones are small wading birds which can often be seen scavenging for small crumbs of pasty along harbour fronts in Cornwall. Their name arises from one of their ways of finding food on the seashore: they are able to lift stones as large as themselves using their strong neck. As their pasty foraging skills suggest, they are very versatile feeders and will eat almost anything including dead animals.
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