Penzance ( ; , meaning holy head) is a town, civil parish and port in Cornwall, England. It lies west-southwest of Plymouth, west-southwest of London, and east of Land's End. Penzance railway station is the terminus of the Cornish Main Line and is both the southernmost and westernmost station in England. Situated in the shelter of Mount's Bay, the town faces south-east onto the English Channel. As well as Penzance itself, the parish also includes the fishing port of Newlyn and the villages of Mousehole, Paul, Gulval, and Heamoor. At the 2021 census the population of the parish was 20,734 and the population of the Penzance built-up area as defined by the Office for National Statistics was 14,960.
Penzance was granted a market charter in 1404 and was formally incorporated as a borough in 1614. Chapel Street has a number of interesting features, including the Egyptian House, The Admiral Benbow public house (home to a 19th-century smuggling gang and allegedly the inspiration for Treasure Islands "Admiral Benbow Inn"), the Union Hotel (including a Georgian theatre which is no longer in use), and Branwell House, where the mother and aunt of the Brontë sisters once lived. Regency and Georgian terraces and houses are common in some parts of the town. The nearby sub-tropical Morrab Gardens has a large collection of tender trees and shrubs, many of which cannot be grown outdoors anywhere else in the UK. Also of interest is the seafront with its promenade and the open-air seawater Jubilee Pool, one of the oldest surviving Art Deco swimming baths in the country.
Penzance is the base of the pirates in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance. At the time the libretto was written in 1879, Penzance had become popular as a peaceful resort town, so the idea of it being overrun by pirates was amusing to contemporaries.
Toponymy Penzance—Pennsans; "holy headland" in the Cornish language—refers to the location of a chapel nowadays called St Anthony's that is said to have stood over a thousand years ago on the headland to the west of what became Penzance Harbour. There are no early documents mentioning an actual dedication to St Anthony which seems to depend entirely on tradition and may be groundless. The only remaining object from this chapel is a carved figure, now largely eroded, known as "St Raffidy" which can be found in the churchyard of the parish church of St Mary's near the original site of the chapel. Until the 1930s this history was also reflected in the choice of symbol for the town, the severed "holy head" of St John the Baptist. His head is shown on the civic regalia of the Mayor of Penzance and on the northern side of the Market House in the town.
History Prehistory to Early Medieval period About 400 prehistoric stone axes, known as Group 1 axes and made from greenstone, have been found all over Britain, which from petrological analysis appear to come from west Cornwall.Markham, M. & Floyd, P. A. (1998) "Geochemical Fingerprinting of West Cornish Greenstones as an aid to Provenancing Neolithic Axes". Read at the Annual Conference of the Ussher Society, January 1998 Although the quarry has not been identified, it has been suggested that the Gear, a rock now submerged half a mile from the shore at Penzance, may be the site. A significant amount of trade is indicated as many have been found elsewhere in Britain.Pool, Peter A S (1974) The History of the Town and Borough of Penzance. Penzance: The Corporation of Penzance. The earliest evidence of settlement in Penzance is from the Bronze Age. A number of bronze implements such as a palstave, a spear-head, a knife, and pins, along with much pottery and large quantities of charcoal were discovered when building a new housing estate, at Tredarvah, to the west of Alverton."Excavation News, 1963–1964: Tredarvah, Penzance". Cornish Archaeology. p. 85 The defensive earthwork known as Lescudjack Castle is not excavated, but almost certainly belongs to the Iron Age.Weatherhill, Craig Cornovia: Ancient Sites of Cornwall & Scilly (Alison Hodge 1985; Halsgrove 1997, 2000) A single rampart encloses three acres of hilltop, and would have dominated the approach to the area from the east. There are no signs of the additional ramparts reported by William Hals in about 1730, and the site is now surrounded by housing with allotments. Excavations in 2008, to the west at Penwith College found an enclosure ditch and pottery indicating a settlement, and an evolving field system with ditches and interconnecting pits suggesting water management. There are traces of a rampart and ditch to the west of Penzance at Mount Misery, and an oval rampart and ditch at Lesingey above the St Just road, which together with Lescudjack, overlook the coast of Penzance and Newlyn.Russell, V. (1971) West Penwith Survey. Truro: Cornwall Archaeological Society
Until recently, there was little evidence for anything but an early and short Roman occupation of Cornwall, and there have so far been only three finds in Penzance. In August 1899 two coins of Vespasian (69–79 AD) were found in an ancient trench in Penzance Cemetery. The coins were eight feet below ground together with some cow bones, and are now in the Penlee House Museum. Another coin, found in 1934 in the Alverton area, depicts Sol, the Roman sun god. It is described as a ″coin of the reign of Constantine the Great″, and was also donated to the museum. A 30 mm (1 3/16 in) sestertius was found on a building site in or around Penzance about ten years previously, and was presented to the Royal Institution of Cornwall. Larger quantities of Roman coins have been found nearby, at Marazion Marsh and Kerris in Paul parish, but there is no evidence of any Roman settlement in the area, although nearby villages such as Chysauster were occupied at this time.Haverfield, F. & Taylor, M. V. (1934) "Romano-British Cornwall"; 38. In: Pool, P. A. S. (1974) The History of the Town and Borough of Penzance. Penzance: Corporation of Penzance.
The Hundred of Penwith had its ancient centre at Connerton, now buried beneath the sands of Gwithian Towans at Gwithian. The Manor of Alverton, with an area of 64 Cornish acres, gave its name to the second largest tithing in Penwith. The manor included Penzance as well as parts of Madron, Paul, St Buryan and Sancreed.
Although Penzance is not mentioned in the survey document the Domesday Book, it is likely that the area would have been included. Domesday records that in 1066 the Manor of Alwarton was owned by Alward who was dispossessed by Robert, Count of Mortain, a half-brother of William the Conqueror. The name Alward and tun, a personal name combined with a town or settlement suffix, indicate Saxon land ownership. In Cornwall the tun indicates a manorial centre such as Helston or Connerton. The change of ownership in 1066 was a change from one alien landlord to another, and the name Alverton lives on as the western part of Penzance from St John's Hall, to the housing estate on the west side of the River Laregan.
High and Late Middle Ages
The first mention of the name Pensans is in the Assize Roll of 1284,Gover, J. E. B. "Unpublished typescript on Cornish Place Names, RIC 614". In: Pool, P. A. S. (1974) The History of the Town and Borough of Penzance. Penzance: Corporation of Penzance. and the first mention of the actual church that gave Penzance its name is in a manuscript written by William Borlase in 1750: ″The ancient chapel belonging to the town of Penzance may be seen in a fish cellar, near the key; it is small and as I remember had the image of the Virgin Mary in it.″Borlase, William (1750) "MS Parochial Memoranda (BM Egerton MSS 2657) (copy at RIC)". In: Pool, P. A. S. (1974) The History of the Town and Borough of Penzance. Penzance: Corporation of Penzance. The chapel was built of greenstone and about 30 ft in length and 15 ft in breadth of which only a fragment remained in situ. In around 1800 the chapel was converted to a fish cellar. A carving in "Ludgvan granite" thought to be of St Anthony was removed in about 1830 and was used in the wall of a pig sty, which was further vandalised in 1850 when "a stranger ... taking fancy to the stony countenance and rough hands, they were broken off and carried away as relics ...". The remains of the vandalised relic were taken to St Mary's Churchyard by a mason who told Mr Millett that he "popped St Raffidy into a wheelbarrow and trundle him off to the chapel yard."Millett, G. B. (1880) PZPP II 7–13. In: Pool, P. A. S. (1974) The History of the Town and Borough of Penzance. Penzance: Corporation of Penzance. The carving remains in St Mary's Churchyard and has been dated by Prof Charles Thomas as early 12th century. There are no early documents mentioning the dedication to St Anthony; this seems to depend entirely on tradition and may be groundless. A licence for Divine Service in the Chapel of St Gabriel and St Raphael was granted in 1429, but nothing more is known of this chapel except, possibly, for the mason who mentioned ″St Raffidy″ in 1850. Adjoining the chapel is St Anthony's Gardens, named in 1933 and containing an archway said to have been taken from the chapel site.
Dominating the skyline above the harbour is the present church of St Mary's. A St Mary's Chapel is mentioned in a 1548 document which states that it was founded by Sir Henry Tyes, Knight, Lord of the Manor of Alverton, who gave a £4 stipend for a priest.Snell, L. S. (1953) "The Chantry Certificates for Cornwall". In: Pool P. A. S. (1974) History of the Borough and Town of Penzance. Penzance: Corporation of Penzance There is an earlier document from 1379, when Bishop Brantyngham licensed for services "the chapel of Blessed Mary of Pensande"."Exeter Episcopal Registers (note 25) Brantyngham I 395". In: Pool, P. A. S. (1974) History of the Borough and Town of Penzance. Penzance: Corporation of Penzance At this date it was a chapel of ease to the parish church at Madron. Further evidence of historical settlement from this period is in the St Clare area of the town, where a chapel existed to St Clare or Cleer. The earliest reference is a lease of 1584: "...a certain chapel situate below the high road between Pensaunce and Madderne.""Lease, Queen Elizabeth to Thomas Betts, 2 Dec 1584". In: Pool, P. A. S. (1974) The History of the Town and Borough of Penzance. Penzance: Corporation of Penzance. In the early part of the 19th century the foundations of a building, said to be the chapel, was discovered, and enough was exposed to show the shape of the building.Courtney, J. S. (1845) "Half a Century of Penzance (1825–1875), edited by Louise Courtney, 1878". In: Pool, P. A. S. (1974) The History of the Town and Borough of Penzance. Penzance: Corporation of Penzance. An episcopal licence cannot be traced for this chapel. The name, St Clare, lives on in the town as "St Clare Street", which is part of the road from Penzance to Madron, and the St Clare cricket ground at the top of the hill.
Medieval economy Markets were held on a fixed day each week, and fairs on fixed date(s) each year. To obtain either, a manorial lord had to apply for a royal charter. The right to hold a market each Wednesday was granted by King Edward III to Alice de Lisle, sister of Lord Tyes and widow of Warin de Lisle, on 25 April 1332; a fair, lasting seven days at the Feast of St Peter ad Vincula on 1 August; and another fair of seven days on 24 August at Mousehole for the feast of St Bartholomew – later to be held in Penzance. The settlement was growing in importance as the weekly Wednesday market was confirmed by King Henry IV and three further fairs, each of two days, were granted on 8 April 1404. These were at the Feast of the Conception of Virgin Mary (8 December), St Peter in Cathedra (22 February) and the Nativity of the Virgin Mary (8 September).