CHAPTER XVIII.

OLD HOUSES IN THE SAINT IVES DISTRICT.

We have now brought down our History to the year 1800, and will take a comprehensive glance at the state of the town during the eighteenth century.

In some respects Saint Ives presented no very different aspect in the last century to what we see to-day. There were the same old narrow, crooked, ill-paved streets which still charm the artistic eye and shock the olfactory nerves. And although a few houses have in recent years disappeared from the sites which they had occupied for centuries, still, in the main, we may see for ourselves, in the course of a ramble through such streets as the Digey, Chy-an-chy, or Street-an-garrow, the kind of homes in which a dozen generations of Saint Ives people grew up and died.

There is a certain type of dwelling-house in the old town which is characteristic of Saint Ives. This typical house is peculiar for the convenient irregularity of its plan of construction, and for the snug solidity of the structure. The principal door is entered either by an upward flight of granite steps, with or without a balustrade, or by a descent of three or four stairs below the level of the street. The thickness of the walls is noteworthy. The ground-floor is in general of stone, though a wooden ' planchen' is also common. As a rule there are but two stories, and the whole building is far more distinguished by length than height. The narrow and infrequent windows admit but little light, though this is in part atoned for by the comfortable deep window-seats, lined with oak. High oak wainscoting surrounds the inner walls, and a few silhouettes and old-world prints, together with the inevitable chest of drawers, covered with old china, add to the antique cosiness of the sitting-room. The fire-place is wide and high, though partly filled by a kitchen stove. Bright brass or pewter trenchers and candlesticks ornament the lofty

chimney-piece. Outside, the ponderous granite chimneys tower aloft, their time-worn chinks and crevices showing a slight growth of moss, lichen, or some hardy grass. A good specimen of this type of house may be seen in Bailey's Lane,

Another type of Saint Ives house, only less ancient than that last described, consists of a fish-cellar with an upper story of one or more dwelling-rooms. Many houses of this description were built in the town during the last century; they are usually described in the deeds as all that fish-cellar and two dwellings over the same.'

Examples of medieval dwellings are not wanting in the Saint Ives district. We have already mentioned the old parsonage, and will now describe other ancient houses in the town of Saint Ives.

Close to the White Hart inn, on the wharf, is a very narrow passage with a flight of steps, at the top of which one comes to a ruinous tenement which has the reputation of being the oldest house in the town of Saint Ives. It is called Carn Glaze (Grey Rock) that being the name of the hill of slate rock just in front of the house; but in a deed of 1699 it is termed Ugnes House,' meaning apparently, Huguenots' House.' Adjoining the house there was formerly a garden, and at the close of the last century the place was used as an inn.

The lower walls are about three feet thick, mostly of solid square blocks of Zennor granite, but largely mixed with unhewn slate rocks. When this venerable building fell in ruins, in 1887, a workman found, in the upper back wall, a square block of a material which he said he had never before seen; it appeared to be either sand hardened by some process, or very decomposed granite-probably the former. The western portion of the house was built long subsequently to the eastern; it has an open fireplace, but the eastern apartment has an immense hearth, with a chimney-corner; and the sky, as well as the whole interior of the chimney shaft, can be seen by looking up the chimney. This room is said to have been Kitty Lemal's, a lady well known to local tradition, of whom we shall have somewhat to say in a later chapter.

Before the roof fell in, it had been for years undulating and uneven, like the backbone of an aged hound. The chimneys, on the outside, were of massively-built granite, interlaid with thin slates. The upper story was one room, extending the entire length of the house, and could be entered, without steps, from the street at the back, the level of which is very much higher than the ground on the other side of the house. In this room,

which was much frequented by artists, was a quaintly picturesque little old window in the deep wall, with an ample window-seat, the wood of which was rotten with sheer age, as were the beams and rafters of the roof. The roof was covered with small tiles (healing-stones' or 'hellan-stones') of the ordinary westcountry type. This ancient tenement cannot have been built later than the early part of the fifteenth century.

About the year 1870, when some workmen were employed on the street in front of this house, a boy picked out of the dirt what he called 'an old penny.' It proved to be an unusually good specimen of a scarce medal. It is of bronze, rather larger than a crown piece. On the obverse is a full-length figure of a naval officer, and a cannon, with the legend: The British glory reviv'd by Admiral Vernon.' Reverse: A picture of a naval engagement off a fortified coast-' He took Portobello with six ships only.

1739.'

6

In comparatively recent times the freehold of Carn Glaze had got so subdivided amongst the numerous descendants of its

MEDAL FOUND AT CARN GLAZE.

original owners, that some of them were deriving such a sum as 7s. 6d. a year from their interest in the property. As any freehold, however small, entitled a person to vote at the election of a coroner, a large tribe of the Carn Glaze freeholders used to come to the fore on these occasions. We have heard of one who didn't know the name of the property until he was prompted.

In the Stuart period this house was inhabited by a seafaring family named Bottrell, one of whom, Reginald Bottrell, was a noted free-booter. His ghost is said to haunt the house; and indeed it would be remarkable if such a weird-looking tenement. were devoid of supernatural associations. (See our chapter on the folk-lore of the district.)

The George and Dragon' inn, which formerly stood on the west side of the Market-place, facing to the church tower, was demolished in the year 1887, to make way for some staring, commonplace new shops. This old house would seem to have been built some time in the fifteenth century. Though modernised in front in 1757, it retained its venerable appearance when

viewed from the roughly-paved yard at the back, where the granite of its walls, and the foundations of immense slate rock could be seen, innocent of plaster or whitewash. From the back-yard a narrow and short passage, over which was a room of the old house, led into the main street, and at this end of the George and Dragon was a quaint penthouse, i.c., a small roof or covering of wood supported on beams projecting about three

feet over a platform of granite and pebbles. A similar but longer penthouse ran all along the front of the house. Inside, the rooms were low and the ceilings supported on huge beams; the ground-floor was rough and uneven, and a picturesque irregularity distinguished the whole building. When the 'George' was pulled down, a polished stone axe of the neolithic age was found imbedded in one of the walls; probably it had been built in for

GEORGE AND DRAGON AND GOLDEN LION INNS.

luck. (These stone celts are by the peasantry called 'thunderbolts,' and are regarded as charms, being sometimes boiled in the drinking-water of the cattle, as a preservative against colic.) This house cannot have been built much later than the church.

In the middle of the Market-place stands the Market House, which, in 1832, was erected on the site of a much older one. The ancient Market House was a building of venerable aspect, surrounded by a penthouse similarly to the old inn just described. It was built in the year 1490, chiefly by Sir Robert Willoughby, whose influence obtained for Saint Ives the privilege of a weekly market, held on Saturdays, and two annual fairs, on May 10 and December 3 the latter is called the Fairy Mow' (Fêr-a'-moh, the pig fair).

On the eastern side of the Market-place there yet stands an inn, the Golden Lion, which is a good example of the dwellinghouses of the latter part of the seventeenth and commencement of the eighteenth centuries. In the roof are some quaint dormer windows; the picturesque penthouse, however, which formerly projected from the front of the house and covered in a corner platform of granite and pebbles for the benefit of the fishhawkers, was destroyed in 1887, when the George and Dragon was pulled down.

A short distance up the hill, at the back of the north-west corner of the Market-place, there stands a capital early Georgian town-house of granite, with a quaint wooden porch. On the top of the roof is the only local example of the once common ' equestrian tile.' This piece of ornamental pottery represents a man on horseback. The boys of the town have a saying, very true in its way, that, as often as the little man hears the clock strike twelve, he gallops along the ridge of the roof.

The old house under Skidden Hill, by the iron fence on the left-hand side leading down to St. Andrew Street from the Terrace, was formerly known as the Beggars' Roost,' from its being let out to poor travellers. The celebrated King of the Beggars,' Bamfylde Moore Carew (pronounced 'Carey') lodged there at different times. The steep road which passes this house was formerly the only road into the town on this side.

Another noteworthy old inn is the Sloop, on the Wharf, a quaint little yellow-washed house, with tiny windows, and the snuggest bar-parlour imaginable. The little state room, with its old-fashioned four-post bedstead nearly filling it, overlooks the harbour. This was anciently the home of the Williams family.

Round the corner, at the back of the Sloop, is the famous