Town in Cornwall, England
St Ives
A Cornish harbour town where artists chased the light, fishermen once landed pilchards by the million, and the local seagulls have become notorious.
Key information
- County
- Cornwall
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 11,000 (2021 Census)
- Known for
- Artists' colony, Tate St Ives, Barbara Hepworth Museum, golden beaches, harbour
- What locals are called
- St Ivians
- Famous people
- Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Patrick Heron, Bernard Leach
- Football clubs
- St Ives Town FC
About St Ives
The saint who sailed in on a leaf
St Ives takes its name from St Ia, an Irish holy woman who, according to local legend, crossed the sea to Cornwall on a leaf. She is said to have landed here in the 5th or 6th century and founded a small religious settlement. The parish church of St Ia stands right by the harbour, and its pinnacled granite tower is a landmark you can spot from almost anywhere in the old town. The church sits among a tangle of narrow lanes with names such as Fore Street and Digey, where fishermen's cottages and net lofts huddle close together.
Silver darlings and a very busy harbour
Long before the easels arrived, St Ives was a fishing town. Pilchards, nicknamed the silver darlings, were the lifeblood of the place, and in the 19th century huge shoals were caught in seine nets and packed into barrels for export, particularly to Italy. The herring and pilchard fleets filled the harbour, and the lofts along the waterfront were used for mending nets and storing gear. When the shoals dwindled in the early 20th century, the town needed a new future. The railway helped. The branch line from St Erth opened in 1877, and the carriages brought visitors, and then painters, to the far end of Cornwall. The line still runs, and its final stretch hugs the coast above Porthminster Beach in one of the most scenic short rail journeys in Britain.
Why painters couldn't leave the light alone
Artists came for the light. Bouncing off white sand and turquoise water, it has a clarity that Turner is said to have admired, and that later attracted Whistler and Walter Sickert. By the late 19th century St Ives had a thriving artists' colony, and the Porthmeor area filled with studios in former sail lofts. In the 1920s, Bernard Leach set up his pottery here, bringing Japanese-influenced craft to Cornwall. The Leach Pottery still operates today. The 1930s and 1940s brought modernists. Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth moved to Cornwall in 1939, and the self-taught fisherman-painter Alfred Wallis became a hero for them. Wallis painted boats and harbours on scraps of cardboard, and his untrained style influenced the whole group. Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon, Terry Frost and others made the town a centre of British abstract art in the post-war years.
Hepworth's garden and the gallery above the beach
Barbara Hepworth lived and worked at Trewyn Studio in the centre of town from 1949 until her death in a studio fire in 1975. Her studio and garden are now the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, where her bronzes stand among subtropical plants just as she arranged them. Tate St Ives opened in 1993, on a site overlooking Porthmeor Beach. Its curved white walls were designed to catch the same Atlantic light that pulled artists here. It was extended in 2017. The gallery sits on the former site of a gasworks, a reminder that the town's creative life has always been built on practical foundations.
Beaches, pasties and gulls with attitude
St Ives has a run of beaches within walking distance: Porthminster, Porthmeor, Porthgwidden and Harbour Beach. Surfers favour Porthmeor, while Porthminster is a gentle family beach beneath the railway viaduct. Food is a big part of the story. Fresh fish and seafood come off the boats, and the town has a long tradition of Cornish pasties, cream teas and saffron buns. Ice cream is also a big seller, which brings us to the seagulls, whose bold habit of snatching chips and pasties from visitors' hands has made the town a regular in national news. In February each year, the town celebrates Feast Monday, a tradition connected to the dedication of the parish church, with a mix of fair, music and local custom. The quieter side of St Ives is its football team, St Ives Town, who play near the coast.