St Ives

Legend attributes the founding of St Ives to Ia, an Irish holy woman who arrived in the 5th century, and the town's Cornish name, Porthia, means "St Ia's cove". From medieval times fishing made the place: it became one of the most important fishing ports on the north Cornish coast, a pier is first recorded in 1478, and the townspeople built their granite church between 1410 and 1434, although it remained a chapel of the parish of Lelant until much later. St Ives was incorporated as a borough in 1639.

Pilchards were the great catch, and seining was the usual way of fishing for them. In the mid-18th century St Ives was one of the four principal Cornish ports shipping pilchards, and the greatest catch ever taken in a single seine was landed here in 1868. John Smeaton rebuilt the pier in 1766–1770, and a class of fishing boat unique to the town, the jumbo, worked from the harbour in Victorian times.

The railway changed everything. The branch line from St Erth arrived in 1877 and brought Victorian holidaymakers, and in 1884 James Whistler and Walter Sickert came down it to paint. Bernard Leach and Shōji Hamada set up the Leach Pottery in 1920; in 1928 Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood met the Cornish painter Alfred Wallis, laying the foundation of the St Ives School; and in 1939 Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo settled in the town. As the fishing declined, tourism took over, and Tate St Ives opened in 1993.

Art defines St Ives' reputation. The town has been home to painters, potters and sculptors for more than a century, and Tate St Ives, the Barbara Hepworth Museum and its sculpture garden, the Leach Pottery and many commercial galleries keep that tradition visible. Bernard Leach, known as the father of British studio pottery, produced work here until 1972, and the abstract painter Patrick Heron lived nearby at Zennor.

The town keeps customs older than its galleries. St Ives Feast, held on the Sunday and Monday nearest 3 February, celebrates the founding by St Ia and is one of the two surviving examples of Cornish hurling. Every five years on 25 July the Knill Ceremony, laid down in 1797 by the former mayor John Knill, takes place at his granite monument overlooking the town; its old Knillian games once included Cornish wrestling. The St Ives September Festival celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2008.

Maritime life remains part of the town's identity: the lifeboat station, the harbour boats and replica jumbos sailed by the St Ives Jumbo Association. St Ives was named best seaside town by The Guardian in 2007 and by the British Travel Awards in 2010 and 2011, and the town and its surroundings have appeared in novels such as Helen Dunmore's Zennor in Darkness.

About 5,400 people lived in the St Ives built-up area at the 2021 census, and about 10,700 in the wider parish, which also includes Carbis Bay, Lelant and the surrounding countryside. The town lost its borough council in 1974 and is now governed as part of Cornwall.

Tourism dominates the economy. The population swells in summer, and much work is seasonal. Commercial fishing is much reduced, but the harbour is still used for recreational boating, fishing trips and boat trips to the seal colonies on the Carrack Rocks. Close to the harbour the old streets are narrow and uneven, while newer houses stand on the rising ground above.

Housing is the town's most argued-over issue. In 2016 residents voted, with 83 per cent in favour, to stop second-home owners buying newly built houses, after average prices had risen to more than £320,000, almost 14 times median annual earnings in Cornwall. By 2019 the Financial Times reported that the policy had not stemmed the number of second homes. Like the rest of Cornwall, the town has seen tourism criticised for its effect on seasonal work and affordable housing.

The pasty is the food most associated with Cornwall and is regarded as its national dish. The traditional Cornish pasty, protected in Europe since 2011, is filled with beef, sliced or diced potato, swede — called turnip in Cornwall — and onion, seasoned with salt and pepper and baked in a folded, crimped shortcrust case. Pasties with many other fillings are made too, and the dish spread around the world with Cornish miners and sailors.

Another Cornish speciality is the saffron bun, sometimes called a tea treat bun: a rich, spiced, yeast-leavened sweet bun flavoured with saffron and full of currants and sultanas, with larger loaves known as saffron cake.

The sea has always fed the town, from the pilchard catches of the past to today's seafood restaurants. On the Wharf along the harbour, one of the oldest inns in Cornwall served as a fishermen's pub for many centuries. The town has even added a spirits school, where visitors can blend their own gin.