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The impressive looking Tregenna Castle Hotel sits high on a defensive hill overlooking St Ives like it was once a castle, but it wasn't! Designed by John Wood the Younger (think Bath's Royal Crescent) it was built 250 years ago as a 14 bedroomed home, then converted to a hotel by Great Western Railways when their branch-line began escorting tourists into town from the 1870s and has offered hospitality ever since.

Trees Are Green 🌳

This picture came up in my feed earlier. I took it this summer in central Oxford. Upset by the lost ‘Sycamore Gap Tree’, I felt a need to share. It’s a beautiful scene and shows the capacity to live closely and care for trees even in densely populated environments. I looked for words to help convey sentiment, and found these from Auden which seem to fit.

‘The trees encountered on a country stroll reveal a lot about that country's soul... A culture is no better than its woods.’ - W.H. Auden, Bucolics, 1953

A gun battery still exists on the east of The Island overlooking St Ives Bay.

The map is St Ives from around 1830 and shows the location of the historic emplacement. From 1860, the fortifications here are known to have included three guns and a barracks for soldiers to defend the town against a possible foreign invasion from the sea. The original guns were removed in 1909. Then, during World War II, the site was re-equipped with anti-aircraft guns pointing upwards to defend the town against bombing raids from the sky.

Today the gun emplacements are still in use providing lookout accommodation for the local Coastwatch station, with the barracks now housing a local surf school.

I went on an archaeological tour of West Cornwall last week and discovered a portal between our physical world and the heavens. A lychgate! The name comes from old-English for ‘co**se’ and offers a traditional entrance to a churchyard, designed as a sacred space for a deceased person to be placed, for family and friends to gather for initial service and in saying farewell. Often with a roofed porch and decorated with wood carvings, these spiritual entranceways helped increase a sense of transition, giving a physical threshold into holy ground. This lychgate is at Paul in West Cornwall. It has no decorated porch, but offers a rare example showing an original plinth where the co**se was seated before passage.

…Paul church was also famously burned by invading Spanish soldiers in 1595, and the soot stained stonework can still be seen inside.

A forgotten castle used to guard over St Ives town at The Island. This low promontory used to be called Pendinas, meaning ‘headland-castle’ from the pre-Roman times. Smatterings of evidence include a 16th Century ‘travel blog’ by poet John Leland referring to a castle here, and borough records in 1595 for the upkeep of fortifications and a platform to hold ‘great guns’. There’s also a faint castle ruin, just outline traces, piled stones facing west across Porthmeor Beach, and a belief that St Nicholas Chapel stands on old castle foundations. The outline of piled stone is similar to ‘Harrys Walls’ built as defences on the Isles of Scilly around 1550.

I never knew St Ives was so defensive!

Today, surrounded by holiday makers, it’s hard to imagine St Ives as a fortified town.

This child-like drawing is part of huge map that was presented to King Henry VIII to show where foreign invaders might attack. The image shows St Ives including its medieval harbour and a fort which defended the town somewhere near the current harbour pier (Smeaton’s Pier) in an area still locally named ‘The Castle’.

Today, 130 years after Virginia Woolf’s first recorded visit to Godrevy Lighthouse, we gathered to celebrate the writer’s connection with St Ives and to unveil a heritage plaque on the family home where they spent their youthful summers.

The unveiling was performed with a polite ceremony and acknowledgement of those who contributed to the installation, including the work undertaken by the Town Council, and the magnificent success of the fund raising which drew in money from around the world.

The current owners and tenants of Talland House generously hosted the event which was garnished with well appreciated wine and food.

Prof. Maggie Humm, who along with the Virginia Woolf Society petitioned the installation, gave a delightful presentation and reading from her novel ‘Talland House’.

The skies cleared giving us perfect views to the lighthouse.

We have listed building consent. One step closer to a heritage plaque at Talland House celebrating Virginia Woolf. Next stage, fund raising- please follow the link in the bio to Spacehive.com for the fundraising page. Very generous donations already received!

Photos include a view across St Ives Bay to the lighthouse and the front elevation of Talland House ready to receive its commemorative plaque.

“For the great plateful of blue water was before her; the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst ...” Virginia Woolf ‘To the Lighthouse’ (1927)

We’ve been working with St Ives Town Council and The Virginia Woolf Society to install a plaque at Talland House to commentate its literary association. This week our planning and listed building application received positive recognition from the local Conservation Officer. Our application can be viewed online, search ‘Cornwall planning register’ and use the reference no: PA22/00895

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Aged 10, on a Saturday in September, 1892, Adeline Virginia Stephen, who grew up to become Virginia Woolf, went boating across St Ives Bay with family and friends, sailing out towards the prominent landmark that was visible from their holiday residence.

The Hyde Park Gate News was the Stephen’s family newspaper, written by three of the young siblings, Thoby, Vanessa, and Virginia. The edition on September, Monday, 12th, 1892, records this trip: ‘On Saturday morning Master Hilary Hunt and Master Basil Smith came up to Talland House and asked Master Thoby and Miss Virginia Stephen to accompany them to the light-house as Freeman the boatman said that there was a perfect tide and wind for going there. Master Adrian Stephen was much disappointed at not being allowed to go. On arriving at the light-house Miss Virginia Stephen saw a small and dilapidated bird standing on one leg on the lighthouse. Mrs Hunt called the man and asked him how it had got there. He said that it had been blown there and they then saw that it's eyes had been picked out.”

Their arrival would have been at the large rocky outcrop, isolated 300 metres from the main shore with churning sea all around, the piled stone and mortar lighthouse, an octagonal sculptural form rising from the bedrock, a bright white beacon towering 26 metres high with a glass and copper pinnacle. The small curious group of visitors standing beneath may have looked somewhat out of place, shuffled along by the dutiful lighthouse keeper, sharing his nautical pokey with the tourists as they gaze all over the attraction with impulsive interest.

In her neatest handwriting, 10 year old Virginia signs her name in the visitors’ book, “A. V. Stephen - London”… one hundred and nineteen years later this Trinity House visitors’ book will sell at Bonhams Auction House in London for £10,250, more than double its guide price, the purchaser urged to make the investment in return for a connection, a physical link, to this, Virginia Woolf’s first recorded trip to Godrevy lighthouse.

With childlike candour, Monday’s edition of The Hyde Park Gate News concludes the story of the trip…. “On the way home Master Basil Smith “spued like fury”.’

Aged 10, on a Saturday in September, 1892, Adeline Virginia Stephen, who grew up to become Virginia Woolf, went boating across St Ives Bay with family and friends, sailing out towards the prominent landmark that was visible from their holiday residence.

The Hyde Park Gate News was the Stephen’s family newspaper, written by three of the young siblings, Thoby, Vanessa, and Virginia. The edition on September, Monday, 12th, 1892, records this trip: ‘On Saturday morning Master Hilary Hunt and Master Basil Smith came up to Talland House and asked Master Thoby and Miss Virginia Stephen to accompany them to the light-house as Freeman the boatman said that there was a perfect tide and wind for going there. Master Adrian Stephen was much disappointed at not being allowed to go. On arriving at the light-house Miss Virginia Stephen saw a small and dilapidated bird standing on one leg on the lighthouse. Mrs Hunt called the man and asked him how it had got there. He said that it had been blown there and they then saw that it's eyes had been picked out.”

Their arrival would have been at a large rocky outcrop, isolated 300 metres from the main shore with churning sea all around, the piled stone and mortar lighthouse, an octagonal sculptural form rising from the bedrock, a bright white beacon towering 26 metres high with a glass and copper pinnacle. The small curious group of visitors standing beneath may have looked somewhat out of place, shuffled along by the dutiful lighthouse keeper, sharing his nautical pokey with the tourists as they gaze all over the attraction with impulsive interest.

In her neatest handwriting, 10 year old Virginia signs her name in the visitors’ book, “A. V. Stephen - London”… one hundred and nineteen years later this Trinity House visitors’ book will sell at Bonhams Auction House in London for £10,250, more than double its guide price, the purchaser urged to make the investment in return for a connection, a physical link, to this, Virginia Woolf’s first recorded trip to Godrevy lighthouse.

With childlike candour, Monday’s edition of The Hyde Park Gate News concludes the story of the trip…. “On the way home Master Basil Smith “spued like fury”.’

We working on installing a heritage plaque at Talland House to commemorate Virginia Woolf and the literary inspiration of her childhood holidays in St Ives. The plaque will be made by Cornish makers, Frank and Sue Ashworth, famed suppliers of the English Heritage Blue Plaque Scheme. Their plaques are handmade with clay, inlaid with letters and details, and finished with a durable ceramic coating. They are a husband and wife team that made their first plaque in 1984, since celebrating the lives of people such as Jimi Hendrix, Bobby Moore, Alfred Hitchcock and over 300 other worthy recipients.

The idea of erecting 'memorial tablets' was first proposed by William Ewart MP in the House of Commons in 1863, with the first plaque erected to honour Lord Byron in 1867. Unfortunately that plaque was lost in 1889 when the building was demolished!

Researching more into the history of Talland House, this idyllic residence is set within a suburb that grew during the C19 as a Victorian resort, partly driven by the arrival of the St Ives branch-line which connected with London from 1877. Today’s character is testament to this proud era of growth. Large villas, townhouses, imposing terraces, and hotels, verdant streets and decorated gardens, the earliest promenade at The Terrace, and the historic civic space at The Malakoff, all exploiting the wide views across St Ives Bay, which never cease to captivate and enthral. No wonder Virginia Woolf’s father described their holidays here as a “pocket paradise”, a place of “intense domestic happiness”.

Pictured is Talland House today; Talland House c.1890; Virginia Woolf and her younger brother playing cricket in the garden of Talland House; and a c.1890 view along The Terrace towards The Malakoff with the branch-line station to left.