Regent Square, Penzance 1836 – 1841

I’ll begin with the field called ‘the Close Yeare Meadow in the Town of Penzance’, whose ownership is documented as far back as 1727. In 1814 Joseph Carne the then owner, started to lease this field as building plots at a yearly rent - and this was the start of Regent Terrace. By 1830 the rest of the meadow, ‘the field on which Regent Square now stands [and which] was used for Sunday School treats’, was also for lease.

Reproduced by kind permission of the Archives and Cornish Studies Service (ref. TM 179)

St Mary’s Church already occupied its present position, and the church wardens were asked if they wished to buy the meadow and extend the burial grounds: ‘it happens that more than an acre of ground adjoining may now be purchased for £300, which ground will otherwise be sold for the purposes of building ... it is the general wish of the inhabitants [of Regent Terrace] that the said land should likewise be purchased.’ But as we know, commercial interests usually prevail over the wishes of the locals, and in 1836 Joseph Carne sold off the leases of the remainder of Close Yeare to be developed into Regent Square: a square which is not a square and which was built after the Regency period.

It was then common practice for a builder to take out a long-term lease and pay a peppercorn rent for the first year. He would usually erect ‘shells’ and offer them for sale on a long lease; the new leaseholder chose his own internal layout, paying the master builder the agreed sum. The original plans for the Terrace and Square were similar in design and were both drawn up by John Crocker; the ‘proposed plan for building Regent Square’ was shown to Mr JS Courtney by Mr Matthews, ‘many years surveyor of the town’ in 1835. The new developments were called after George IV ‘when during the incapacity of his father he was Prince Regent’. The proportions of the facades of the square fall within the Golden Section. Previously leaseholders had to pay tithes [in money or kind] to the landlord, but after the 1836 Tithe Commutation Act a yearly rent was payable instead.

Permission kindly given by the owner of the drawing and the copyright

 A square of 17 houses was planned and the conditions of the lease were stringent. The first leaseholder was Henry Matthews, and his contract includes stipulations designed to ensure a high standard of building at number 17. The surrounding wall was to be eight feet high, and fashioned from granite or ‘downs stone’. The front was to be covered in stucco – a fine plaster finish much favoured for decoration – or ‘Roman cement.’ ‘Good Norway or Baltic timber’ was specified for the woodwork, which included guttering, and scantle slate for the roof. In front there was to be a garden, with a kerb and iron railings. To avoid annoying the neighbours, the chimneys were to be as high as Carne’s surveyor deemed necessary. (For the full text of the contract see Appendix below)

The lessee also agreed to ‘keep in perfect and substantial repair the said Dwelling House and buildings and repair and keep clean the sinks and drains’ not to allow any ‘Beer or Spirit Shop of any trade or business which may be nauseous or offensive to any of the other tenants.’ Presumably all the other leases had similar terms. While the facades are mostly alike, the back of each house is individual as can be seen by a stroll along the land and alleys. This was so from the beginning. What is very different today is that three of the original properties have been divided in two, front to back, and an additional house has been added on to the south-west end to give a total of 21 houses. By the 1841 census only original number 6 had been divided, number 7 had not, and numbers 8, 9, 10 and 11 were under construction.

John Croker was listed in Pigot’s and Williams Commercial Directories not as an architect but as a builder, a cabinet maker, a paper-hanger, an upholsterer and an appraiser - clearly a useful man to have around. It is likely that he used a pattern (such as could be found in a pattern book similar to Loudon’s Encyclopaedia) for his design for a ‘perfect small square of 21 houses, with a serpentine road running diagonally across it, with scribed pilasters and Doric columned porches’. The Window Tax, in force until 1851, put a levy of five pounds on all houses with an additional tax on six or more windows. To avoid this tax, windows were sometimes bricked in, or dummy windows could be installed to maintain symmetry. Sash windows had been introduced from the Low Countries the previous century and were seen as a distinct improvement on the traditional leaded casements; the principal rooms benefitted from taller windows. As to their proportions, the rule of thumb was that the height should be from one-and-a-half to one-and-three-quarters the breadth.

In 1833, Loudon estimated the cost of building ‘A Dwelling with Five Rooms, with Conveniences, in the Old English Style, where the building material is chiefly Stone’ of 23,024 cubic feet to be from £575.12 to £287.16s. As it is likely the Regent Square houses had more than five rooms, the selling price of £265 for number 21 was good value in 1847. Another of the new houses was put up for auction and only needed one advertisement

A Dwelling House situate at Regent’s Square in this town, consisting of Two Parlours, a Drawing Room, Four Bedrooms, and Two Kitchens, with every necessary convenience at the back thereof, and an excellent Garden in front; now in the occupation of Capt. Thomas Barnes. The premises command an uninterrupted view of the Mount’s Bay.

One of the many unanswered questions is: where did Regent Square get its water from? We know that water from the Causewayhead Reservoir passed, via a shoot on the corner of Alverton Street, down Chapel Street to the top of Quay Street, where there was another shoot. But were there any wells with more wholesome water nearby?

Mr Edward Smith recalled ‘a number of men and women got their living fetching water in earthenware pitchers from the shoots, pumps and wells at 2d (2 pennies) a turn. In a dry season when water was scarce ... the carriers often had to wait an hour before their turn came to fill their pitchers’ and fights sometimes broke out.

By kind permission of the Morrab Library Photo Archive

The 1841 census lists the early owners, tenants and lodgers of the square: five were of independent means, seven were servants, two were mariners, one nurse [probably a nursemaid], two accountants, one clergyman, three shipwrights, one carpenter, one innkeeper, four masons, one teacher, one housebuilder. The number per household varied from one to nine. The numbers of people do not match the numbers of houses as in some cases several adults of working age lived together while in others, houses were still under construction.

The average age, 29, is surprisingly young, and partly explained by the 31 children living there; at least two of these children lie buried in St Mary’s churchyard. All but two of the residents were Cornish born.

One feature of the original meadow may still remain: the curious serpentine road that leads from Voundervour Lane through the square to Queen Street. My theory is that this was an original right of way which the new road was obliged to follow.

Penzance Gazette
shall have the last word:

Few towns possess such natural attractions as Penzance, its pavement may be vile, its streets narrow, and irregular, and beyond measure unclean, its light may just serve to render the darkness visible ... This may be true, but then there is the neighbourhood, the bay with its every varying shades, the North Channel with its deep blue tint ...

Jenny Dearlove

Image ©Clive Cooper used by kind permission

This article can be read in conjunction with another on this site,
On this Day 22nd November 1871

Further reading and general references:

GG Boase, ed Peter Pool, Reminiscences of Penzance, 1829-97, Headland Press, 1987

JC Loudon An Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm and Villa Architecture, London 1846, 1st edition 1833

Peter Laws in Peter Pool (ed) The History of the Town and Borough of Penzance, 1974

Richard Reid, The Georgian House and its Details, 1989, Bishopsgate Press, London.

Deeds to 21 Regent Square, originally number 17 in the possession of the author

Appendix: contract agreed by Henry Matthews:

shall appoint, build and in a workmanlike manner finish fit for habitation one good and substantial dwelling house, being number Seventeen ... agreeably to the plan prepared for that purpose by Mr John Crocker and make roads or walls in and upon the same premises pursuant to the same Plan And shall and will build the walls not less than eighteen feet high from the line of the first floor and the Court walls eight feet high from the line of the Court with granite and downs Stone using in the String Course and window sills fine Slataxed Granite Stone and finish the front with Stucco or roman Cement agreeable to the said plan and use for the exterior doors and Jambs window Frames and sashes wall plates and water shoots good Norway or Baltic Timber cover the Roofs with the best Scantle Slate at the four and a half pin with Rag Eaves laid in lime and sand half abithow ad half common lime and the residue of the ground hereby demised in front of the said house as marked out of the said plan convert into a Garden or Shrubbery to be enclosed by a cut Stone curb six inches wide and one foot high above the garden line and an iron pallisade thereon uniform with the plot or piece of ground next adjoining to the said Dwelling and will at his or their own costs carry up in the Gable end or Punion wall of the said intended Dwelling so many flues of the usual size for Chimneys as shall be deemed necessary by the Surveryor of the said Joseph Carne.