Best Foot Forward: the Public Benefit Boot Company in Penzance
Still clearly visible high up on the corners of 27 Market Place Penzance, the entwined initials ‘P B B C’
Photo: Kevin Camidge
In the heart of Penzance, at 27 Market Place, is a notable building with a terracotta façade in Art Noveau style at second and third floor level. Integral to the decoration are the initials PBBC, proudly incorporated as testimony to the original occupants of the site. Look up, stranger, and behold: the ghost of the Public Benefit Boot Company.
Despite its title the company was not a co-operative in any shape or form, although it did aim to provide footwear at low cost by means of bulk purchasing direct from the factory. [i] The phrase ‘public benefit’ was also used, for example, by Friggens’ vehicle hire in Causewayhead, and did not carry its present-day legal significance.
The company already had branches at Redruth, Truro, St Austell and Penryn when it launched a teaser advertising campaign – with a blank rectangle captioned ‘Watch This Space’ – in the local press during May 1894.
‘watch this space…’ teaser campaign, Cornishman 10 5 1894, p 4 col 1
Collection of the Morrab Library
The following month the ‘space’ was filled with an image of the company’s trademark – a giant horsedrawn wagon occupied by an elegant gentleman’s ankle-boot, its top over 2m above the ground.[ii] More than the mere fantasy of a graphic artist, the giant boot was used as a display item for real-life promotions, and a version of it – transportable by train - probably appeared in the Hayle Carnival procession of 1894.[iii]
The space is filled… Cornishman 7 6 1894, p 4 col 1
Collection of the Morrab Library
Until 1907, the company had two Penzance addresses. The first was given at the time as 3, Greenmarket – but the properties in the area seem to have been renumbered, and this represents what is now 27 Market Place, east of the White Lion. [iv] The second address – from 1898 - was 26 Market Place which is, confusingly, neither opposite nor adjacent to 27: it is round the corner, and was later occupied by Burton’s before its 2026 reinvention as the Wren and Raven café. The two shops were linked by a thoroughfare running behind the busy corner, which was used to transfer goods between them.[v]
A man who stole a pair of boots hanging up outside the ‘Greenmarket’ shop (27 Market Place) in November 1896 attempted to make his escape via the passage which still exists between the shop and the White Lion.[vi]
27 Market Place, 2018. Note the adjacent side passage to the right, the getaway route of a Victorian boot thief. The building is now, happily, reoccupied
Photo: Kevin Camidge
Such an open display of goods may have been a relative novelty; when the theft came to court the shop manager, Mr Morrish, was given a severe dressing down by Alderman W H Julyan, who told him: ‘the practice of hanging boots outside shop-windows is a direct temptation to steal… and… ought to be discontinued.’ Morrish retorted that the company was ‘bound to do it,’ and that ‘every business almost’ now displayed goods in the same way. Julyan replied that the practice was ‘a result of competition,’ which had ‘a great deal to answer for.’
A similar comment was made a few weeks later at a court in Redruth, again following theft from a Public Benefit Boot Company shop.[vii] Was the local establishment of magistrates (at that date usually mayors and aldermen) and traders hostile towards the arrival of a national chain with innovative marketing strategies and cheaper goods? A second Penzance theft in 1898 brought a similar reprimand from Alderman Julyan, who had now been elevated to Mayor but still found himself powerless to influence the company’s policy. [viii] Despite the ill-will of magistrates and occasional theft, the exterior display of goods seems to have done no harm to the Public Benefit Boot Company. Advertising a Christmas 1898 offer of three china plates with every sale, the retailer boasted that only its ‘enormous turnover’ allowed it to present such a valuable gift instead of the ‘old-fashioned Almanack’ which – we may infer – less go-ahead retailers were presenting to their customers. [ix]
In 1906 Mr Holtham, a company employee based in Penzance, won a gold medal for his window-dressing. [x] A few months later, the shop with the Greenmarket address was cleared and its contents auctioned prior to what was described on several occasions as ‘rebuilding.’ [xi] The sale particulars included eight outside gas lamps, which indicates a significant length of shop front. The town council was engaged in a long-term project to buy up properties in the area to facilitate road widening,[xii] and in previous years several business owners had been persuaded that this was in the interests of the town and therefore of themselves.
No such sentiments could be wrung from the Public Benefit Boot Company, which as a national chain had no particular interest in making sacrifices to improve the townscape or traffic flow; the company bluntly replied that ‘the value of the site is in its prominent frontage.’ If required to move the building line further back, it would demand a higher price than the town council could agree to pay; an early example of powerful retailers having deeper pockets than local authority planning departments. The ‘prominent frontage’ in question can be seen to this day, standing out from its neighbours, conferring the added benefit of small side elevations which could provide display windows directly facing passers-by.
The company seems to have been anxious to retain its profile in the town, and perhaps also to restore public and official goodwill after its refusal to co-operate with the town council. Later in 1906 it donated a ‘special’ prize (although this may have been no more than end of line or otherwise surplus boots) to the East End Regatta. The following year – while the rebuilding was still in progress – it stumped up a subscription to support the Military Band.[xiii] The East End Regatta, as its name suggests, was an event primarily intended for the working class people living in the Quay and ‘Battlefields’ area of the town: the company was making a careful choice of where to place what we would now term its sponsorship.
The PBBC initials woven into the decorative façade of the new building, so beautifully designed, were already obsolete. Despite the populist appeal that the phrase ‘public benefit’ might have been expected to retain in the early 20th century, a major re-badging and rationalisation of the brand was underway, and the new building was never known by the old name.[xiv] Instead, it was named ‘Lennard’s Chambers,’ a name with altogether different connotations: ancient palaces, private spaces and legal proceedings.
The building still occupied by Lennards in the mid-20th century – note the display potential of the eye-catching side windows provided by the projecting frontage
“Greenmarket with Shops and Lloyds Bank,” Morrab Library Photographic Archive, accessed May 16, 2026, https://photoarchive.morrablibrary.org.uk/items/show/8806
Although essentially the same company as the PBBC, the footwear retailer on the ground floor was to trade as Lennards for most of the 20th century. Britannic Insurance and similarly prestigious firms (including the architects commissioned to build the seafront Pavilion in 1911) were the first occupants of the office space above. [xv]
From private benefit to public splendour; the boot, one might say, was now on the other foot.
Further reading
Seddon, Brian and Bean, David L. (2004), Well-heeled – the Remarkable Story of the Public Benefit Boot Company
Rootsweb, ‘The Public Benefit Boot Company’ (undated) (http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~publicbenefit/genealogy/index.html (accessed 14 5 2026)
‘Building Our Past’ website, ‘The Public Benefit Boot Company and Lennards’ (5 4 2016) https://buildingourpast.com/2016/04/05/the-public-benefit-boot-co-and-lennards (accessed 14 5 2026)
[i] http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~publicbenefit/genealogy/index.html (accessed 14 5 2026) suggests an altruistic element but this may have been no more than a carefully constructed media image; https://buildingourpast.com/2016/04/05/the-public-benefit-boot-co-and-lennards (accessed 14 5 2026) describes the name as a ‘cynical advertising ploy’
[ii] For a photograph from which the size can be estimated see Seddon, Brian and Bean, David L. (2004), Well-heeled – the Remarkable Story of the Public Benefit Boot Company , fig 24 p 15. For local representations see advertisement – ‘The Public Benefit Boot Company’ eg Cornishman 7 6 1894, 19 7 1894 both p 4 col 1; Cornish Telegraph 14 6 1894 p 4 col 5. The company continued to place this advertisement weekly in both newspapers until July 1896, when their press advertising came to an abrupt end
[iii] ‘Hayle Regatta, Horticultural Show and Carnival’ - ‘The Carnival’ – official procession list Cornish Telegraph 6 9 1894 p 6 col 3. The Hayle Regatta was the most successful and long-lived in the area
[iv] The Greenmarket address was the only one being used at the end of 1896 (advertisement: ‘During Xmas Week’ Cornishman 24 12 1896 p 9 col 6), and to appear in Kelly’s Directory 1897 (p 390). Both this and the 26 Market Place address were in use two years later (advertisement ‘Trade Addresses’ – ‘Important Notice’ Cornish Telegraph 15 12 1898 p 4 col 5)
[v] In the report of a 1902 prosecution for theft, a shop assistant testifies that he worked at the Greenmarket shop but from the fitting room ‘went by the back to the shop in the Market Place to get another pair’ – this is followed by a further allusion to ‘the other shop’ (‘Impudent Shop Thefts’ Cornish Telegraph 5 3 1902 p 5 col 2)
[vi] ‘Penzance Special Borough Sessions’ - ‘What Competition has to Answer for’ Cornishman 5 11 1896 p 4 col 3
[vii] ‘Carelessness of Shopkeepers Tempts Two Young Redruth Girls’ Cornishman 21 1 1897 p 3 col 2
[viii] ‘Thefts from Shops in Penzance – Leniency of Bench – Warning to Shopkeepers’ Cornish Telegraph 8 9 1898 p 5 col 4; ‘A Warning to Shopkeepers – The Borough Bench Deprecates a Too Common Practice’ Cornishman 8 9 1898 p 6 col 4
[ix] ‘Trade Address’ – ‘Important Notice’ Cornish Telegraph 15 12 1898, 22 12 1898 both p 4 col 5
[x] ‘Local and District News’ paragraph beginning ‘Mr R F Holtham’ Cornish Telegraph 19 4 1906 p 4 col 3
[xi] ‘Sales By Auction’ – ‘Green Market Penzance, August 17th 1906’ Cornish Telegraph 9 8 1906 and 16 8 1906 p 1 col 3
[xii] Penzance Town Council’ - ‘Green Market Improvements’ Cornishman 22 3 1906 p 7 col 2 ‘Penzance Town Council’ - ‘Green Market Corner’ Cornishman 19 4 1906 p 8 col 3
[xiii] ‘Penzance Harbour Sports’ - event list, sculling race Cornishman 6 9 1906 p 2 col 4, ‘Public Notice - Penzance Military Band’ alphabetical list Cornishman 13 6 1907 p 1 col 7
[xiv] Lennards had been trading under the PBBC name since the 1880s – Well-heeled pp 24-25,
https://buildingourpast.com/2016/04/05/the-public-benefit-boot-co-and-lennards (accessed16 5 2026)
[xv] ‘The New Pavilion For Penzance’ - ‘The Architects’ Cornish Telegraph 9 11 1911 p 5 col 6
Penwith Local History Group
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