Industrial Village to Peaceful Hamlet: Halsetown homes 1832 - 1950
This is a chapter from our book Homes and Households in West Cornwall, where it appears on pages 85-92.
As the book has now been out of print for some time, we provide it here as a Penwith Paper. Apart from the incorporation of footnotes into the text, it is exactly as originally published – except that, unfortunately, we are unable to reproduce most of the images and have provided alternatives.
This chapter will look at the early years of the mining village of Halsetown and, after comparing its cottages with traditional homes for mining families, it will sketch in its subsequent fortunes from boom to decay to the current relative prosperity. The research process has been enlivened by visits to residents and conversations with people closely connected to the hamlet, whom you will meet as you read on.
'Within two miles of the town [of St Ives], a neat village of about eighty houses, with a good inn, in the centre of a neighbourhood abounding with tin and copper mines has been erected within the last few years by J. Halse, esq., from which it derives its name' wrote W. Penaluna in 1843.[i]
This positive view of Halsetown contrasts sharply with the childhood recollections of Henry Irving, the actor, who moved there in 1842, some ten years after the hamlet was founded : 'I recall a village nestling between sloping hills, bare and desolate, disfigured by great heaps of slack from the mines…It was a wild, weird place, fascinating in its own peculiar beauty…The stories attached to rock, well and hill were unending: every man and woman had folk-lore to tell us youngsters.'[ii]
Henry Irving on stage – 45 years after his arrival in Halsetown
Unknown source, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Today Halsetown is a remarkably well-preserved hamlet on a windy site, tucked in off the B3311 Nancledra road between Penzance and St Ives, and presents a peaceful and relatively prosperous scene. Founded by James Halse in the early 1830s, it has rightly been called a planned village; the granite houses were built more or less to the same basic design, and each had a plot of about one-quarter of an acre. The original houses were built either in pairs of back-to-backs or in semi-detached dwellings, along a loose grid of three or four rows, and separated by grassy tracks wide enough to let a cart by. There is surprising variation in the Halsetown cottages even though to the casual visitor they all seem pleasingly similar. Ivy explained that those on the east side of the hamlet are slightly larger, mostly built in pairs side-by-side, and intended for the mine captains and foremen, while those on the west side were mostly built in pairs of back-to-backs for the miners.
Along the paved road that leads to Laity Lane the cottages are either in short terraces or in back-to-backs. In 1861, when the nearby St Ives Consols mine was flourishing, the census counted 553 people living in 102 households in this hamlet, but its prosperous days were over by 1876 with the import of cheap foreign tin. By the turn of the twentieth century there were only 209 inhabitants living in 43 households and the decline continued until the middle of the last century; today the village has a new lease of life with about 200 residents living in its remaining 72 houses which are well spaced out on the west-facing slope, each with its large garden enclosed by a Cornish hedge.
At the time the hamlet was constructed the idea of planned villages was in the news, for New Lanark had been established in 1800 and, nearer to hand, the plan for model cottages to be built on Captain Vinnicombe Penrose’s estate at Ethy, near Lostwithiel, was in print.[iii]
The round houses at Veryan, of a similar date to Halsetown
Like other reformers, Penrose recommended that internal walls be mere partitions open at the top to allow the 'free circulation of air throughout, and all purified by the fire in the kitchen.' [iv] The Royal Cornwall Gazette too had its own views on the subject, promoting the construction of 'Double Cottages' while warning that more than three in a row 'is a School of idleness, dirt, and wickedness', a consideration which may not have troubled the businessman and politician James Halse.[v]
Unlike the traditional English village Halsetown does not have a green, nor was it ever subservient to the manor house and the vicarage; instead the original ninety or so houses were built 'on upwards of twenty-six acres of land' to provide accommodation for the miners employed by Halse.[vi] It was in fact a village of tied cottages, where your home went with your job, and it as completed in time for the first general election after the1832 Reform Act. As this Act increased the electorate to include £10 borough leaseholders, so Halsetown’s male householders became eligible to vote. Their local Tory candidate was none other than James Halse who fought a corrupt campaign to get re-elected. Standing for Parliament as employer and landlord in the days before the secret ballot, he was in a position to dictate how his tenants voted; and vote for him they did. In fact he was elected to Parliament by 'upwards of one hundred majority', just a few more votes than the number of houses he had built.[vii]
Was life better in Halsetown?
While owning your own home provides some security of tenure, a real advantage to renting property is that you can move to wherever there are jobs; tenants at Halsetown had a mile or less to walk to work at one of the St Ives Consols Mines, whereas those home-owners living at some distance had to walk up to twelve miles or else lodge with a local family.[viii] This village may have its origins in an ambitious man’s self-interest but in the 1830s these cottages were a distinct improvement on other accommodation the miners’ families might have found. They were solidly built and offered one room up, one room down and a loft; outside each had a plot large enough for a pig-and-potato subsistence husbandry, with chickens and a vegetable patch in addition to a privy, a fuel store and a washing line.[ix] The inconveniences of having only one door, no through ventilation, 'the smeech which pervades the air' from the mine chimneys, and no running water or sanitation were similar to most cottages for working people at that time.[x]
Photo of Miss Gracie Wearne in her living room in Number 7, Halsetown, shows the slab with her Staffordshire pottery, the thick exterior walls, and matting on the floor. The settee was moved to take this picture, and there are no soft chairs
Permission to reproduce this image has been given by the owner
By walking around the village and visiting some of the homes, you can see that all the two-room cottages were built with either one or two windows on each of the two floors and a staircase to the upper floor. In Eileen’s house there is still an inglenook with an open hearth fireplace, measuring roughly five feet six inches across, on the gable end of the living room; standing downstairs, the upper floor-boards were visible as was customary. The downstairs floors were probably brick on sand, according to George. Patrick has calculated that the rooms were between seven and seven and-a-half feet high and the total floor space, which varied between 200 and 376 square feet (excluding the loft), depended on the width of the cottage; the original glass windows would have been sash. Access to the windowless loft was presumably by ladder, and this could be used as a sleeping space, a traditional Cornish practice according to Hamilton Jenkin. Mary supports this as she remembers beds in the loft in Rose Cottage opposite the pub, where she lived as a child with her grandparents and three uncles, necessitating appropriate sleeping space for five adults and one child. Henry Irving recalled his grandmother’s 'kitchen - it was a living room, by the way, and looked cozy enough with its ingle-nook and oak beams embellished with rows of hams…'. Cooking was done in a 'crock' (a large iron bowl with a lid), and bread and pasties baked on a flat baking iron covered by a baking kettle (an inverted iron pot).[xi] Today there is no evidence of bread ovens in the cottages I visited.
The alternative, the traditional Cornish two-room cottage, was made of cob (clay and straw or horsehair) with poles and reeds for the roof, while the floor was simply trodden-down earth or lime-ash, which quickly formed holes made by the hob-nailed boots[xii]; the 'narrow and infrequent windows admit(ted) but little light' but, like the ill-fitting doors, plenty of draught. Writing in 1808 GB Worgan noted 'in some of these miserable dwellings …. the poor inhabitants (were) busy in placing their bowls, crocks, and pans, to catch the (rain) waters pouring in at the roof.' Often there was no land at all around these old properties as they were built on waste ground beside the road or squeezed between existing buildings.[xiii] Cooking, as in Halsetown, was generally over an open fire of turf or furze in the fireplace. In 1858, Dr Richard Couch described miners’ cottages in nearby Lelant: 'If they are not in swampy situations, they are as exposed as possible…Many have only two rooms, the bedroom and the kitchen. The kitchens have only earth floors, the doors so dilapidated…as to admit every wind that blows, and the rooms are consequently cold and comfortless.'[xiv]
In fact, in 1865 St Ives Council ordered 'the filthy state of certain dwelling houses and other places in the town' to be dealt with according to the Nuisances Removal Act ; these conditions still remained at the end of the century when its '(o)ld, narrow, crooked, ill paved streets…still charm the artistic eye and shock the olfactory nerves.' [xv]
Halse’s specifications can be usefully compared to the minimum standards recommended by a housing charity just a few years later in 1846: 209 square feet for a two-room family house but with the addition of 'requisite conveniences' that were missing in Halsetown.[xvi] As an indication of how standards have risen over time, the Local Government Board’s 1912 Report advised that every house should contain a living room, a parlour, a scullery with a bath, a separate WC for each dwelling, three bedrooms, a bathroom and a larder. The living area was to be between 900 and 1080 square feet.[xvii] But judged in the context of his time, Halse did create desirable residences: he kept to the norms expected, built in the style of the local vernacular and introduced minor improvements. For example, the large plots not only allowed the tenants to produce some of their own food but also to sell surplus; one advantage of being a miner was that work hours were usually limited to eight hours a day (possibly excluding the descent to and ascent from the work area) which could leave the men and boys time to work in their gardens. The vegetables grown in cottage gardens at that time included potatoes, turnips, onions, peas, beans, carrots, parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes, swedes, kohl rabi, beets and cabbage.[xviii]
The Halsetown Inn, built at the same time as the houses and opened in 1831
© John Stratford via Creative Commons
Economically this was a turbulent time when the scarcity of wheat and high cost of living compelled some miners in West Cornwall to take action; their marches and demonstrations were sometimes successful and did prevent Cornish wheat being shipped out of the county.[xix]
Although with no secret ballot Halse’s tenants were obliged to vote for him or lose their job and home, he still felt the need to placate his workforce; to this end he must have pleased both the drinkers and the Methodist teetotallers by opening Halsetown Inn and the Wesleyan chapel, and then pleased the entire hamlet by setting up the first Halsetown Cattle and Horse Fair (with fireworks) all in the first two years of the village‘s existence.[xx] It would seem that he could be generous too when it suited him as '[a]n Old St Ives woman speaking of the Halse family some years ago said “the gentry…paid all the schooling for the children, and bought all the stuff for their clothes…The ladies was very good to us, and so was Mr Halse.”'[xxi] On the other hand, he established a village shop and compelled his tenants to use it by threatening dismissal if they patronised rival shops in St Ives town.[xxii]
After his death in 1838, the hamlet he founded for his own ends continued to flourish; a little school was started in 1840, the Church of St John’s was opened in 1866 and by1868 there was 'a good school and four chapels.'[xxiii]
Home Life
In 1837 the new borough council of St Ives issued its byelaws which, by forbidding certain practices, reveals how people were actually living at the time Halsetown was established.[xxiv]
Councillors concerned with public health decided there was to be 'no washing of any Tripe or other entrails of any Animal or any Fish Clothes or Vegetables in any Trough' nor dropping any 'putrid broken or Mun Fish Seaweed Night soil Coaltar or other noisome or offensive Matter on the public street'; nor 'discarding of human excrement or…void(ing) Urine in a public place'. Furthermore any 'Privy Necessary House or Slaughter House' was to be emptied between eleven at night and six in the morning and anyone throwing urine or 'other offensive matter of any kind from out of any doorway or window' was to be fined ten shillings.
All these were sensible precautions since there were in fact outbreaks of 'that direful and pestilential calamity the cholera' in St Ives in 1832 and again in 1838. 'Nuisances' were still being committed in 1878 when the Medical Officer of Health was ordered by the council to report on the state of Halsetown.[xxv] Of relevance here is a slightly earlier government enquiry into the condition of mines and miners in West Cornwall which concluded that the men’s bad health arose from several causes including 'their mode of living, too many of them huddling together in small rooms', defective drainage, lack of openable windows and refuse thrown on dust heaps by the front door.[xxvi]
The borough council kept an eye on personal morals too: Byelaw number six stated that no nakedness 'for the purpose of bathing within view of a public road' was to be allowed. Given the lack of space indoors one wonders where the men and boys were supposed to wash after their stint in the mine; Ivy remembers her father in the 1930s, and then later her husband in the 1950s, washing at a stone slab outside the door for lack of a bathroom, in defiance of Byelaw number six. The council was also concerned with the control of animals; it was forbidden for example for a 'Horse to serve a Mare' in the public streets or 'to turn loose any Horse Cattle Swine Bulldog or Mastiff'. [xxvii]
To what extent did the villagers follow the bye-laws and live in an orderly manner? The Borough Council had its own views on this; in 1846, when the population was nearing its height, one and later two part-time constables were assigned to police the village at an annual salary of one guinea each. In addition, police officers were voted money for great-coats and shoes. [xxviii]
Reading between the lines village life seems to have been lively from the start, with 'a public house row' and a charge of stabbing reported in 1837, mothers summonsed for not sending their children to school (due to lack of boots), a divorce, and an assault involving three Halsetown women. While it is quite likely that the tenants 'slept both ends of the bed' the rumour that 'pigs were kept underneath the stairs' was probably a disparaging reference to the custom of hanging a treated pig carcass in a cupboard under the stairs.[xxix] The Inn was seen by some as a 'real rough drinking place' during 'the old, boisterous, hard-drinking mining era'. Cyril Noall records the tradition of Maze Monday, the Monday after the monthly Saturday pay day, when miners took a holiday from work and enjoyed themselves with wrestling and hard drinking. But it was not all fun; tragic deaths and serious accidents in the mine were reported and as can be seen in the census table at the end of this chapter, the number of widows is significant.[xxx]
1841 census
The censuses can give us a lot of useful information about the people listed, bearing in mind the usual caveats about wrong or misleading entries, residents away from home, and furthermore in Halsetown, the individual properties were not identified by number or any other device.[xxxi] The 1841 census shows a population of 499 people living in eighty-six households; the average household size of 5.8 may not seem high, but eleven families are listed as having nine or more members, and one had thirteen.
Today we cannot imagine such over-crowding in two basic rooms with no washing or toilet facilities; this is where the sleeping loft would have been useful and in addition the shift system at the mine could mean a shift system for beds too. At this time there were 52 lodgers in the hamlet who would go home on Saturday night if they could, and return for the following week bringing their own food with them.[xxxii] Among the working residents, 118 stated they were directly employed in mining although everyone in work would have been economically dependent on St Ives Consols, however indirectly; as the major employer Consols needed labourers and craftsmen of all sorts as well as mine workers.
Although the mine was extremely profitable for shareholders, the low wages paid can be deduced from the necessity for old and young to earn their keep; the youngest child working was seven years old, and there were altogether 13 children under the age of 12 employed at this time. The oldest employees listed were aged 65 and their small number may be accounted for by the fact that mining was a dangerous and exhausting business; if miners survived they were frequently in a physically weakened state and ceased working underground.. Hamilton Jenkin states that the average mining wage per calendar month in 1838 (after deductions made for equipment, the sick-club and the barber) was £2.12.6. , and in 1849 £2.16.0. Wages had risen only slightly above this low level by 1864. Halse must have worked out his employees wages carefully in 1832 so they could pay their annual housing costs of £10 (the qualification for voting) and have enough to live on. It is clear that a miner’s wife had an extremely tight budget.[xxxiii]
According to the Parliamentary Report of 1842, children working in mining were largely employed above ground from the age of seven or eight starting at a wage of 'two or three pence per day' for ten hours a day in summer, and boys could work underground from the age of ten or eleven. It was noted that children were expected to contribute to the household economy by supporting themselves from an early age. Since mining work was undertaken by many groups of sub-contractors, the children were generally able to work for their relatives and the report notes the 'generous and manly' feeling of the men towards the boys in their team; the employment tradition in West Cornwall was favourably compared to conditions 'in some (other) employments.' For their meal break the youngsters would take potato pasties or hoggan, a pastry cake of potato or raisins, or perhaps their mother would bring these items hot to the children; they drank cold water 'sometimes obtained with difficulty' or an infusion of hedgerow herbs such as mugwort. The provision of equipment and clothing was another expense for the household economy; underground workers changed into 'a loose woollen dress, thick shoes without stockings, and a strong hat…usually weighing from one to two pounds, and affording efficient protection to the head from falling bodies and blows.' [xxxiv]
20th century Halsetown
Recent interviews with residents give valuable and lively insights into some of the practices of the 1930s that may go back to the 19th century. Once child employment stopped it could have been a happy place to grow up in, with almost no traffic, dozens of others to play with, 'the rocks' on the top road to clamber over, slide down and tear your britches on, 'the park' to play in and nearby Steeple Woods to explore.[xxxv]
The Rocks, where generations of children have played, the end of number 7 (right), and numbers 13 1nd 14 (left)
© Glyn Richards
Hannah, now in her 80s, has lived all her life in the same house; when she was a child, her grandmother lived nearby and would wave a tea-towel as a sign that there was a jug of milk or cream ready for her to fetch. Water was a perennial problem: 'Launders from every corner of your little cottage, or your shed in the garden' fed into barrels and this water, used for washing, was called 'codlin water'. But this was insufficient so the children used to collect water from one of the three pumps which were situated by the pub, in front of the laundry (the site of the rope-factory in the nineteenth century) and by Number 59; if these wells ran dry, water was collected from Benny’s chute at Balnoon. The girls carried two cans containing two-and-a-half gallons each; in Victorian days of course there were wells where the pumps later stood. In at least one house the larder was under the stairs, while the meat safe was fixed to the outside wall. In hot weather the meat, mostly rabbit, was washed with vinegar to kill off the maggots; rabbit was either caught by ferrets, snared or shot, though anyone doing this before the 1880s could have been breaking the law.[xxxvi]
Tom Adams with his mother outside their house, number 41
Permission to reproduce this image has been given by the owner
As for toilet facilities, the expression 'bucket and chuck it' is still widely used to describe how families were managing in the first half of the 20th century; one girl’s job was to tear up the News of The World into small squares to be used as toilet paper for the following week. There were no dustmen, so rubbish was either burned or buried, while bottles and tins were stuffed into holes in the hedges. Well into the last century Hannah’s mother and the other women of the hamlet would 'religiously' follow the Monday morning ritual of going up Steeple Hill to the woods to gather firewood. In the 1930s there were two or three shops, and a Post Office while fish, apples and turnips were sold by rounds men from horses and carts.[xxxvii]
Over time it seems that the villagers had developed an independent spirit, with a taste for their own irreverent traditions: they boasted a Poet Laureate, a national anthem, and a Mock Mayor whose 'election' they celebrated with a banquet in the Halsetown Inn, a scene accompanied by 'the usual abundance of light refreshments.' Halsetown Fair appears to have been a raucous event from its early days, needing constables to be drafted in and even occasioning a proposal, luckily abandoned, to abolish it altogether.[xxxviii]
The fate of the village mirrored the economic times and its decline continued into the twentieth century; in 1934 a Ministry of Health report stated that 'a great number of the properties' were not fit for human habitation and two years later there was still no sewage, gas, light or mains water. Yet when St Ives Borough Council became concerned about the quality of the well water and proposed supplying the hamlet with mains water in 1936, 65 residents wrote in to protest.[xxxix]
Similarly in the following year the Council’s plan to demolish the village and re-house all the residents on a new housing estate was strongly opposed, delayed and then dropped. The residents’ campaign was supported by the St Ives Times which praised 'a village whose remarkable community spirit has been held up as an example to many other communities.'[xl]
However, low rents meant little capital investment, consequently the houses continued to be poorly maintained and by 1956 the fabric of the village had deteriorated to the point where the Ministry of Health reported that 'almost without exception' the houses were condemned as unfit for human habitation by reason of disrepair, dampness, darkness, poor ventilation and a lack of basic amenities. The St Ives Times called it 'a doomed village' but once again the inhabitants protested vigorously and continued their fight to preserve the community; at this stage many used their savings to purchase their home and perhaps the one next door, thereby saving many cottages from demolition by joining two into one and by modernising them.[xli] However public amenities were still slow to arrive for in the 1960s 'the open foul water drains…encouraged rats, flies and smells…', 'some people still had earth closets', and the roads were judged inadequate for 'a refuse lorry, a fire appliance or an ambulance.'[xlii] At that time, out of the original 90 cottages built only 49 were inhabited; today however Halsetown’s fortunes have changed again and there are now 72 separate inhabited dwellings.
This chapter has traced this village from its origins as homes for miners’ families, through its low period of abandoned and decaying properties to its current status as a desirable and expensive place to live. The uniqueness of Halsetown was recognised by Cornwall County Council who included it in the St Ives Conservation Area, and is proposed to be listed by as an area of Great Landscape Value and of Great Historic Value, thereby saving this living link to our past.[xliii]
Sincere thanks to the Halsetown residents, past and present, and to Patrick who has long been closely connected with the village, for so generously sharing their experiences. Their names have been changed to provide privacy. All visits and conversations took place between December 2008 and March 2009.
Thanks too to St Ives Archives for their generous help.
Bibliography:
Burnett 1991: ‘A Social History of Housing 1815-1985’ J A Burnett 1991 edition
Darley: ‘Villages of Vision: A Study of Strange Utopias’ Gillian Darley 2007
Hoare 1926: ‘Quaint Houses in Cornwall’ J C Hoare Old Cornwall vol 1 1925-1930, issue 6, pp 5-7
Jenkin 1927: ‘The Cornish Miner’ A K Hamilton Jenkin 1927
Penaluna: ‘An Historical Survey of the County of Cornwall’ vol 1 1843
Short 1914: ‘Prisoners of War in France from 1804-1814’ John Tregerthen Short and Thomas
Worgan 1811: ‘General View of the Agriculture of the Count of Cornwall’ G B Worgan 1811
©Penwith Local History Group for Jenny Dearlove 2010
Since this article was published, a new website [please add hypertext https://www.stivesretreats.co.uk/blog/post/history-of-halsetown-the-old-chapel3] has appeared on line with more images and details of 20th century Halestown
[i] Penaluna 1843:287
[ii] Western Echo November 12 1904
[iii] Further contemporary dwellings built to house labourers’ families in Cornwall were at Charlestown, Portreath, St Michael Penkevil and Treslothan Estate Village, and the five circular cottages in Veryan. Darley 2007
[iv] Worgan 1811:27
[v] Royal Cornwall Gazette 8.09.1832
[vi] Details from Lot 78 in 1866 Auction of Halsetown, CRO X1295/4, when the whole village was put up for sale some 28 years after Halse’s death. Curiously it is unclear exactly how many cottages were originally built. West Penwith Resources
[vii] Hansard website 1833 cc 1183-7; Halse’s full story has been told by the writer Tre Pol Pen in The St Ives Times & Echo issues dated August 22 1997 and August 29 1997
[viii] Mortgages only became widely available after the 1874 Building Societies Act, although Building Societies were first officially recognised in 1836 according to the Building Societies Association website
[ix] Cornish Mining World Heritage website
[x] Jenkin 1927:246. Today there are still plenty of ‘one up one down’ cottages to be found in forgotten corners of towns and villages in West Penwith although most will have had extensions added
[xi]The Cornishman Magazine 1898; St Ives Times December 1977.
[xii] Jean Nankervis says floors were often made of sub-soil known as ‘rab’: 'In Zennor it is a clay shale. Any earth would be scraped off. I am not sure if it could polished smooth. Floors were sanded before sweeping.' email message June 18 2009
[xiii] Worgan 1811:26; although the report was published in its final version in 1811, the research was completed by 1808.
[xiv] Jenkin 1927:257
[xv] Hoare1926:5 recollections of his father born 1824; Jenkin 1934:3; St Ives Borough Council Minutes February 2 1865; Matthews 1892:312-3.
[xvi]The Society for Improving the Conditions of the Labouring Classes, Illustrated London News website
[xvii] Burnett 1991:222-225
[xviii] The Penzance Gazette and West Cornwall Advertiser March 17 1847; these vegetables were listed in a letter to 'Occupiers of Cottage Tenements' Worgan 1811 end papers
[xix] Royal Cornwall Gazette February 6 1830, February 26 1831, April 9 1831, November 19 1831
[xx] The Secret Ballot Act was not introduced until 1872
[xxi] St Ives Times September 9 1838
[xxii] Hansard website February 27 1833
[xxiii] West Penwith Resources website, Halsetown: Lake’s Parochial History 1868.
[xxiv] CRO B IVES/1 1834-68. Original spelling and punctuation have been adhered to.
[xxv] Short 1914:217; CRO B IVES/II, August 23 1878
[xxvi] HMSO 1864 Appendix B to Report:141.
[xxvii] CRO B IVES/1 1834-68
[xxviii] CRO B IVES/1 1834-68
[xxix] On Cothele Estate, Cornwall, in Roadford, Devon and possibly elsewhere, a similar place for storing pork was built into the cottages. Conversation with Veronica Chesher June 3 2009
[xxx] Royal Cornish Gazette April 17 1830, The West Briton, October 19 1837; St Ives Times April 6 1895, September 14 1956, September 28 1956; Western Echo November 23 1978; West Briton February 10 1836, February 23 1837, March 17 1887
[xxxi] Harwood 1995: Introduction
[xxxii] Jenkin 1927:258; Mary confirmed this custom
[xxxiii] Jenkin 1927:199; Chambers 1853:22-3
[xxxiv] HMS0 1864 Epitome:24
[xxxv] Hoare 1926
[xxxvi] Not until the Ground Game Act in 1881 were tenants allowed to destroy rabbits and hares without their landlord’s permission
[xxxvii] St Ives Archives, typescript of Kathleen Curnow
[xxxviii] Western Echo November 9 1904; CRO B IVES/II March 8 1872
[xxxix] Western Echo June 1 1934, February 22 1936
[xl] St Ives Times September 21 1956
[xli] St Ives Times September 21 1956
[xlii] St Ives Times & Echo December 14 1962, June 26 1964, December 21 1962
[xliii] Cornwall Council website
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