The completion of Penzance Public Buildings forms an epoch in the
history of the place, and an elderly person cannot help contrasting the
present appearance of the town with what it was three score years, or a
century, ago; as we know it to have been from well-remembered vestiges
of the old time, and from the accounts of our grandparents, who, if
they revisited the glimpses of the gaslight in our town at the present
time would be much surprised, and not over well pleased, at all the
changes which have taken place during the last hundred years, many of
which are alterations without improvement, nay often wanton destruction
of what can never be restored, however regretted. Who that remembers
the picturesque and interesting old market-house, with the
corresponding buildings surrounding or near it, such as the house in
which Sir Humphry Davy was born, the cosy nook under the balcony of the
‘Star’ Inn, where often of an evening he held his youthful comrades
spellbound by the wonderful stories that his poetical imagination
inspired, can help regretting removal and loss? I can’t understand, nor
can many others, what was the inducement to remove the old balcony from
this inn, and other houses throughout the town. They were no
obstruction to the footpath, and the very aspect of these appropriate,
cosy-looking entrances to the old inns infused a feeling of comfort and
seclusion that one misses very much in the glaring lantern-like modern
hotels. Besides, as an interesting memorial of our most illustrious
townsman, it is ten thousand pities it should have been destroyed. The
picturesque scene is gone, never to be restored, which was formed by
the projecting balcony, with its rustic pillars and casemented lights,
combined with the high gables, mullioned and labled windows, with the
penthouse-like projections of the old market-house. It is much to be
regretted that, when the old building was taken down, its site should
have been occupied by any structure more massive than an elegant
monument to Sir Humphry Davy—suppose it had been a fountain, of an
antique Gothic pattern, surmounted by the statue of Sir Humphry, with
niches in the basement for memorials of other celebrities connected
with the town, or its vicinity, as Pellew, Davies Gilbert, &c., &c. The
first mistake was to build on the site at all; the second to adopt the
Italian style for a building to be erected in such a confined space. It
must be apparent to anyone who has studied the matter that the Gothic
or old English style, with its acute gables, pinnacles, pendants,
balconies, oriels, and other projecting appendages for use or ornament,
which that style admits, is felt to be more suitable to a confined
space, because any imitation of the classical styles is very
unsatisfactory, unless it has sufficient breadth and massiveness to
produce the impression of grandeur, as well as just proportion, which
cannot be appreciated, however just it may be, unless there is
sufficient space around to allow the spectator the choice of a station
from which the whole facade of the building may be taken into the view.
In the old English, on the contrary, one does not look for breadth,
massiveness, and correspondence in the various portions of the
structure, but rather to that lightness and variety which is even more
interesting when seen only in such broken portions, and from such
points of sight as would spoil the effect of the regular styles.
Besides, perhaps from being accustomed to meet with the picturesque old
style in ancient walled towns, where the streets are always narrow, it
never seems out of place in a confined space, if the surrounding
buildings are of a simple or corresponding style, or at least are not
such as to produce a violent contrast.
Any small building, designed after classical examples, looks naked and
poor, and particularly mean, unless the building-materials are of the
best description and finish, and is quite unsuitable for the houses of
a narrow street, which must necessarily be small and irregular, where
the frontages range only from about 20 to 40 feet, and where the
adjoining houses belong to different proprietors, who delight to
display their independence of each other and common sense, by each one
building on his 20 or 30 feet frontage according to his own caprice,
and desire to show off his own originality of conception.