One can’t take leave of the old market without some notice of the
handsome fisherwomen, in their picturesque old costume of short scarlet
cloaks and broad felt hats, which well became their coal-black eyes and
hair, and heightened the oriental cast of their countenances. Then
their tongues, loud and musical, hailing every one who passed the
street:—“Wount ’e buy some nice fresh fish to-day, my dear?” “Cheeld
vean; why you shall have en for nothan; do come here!” As well as their
chaffing and slack jaw at each other and all the world besides. Above
all, the shoemakers, who kept their stalls near by, came in for a good
share of their gibes. People had a heart to laugh then, and were all
the better friends even for a little rough talk, before so much
organised hypocrisy, whining cant, and morbid feeling became the
fashion, which seems, if possible, to be increasing in intensity and
stupidity in Penzance.
The buildings surrounding the Market Place, Green-Market, and many
other parts of the town, were mongrelized about the time of the
erection of the new structure by taking the mullions out of the windows
of many houses, lowering the pitch of their roofs, erecting useless
unmeaning parapets, covering walls of dressed granite and ornamental
slate work with plaster and other shams, until the surrounding
buildings were changed into worse-looking objects if possible than the
centre piece. A specimen of the true appreciation of just proportion
which seems to have been intuitive with old masons may yet be seen in
the dressed chimney-stacks, with embattled mouldings, belonging to an
old house at the north-western corner of the market-place. In the
premises, more examples of the old style will be found. When this old
house was first built, it was said to have been the grandest mansion in
Buriton, as a good part of what is now included with old Penzance was
then named,—all around the Market Place.