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Quilters Cabin an exceptional holiday apartment in St Ives.

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History

The origin of St Ives is attributed in legend to the arrival of the Irish Saint Ia of Cornwall, in the 5th century. The parish church in St Ives still bears the name of this saint, and the name St Ives itself derives from it.

The town was the site of a particularly notable atrocity during the Prayer Book rebellion of 1549. The English Provost Marshal (Anthony Kingston) came to St Ives and invited the portreeve, John Payne, to lunch at an inn. He asked the portreeve to have the gallows erected during the course of the lunch. Afterwards the portreeve and the Provost Marshal walked down to the gallows; the Provost Marshal then ordered the portreeve to mount the gallows. The portreeve was then hanged for being a "busy rebel".

Later history

From medieval times fishing was important at St Ives; it was the most important fishing port on the north coast. In the decade 1747-1756 the total number of pilchards dispatched from the four principal Cornish ports of Falmouth, Fowey, Penzance and St Ives averaged 30,000 hogsheads annually (making a total of 900 million fish). Much greater catches were achieved in 1790 and 1796. In 1847 the exports of pilchards from Cornwall amounted to 40,883 hogsheads or 122 million fish while the greatest number ever taken in one seine was 5,600 hogsheads at St Ives in 1868.

Kenneth Hamilton Jenkin describes how the St Ives fisherman strictly observed Sunday as a day of rest. St Ives was a very busy fishing port and seining the usual method of fishing there. Seining was carried on by a set of three boats of different sizes, the largest two carrying seine nets of different sizes. The total number of crew was 17 or 18. However this came to an end in 1924. The bulk of the catch was exported to Italy: for example in 1830 6,400 hogsheads were sent to Mediterranean ports. From 1829-38 the yearly average for this trade was 9,000 hogsheads.

Modern St Ives came with the railway in 1877, the St Ives Bay branch line from St Erth, part of the Great Western Railway. With it came a new generation of Victorian seaside holidaymakers. Much of the town was built during the latter part of the 19th century. The railway, which winds along the cliffs and bays, survived the Beeching axe and has become a tourist attraction itself.

In 1999, the town was the first landfall of the Solar eclipse of August 11, 1999. A live BBC programme with Patrick Moore was clouded out and the eclipse was missed.

St Ives hit the national headlines on 28 July 2007, following a suspected sighting of a Great White Shark. The Chairman of the Shark Trust, Mr Pierce, could not rule out the possibility that this was a genuine sighting after watching video footage of the shark. However, he added that it could also have been either a Mako or a Porbeagle shark. Both are predatory sharks. Coastguards dismissed the claims as "scaremongering" when questioned by reporters.