Market Jew Street 1829

In case anyone is interested, I also have Trelissick, Place Fowey, Polruan, Bodninnoc Ferry, Trelowarren, Looe, Tintagel, Boscastle, Mount Edgcumbe, Lary Bridge (Liara), Plymouth Barbican, Plymouth Breakwater (on it), Devonport Dockyard, Catwater Plymouth, Plymouth Citadel and Battery, Mount Edcumbe and Breakwater, Devonport Town Hall, Morvall, Ilfracombe, Valley of the Rocks, Torquay, Brixham, Devonport, Plymouth Devil's Point, St Austle Church, Launceston, Falmouth Harbour, Falmouth, Truro centre, Trgothnan, Place House Padstow, St Mawgan Church and Carclaze Tin Mine. All 1829-1831.

William Bottrell makes his comments and adds some notes on history. He even mentions the old house with the 'famous chimney' Drawn from his Hearthside Stories 1865.
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 their 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. 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. The only structure we have in the town that is anything like an example of this ornate style, is the front of the Star hotel. As pretty fair examples of the adaptability of the Old English to all the exigencies of modern comforts and refinements, and to prove that one may do whatever one likes with this pliable style, we have the Abbey, the Marine Retreat, some small cottages in the Back-lane, also two or three pairs of semidetached cottages near the Catholic Church.

In the opinion of many persons of taste the quaint old market house, low, irregular, and devoid of all pretensions to ornament--when surrounded by the houses of as simple a mode, was a more pleasing object than the present insipid, silly-looking structure, which, when first seen from Marketjew-street, looks like a heavy wall to support a portico and dome to which there is no body of building,--a grand entrance, to which one cannot see the means of access, and which apparently leads to nothing. This end is the most faulty, because the most pretentious.

We cannot think of the old market-house without remembering the animated scene around it of a market-day. On the higher side, at the corn-market steps, opposite the Golden Lion, the jolly farmers and their buxom wives would be seen arriving, seated each on two or more sacks of grain, with a basket of butter and eggs on the arm of the dame, and probably a basket of poultry on that of her lord. The crowing, squalling, laughing, and scolding showed a sound heart and lungs, and that the old folks were neither ashamed nor afraid to be seen to do their own work; and the appetizing steam which ascended through the open kitchen window of the cozy hostel, at the foot of the stairs, told them, as well as the screeching, lard-labouring roasting-jack, as plainly as jack could speak, that plenty of good substantial fare would soon be ready for their equally substantial appetites. There is no mistake about it,--there was less nonsense about the people then than now. At that time the ladies of the squires, merchants, and farmers, did their own marketing,--aye, and often such dames as Mesdames Noye, Trezillian, Ustick, and Fender, in the west country, and others of equal rank in town, would ride to the mill on the sacks of corn and bolt the meal themselves. The sturdy butchers--to be seen in the meat-market then--were mostly occupiers of the land near the town, and often cultivated many of the farms of Madron.

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 some of their Spanish-looking 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 nothing: 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 organized 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 of the old houses, lowering the pitch of the roofs, erecting useless unmeaning parapets, covering walls of dressed granite and ornamental slate-work with other shams, until the surrounding buildings are 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 the old masons may yet be seen in the dressed chimney-stacks with embattled mouldings, belonging to the old house (said to have been as country seat at one time) now occupied by Mr. Field, and at the north-east corner of the market-place.

Very interesting!
Just shows that every generation complains about the building work/fashions/manners etc. of the next!

Glad you took the point of that post. The New Market House was considered in poor taste, and most certainly in the wrong place, by others, causing much difficulty in going through the town. I must try and find that again (I think it was John Ayrton Paris).

Here is another quote from local opinion ...
In 1842 Cyrus Redding states 'It is indeed unfortunate that this building was constructed upon the same spot as the old hall, since it is a serious obstruction to what would otherwise have been a fine wide thoroughfare in the heart of town; and the wants of an increasing population required the space. The people of Truro were wiser and removed their market from the middle of a much broader street.'