Penzance

Penzance [ pɛnˈzæns ] ( Cornish Pennsans [KK] , Pensans [UCR] ) is a town in the former district of Penwith in the county of Cornwall in England and is located on Mounts Bay , a bay of the Atlantic at the entrance to the English Channel , in which the St. Michael's Mount can be found. The city has 21,045 inhabitants (as of 2011) and was the administrative seat of the Penwith district until 2009. Penzance and the surrounding area are strongly influenced by tourism. Penzance is also considered the first plastic-free city in England.

View from Briton's Hill over the harbor at Penzance

etymology

The name Penzance comes from the Cornish language : "Pen Sans" means something like "holy headland", which refers to a church being founded in early Christian times.

Penzance in an Autumn Storm (November 2005)

climate

The mild Atlantic climate due to the influence of the Gulf Stream with a lot of sunshine by British standards favors a lush, partly subtropical vegetation. The beach promenade as well as numerous gardens and front gardens are characterized by high cordylines . Recently, Canary Island date palms have even been planted in the city .

traffic

Penzance Railway Station

Since 1866, Penzance has been the terminus of the 500-kilometer main railway line from London - Paddington via Plymouth to Cornwall; Numerous express trains run to and from the capital every day, the travel time is around five and a half hours. In addition, there are multiple daily high-speed train connections to central and northern England and Scotland .

National Express intercity buses operate between Penzance and London- Victoria via Heathrow Airport . Penzance has the main bus hub on the Penwith Peninsula and is connected to nearby Land's End and most of the major towns in Cornwall, including Plymouth.

The Isles of Scilly can be reached by passenger ferry from Penzance . There are shuttle buses to and from Penzance Train Station on scheduled flights connecting the Isles of Scilly to nearby Land's End Airport.

Attractions

Jubilee Bathing Pool on the seafront

Morrab Gardens in Penzance

Penlee House : Museum and art gallery with the most important representatives of the Newlyn School , an artist colony from the area.
Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange : The art gallery, which has been in existence for 120 years, focuses on exhibitions of international works of contemporary art. The exhibitions change several times a year.
Jubilee Bathing Pool : A lido-style outdoor pool built in 1935 south of the inner harbor into the sea . One of the best preserved examples of its kind in Great Britain.
Beach promenade : The promenade, built in 1844, runs from the Jubilee Bathing Pool to the neighboring harbor town of Newlyn , which is politically linked to Penzance.
Newlyn Harbor : At the end of the promenade there is a fishing port with an impressively large deep-sea fishing fleet .
Morrab Gardens : A city park with an old population of subtropical trees and wide lawns.
Market House : A domed roof building constructed in 1837 at the intersection of two main streets, Market Jew Street and Chapel Street
Egyptian House : Built and decorated in the Egyptian style by John Lavin in 1836 on Chapel Street.

Penzance in art

The artistic adaptation of the place made it famous for the comic opera The Pirates of Penzance, or The Slave of Duty by Arthur Sullivan and WS Gilbert , first performed in 1879 .

Town twinning

Penzance is twinned with Cuxhaven .

sons and daughters of the town

Humphry Davy (1778-1829), chemist
John Davy (1790–1868), physician, chemist and zoologist
William Lovett (1800–1877), leader of Chartism
William Colenso (1811–1899), New Zealand printer, botanist, naturalist, missionary and politician
Francis Polkinghorne Pascoe (1813-1893), entomologist
George Marsden Waterhouse (1824–1906), Prime Minister of South Australia and New Zealand
Leonard Courtney, 1st Baron Courtney , PC (1832–1918), politician of the Liberal Party and later the Liberal Unionists
William Copeland Borlase (1848–1899), archaeologist and MP in the House of Commons
George Grenfell (1849–1906), missionary and African explorer
John Field-Richards , OBE (1878-1959), motor boater
Sir Arthur Stanley Angwin (1883-1959), radio pioneer
Ethelwynn Trewavas (1900-1993), zoologist and ichthyologist
Arthur Gould-Porter (1905–1987), actor
William Peter Stephens (1934–2019), Methodist clergyman
Martin Fido (1939–2019), university lecturer and author
Stanley Johnson (* 1940), politician, author and expert on environmental and population policy
Caroline Jackson (* 1946), politician, MEP (1984–2009)
Alex Reid (born 1980), actress
Tom Southam (1981), cyclist, athletic director and author
Helen Glover (* 1986), rower, gold medalist at the London 2012 Olympics
Amy Roberts (* 1988), jazz musician

Web links

Commons : Penzance - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikivoyage: Penzance Travel Guide

Individual evidence

^ City population
^ Julie Kurz: Penzance in Cornwall. A small British town is fighting against plastic waste. Deutschlandfunk , February 12, 2018, accessed on September 23, 2018 .
^ Homepage for the buildings on Chapel Street

50.118611111111 -5.5372222222222Coordinates: 50 ° 7 ′ N , 5 ° 32 ′ W

[1] City population

[2] Julie Kurz: Penzance in Cornwall. A small British town is fighting against plastic waste. Deutschlandfunk , February 12, 2018, accessed on September 23, 2018 .

[3] Homepage for the buildings on Chapel Street