St Ives: Cornwall’s Most Picturesque Seaside Town

The strong tides are also noticeable at the tidal harbour of St Ives: At high tide the harbour functions normally, but at low tide when the sea retreats, the seabed becomes visible and the boats in port are stranded.

St Ives harbour is protected by two breakwaters or piers, namely the small W Pier and the larger Smeaton’s Pier, on which you can also find two lighthouses.

The harbour of St Ives is primarily a fishing port that is home to a small mackerel fishing fleet, although there are also a few moorings for leisure craft such as tourist boat rentals and excursion boats.

Wharf Road

Wharf Road, the harbourfront, is lined with a number of shops, bars, and restaurants.

I stopped at a small bakery to buy a traditional Cornish steak pasty, which is of course a must-eat when visiting Cornwall.

Just be careful when eating food outdoors at the harbour, as there are cunning seagulls abound who keep a close watch on you and will seize any opportunity to snatch the delicacy you’re eating from your hands!

Harbour Sand

After finishing the delicious snack, I continued exploring St Ives and walked along the quays to the small beach in the harbour.

This small beach is known as Harbour Sand, and while it consists of two small patches of sand on either side of a slipway at high tide, it expands into a single larger beach at low tide when the sea retreats.

Harbour Sand is certainly a picturesque stretch of beach, with the town, the old stone quays, and the boats in the harbour forming a beautiful backdrop.

A walk on Smeaton’s Pier

From the beach, I walked on to Smeaton’s Pier to take in the view of the harbour from there.

This pier, named after its designer and chief engineer John Smeaton, was constructed between 1767 and 1770.

Smeaton’s Pier has two lighthouses, one roughly at the halfway point and another at the far end of the pier.

The reason why the pier has two lighthouses is actually quite simple, as the original pier was only built as far as the first lighthouse, and it was only at a later stage that Smeaton’s Pier was extended to its current length of 600 feet, which required a new lighthouse at its end.

Another interesting feature of Smeaton’s Pier is its reservoir at the base, which fills at high tide and helps to reduce the power of waves rolling into the harbour.

The harbour used to have a third pier called the New Pier, which was built in 1864 at an almost 90-degree angle to Smeaton’s Pier, jutting further into the sea.

However, the New Pier was built out of wood, and the planners underestimated the strength of the tides, which led to the wooden pier being destroyed by the powerful sea in just 20 years.

If you look closely at low tide, you can still see some wooden stumps of what was once the New Pier sticking out of the seabed.

Yet it’s the views from the quays of Smeaton’s Pier over the harbour and the town of St Ives that are arguably the biggest reason to walk up here.

Backstreets of St Ives

Although many tourists stick to the waterfront when they visit St Ives, it’s well worth exploring the backstreets uphill from the harbour as well.

Here, you’ll not only find picturesque streets and beautiful stone cottages, but you can also enjoy some lovely views over the harbour and sea.

Just above the old town streets of St Ives is a green hill known as The Island by the locals, although it is actually a peninsula jutting out into the sea.

On this peninsula, which is free of any construction apart from the small St Nicholas Chapel on top of the hill and a National Coastwatch post overlooking the waters around St Ives Head, you can hike along pleasant footpaths and admire the fine views over the sea.

In this part of St Ives, you can also find two more fine stretches of sand with Porthgwidden Beach and Bamaluz Beach.

St Ives as an art colony

There are also a few museums in St Ives worth visiting, including the St Ives Museum, which has exhibits on the town’s history, and Tate St Ives, which features modern art.

St Ives has been a beloved travel destination for artists since the late 19th century, and unsurprisingly, you will also find a large number of art galleries, art clubs, and painting schools in the town.

Among the artists who settled in St Ives were the English painter Ben Nicholson and his wife, the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, who established an outpost for the abstract avant-garde movement in Cornwall, followed by many younger artists in the decades after.

If you are interested in Dame Hepworth’s work, you can visit the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in the town, which is housed in the Trewyn Studios building where she lived and worked until her death in 1975.

As I’m personally not particularly interested in modern art, I instead visited one of the local pubs, where I enjoyed a pint of Sharp’s Sea Fury.

Sunshine

While I was drinking my pint of beer on the pub terrace, I noticed that the sun was slowly starting to break through the dark cloud cover.

It proved again that even on days that start off cloudy in Cornwall, you may still get lucky and catch some beautiful blue skies later on, or vice versa.

St Ives immediately looked like a completely different place in the bright summer sunlight, as the colours of the sea, the beach, and the stone houses in town instantly appeared more vivid.

St Ives and overtourism

As tempting as it was to drink another beer on the sunny terrace or to hit the beach, I still had some more exploring to do.

I walked a bit more through the streets of the town centre, which also started to feel livelier as more holidaymakers began to arrive in the early afternoon.

St Ives is undoubtedly a quaint and pleasant travel destination, but like elsewhere in the world, the arrival of large numbers of tourists is causing some friction as well.

Although the days when St Ives primarily relied on fishing are long gone, and the town’s development into one of Cornwall’s more upscale travel destinations has been welcomed by many, there are definitely some signs of overtourism as well.

Just like in other coastal destinations around the world such as Dubrovnik, it doesn’t take long to notice that nearly all shops, cafés, and restaurants in the heart of St Ives cater to tourists, and that most houses have been converted into holiday accommodation units.

It’s not even middle class holidaymakers visiting Cornwall in summer who are driving this transition, as St Ives has always welcomed tourists, but rather the wealthy individuals from London and other parts of England buying second homes in the town, thereby pricing locals out of their own community and changing the local fabric.

St Ia’s Church and the Memorial Gardens

A sight that’s well worth a visit in St Ives is St Ia’s Parish Church, an Anglican church dedicated to Ia the Virgin.

Ia the Virgin was a holy Irish woman who sailed from her native Ireland to Cornwall in the 5th or 6th century, only to be martyred by a local king on the banks of the River Hayle.

At the spot where St Ia was buried, the local parish church was later built in the 15th century.

St Ia the Virgin, or St Ia of Cornwall as she is also known, is the person after whom the town of St Ives is named.

The beautiful stone church and the picturesque streets surrounding it are well worth exploring, as are the subtropical Memorial Gardens opposite the church, with its palm trees, flower arrangements, and a monument dedicated to the local men of St Ives who gave their lives during the two world wars.

Back to the railway station

Although the weather really started to improve, I unfortunately had to make my way back to the railway station as there was one more place I still wanted to visit in Cornwall on this day.

On my walk back, I made sure to stop at the scenic viewpoint overlooking the rocky seashore, coves, and the harbour of St Ives in the distance, as it all looked much more beautiful now that the sun was out than it had in the dark clouds earlier in the morning.

Train back to Penzance

The train ride from St Ives back to the railway junction of St Erth again offered some lovely views from the window.

If you spend more time in the St Ives area during your travels, you may want to check out the sheltered beach between the green hills of Carbis Bay or head to the wide expanse of Porthkidney Sands.

Similarly, there is great hiking to the west of St Ives, with a path running along the cliffs from the town to Clodgy Point and Porthkervis.

On a sunny day, it doesn’t take much imagination to see why St Ives is such a wonderful travel destination, as there are many highly scenic places to visit in the area.

Conclusion

St Ives is perhaps Cornwall’s best-known travel destination, and it’s easy to see why this picturesque harbour town attracts so many visitors.

Once a quaint fishing port, St Ives has developed over the years into an upscale holiday resort, offering travellers beautiful beaches and a wide selection of shops, cafés, bars, and restaurants.

Whether you visit St Ives to take in the fantastic views over the harbour, the rocky coastline, and the beautiful blue waters of the sea, or are more interested in discovering the local museums dedicated to the town’s history as an art colony, there is plenty to see and do to keep you occupied here.

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