Market Jew Street is changing.
Our most prominent shopping street is undergoing an airy makeover, with more plants, seating and pedestrian-friendly features. This seemed like a good time to peel back the years and look at its journey over several centuries.
This story takes us from a chaotic marketplace to municipal grandeur and, finally, exciting new ‘once-in-a-generation’ projects and renovations for the 2020s.
We began this article as a short, snappy listicle but, frankly, found ourselves falling in love hard with Market Jew Street again. There are so many fascinating stories to tell, so we’ve tried to include a few of them.
Here are eight things you really should know about our most prominent street.
1) The name Market Jew Street may not mean what you think it does
A lot of interested locals reading this post will know this one, but it’s always worth retelling. The name ‘Market Jew Street’ has nothing to do with any Jewish communities. Jews certainly were here in Penzance, but the name is a corruption from the Cornish language ‘marghas Yow’, meaning ‘Thursday market’.
2) The street had a legendary market
In the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, this part of Penzance looked nothing like it does today. In 1765, trees were planted to line the street (they were later removed) and as late as 1825 there were few, if any, shops.
What Market Jew Street did have, of course, was a market, which was in the same location as the current Market House. So picture, if you will, this scene from Dr Paris’ ‘Guide to Mount’s Bay’ from 1824.
‘The market… is certainly not to be equalled by any other in Great Britain. To the great quantity of salt usually mixed with the food of the hog is to be attributed the delicacy and richness of the pork, while… the heifer beef is superior… to the Scotch. During the winter, the market is filled with the greatest variety of wildfowl, as woodcock, snipe etc.’
Meanwhile, an enthusiastic Dr Paris, overcome perhaps by the heady fumes and chaos of a busy market, was all a-fluster at the local women.
‘Every variety of fish in season is offered for sale every day by the Newlyn fish-women, whose delicate complexions and the vivacity and brilliancy of whose jet-black eyes, darting their rays from beneath the shade of large beeaver hats, fascinate the traveller.’
Steady there, Dr Paris.
3) The reputed origin of its famous terrace will make archaeologists weep
The Terrace is such a lovely feature of Market Jew Street – a raised walkway, paved in granite, with fine railings and twisting steps to the road.
Originally, it was merely a high, wide path with a grassy slope that led down to the street. As Penzance and commerce grew, however, municipal projects abounded. One of those was a widening of the road and a cutting into the slope to form a terrace. This was, according to some sources, started in 1826 and finished in 1834.
This is all quite lovely, but archaeologists – avert your eyes. According to Mike Sagar-Fenton in his excellent book, ‘Penzance: A Biography’, ‘[…] local rumour says that the bulk of the excellent stone used for its construction was pillaged from the ruins of Chun Castle’s ramparts.’
That, to those not in the know, is the site of one of West Penwith’s (the UK’s, for that matter) most stunning Iron Age hillforts.
Tell you what – you wouldn’t get away with that today.
4) Our beloved Market House was considered ‘dignified’ and… ‘silly’
For many Penzance people, the plump dome of our beloved Market House makes us all swell a bit with pride. It’s surprising, then, to discover this neoclassical icon divided opinion. Letters were written. Contrary views aired.
It was like one of today’s Facebook spats, but much, much slower and a bit more polite.
Some backstory. In 1614, James 1 granted the town a Royal Charter and, soon after, the site of the original market building was bought from the manor of Alverton. This housed a market hall, guild hall and prison. By the turn of the Nineteenth Century, however, Penzance was on the up and something grander was conceived.
The new building, a neoclassical design with its distinctive dome and ionic columns facing Market Jew Street, was completed in 1838. Lovely, isn’t it? Yes, says architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, who is said to have described it as ‘dignified’. No, said Cornish folklorist William Bottrell who called it an ‘insipid, silly-looking structure’.
As the popular saying goes, ‘You can’t please all of the people all of the time – and when it comes to architecture, you may as well give up…’
5) Humphry Davy’s statue almost had a different home
Ah, Davy. The town’s most famous son. The maverick scientist, element discoverer, miner’s lamp inventor, poem composer and nitrous oxide guzzler stands grandly on his plinth at the top of Market Jew Street below the Market House.
With one hand on his hip, the other on his safety lamp, he seems to own this spot, just across the road from where he worked as an apprentice apothecary at 1 Market Place.
But the likeness of the Market Jew Street legend almost didn’t appear here. The statue of Baronet Davy, erected in 1872 and paid for by the working men of the town, was originally planned as a ‘Davy Monument’ at Lescudjack Hill, the Iron Age hill fort at the edge of the town. (There’s a great story about it from Penwith Local History Group.)
That plan fell through, thankfully, and Davy takes his rightful place at the pinnacle of Market Jew Street, where he owns the space with great seriousness and authority.
Apart from when he has a seagull on his head.
6) Market Jew Street has come full circle – as a hub of indie shops
Every high street looks the same these days, doesn’t it? One of the wonderful things about Market Jew Street in the 2020s is that the answer to that is a decisive, ‘No’.
Like many retail centres, ours was originally populated by independent retailers, a phrase nobody knew because there was no other kind. But by the time the twentieth century got going, the chain stores came, saw and conquered.
Cut to a hundred years later, however, and something quite remarkable is happening. The decline of the chains from the high street has led to Market Jew Street becoming a haven of creative, ingeniously independent shops.
Think vintage and ethnic clothing, independent bookshops, galleries, locally made jewellery, home and crafts, indie cafés and coffee shops and much more. In 2025, The London Economic described Penzance as the best town for shopping independent in the UK.
Would someone from the mid-nineteenth century recognise our street today? In one wonderful way, absolutely.
7) The street is fresher and less polluted than it has been in decades
One of the biggest debates of the early 21st century has been ‘What do we do to make our high streets a better experience for everyone?’
Penzance answered that by helping Market Jew Street become safer and much more pleasant for pedestrians in the daytime – and less polluted too.
Starting in 2020 following public consultation, the Healthy Streets Penzance scheme restricts cars and delivery vehicles from entering Market Jew Street between 11am and 4pm, providing space for pedestrians and cyclists to move around safely and comfortably.
Before the scheme, up to 250 vehicles per hour were entering Market Jew Street between 11 am and 4 pm. Traffic monitoring figures for 2022 show 30 to 40 vehicles per hour entering the town centre during the restricted period – an 80% reduction. The traffic monitoring also shows a sharp rise in the number of pedestrians using Market Jew Street between 11 am and 4pm.
8) A new look for Market Jew Street from 2025
The Penzance Town Deal and Penzance BID have also played a prominent part in further enhancing Market Jew Street, spearheading some of the most exciting developments in the street in decades.
First off, the eastern side of the Market House – empty for years – will become a foodie hub. Downstairs, this will include street food pods and a bar and, upstairs, a restaurant with stunning views of the town and the bay. Meanwhile, the old Poundstretcher building halfway up the street is transforming into a state-of-the-art bouldering centre.
Finally, the £6.5 million Sustainable Travel Network project has complemented the Healthy Streets Project by providing even better access for pedestrians and cyclists, installing new seating and planting, and overseeing a widespread beautification of this fascinating street.
Sources and further reading:
Books:
Penzance: A Biography, Mike Sagar-Fenton – a fabulously entertaining and informative history of Penzance
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/48116/pg48116-images.html – warning, you may get lost for hours in this manuscript of a seminal early Nineteenth Century west Cornwall travel guide
Online history:
https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~treevecwll/family/pzmktjwnt.htm – we couldn’t definitely corroborate every fact in this local history page, so used the phrase ‘some sources’ about the Terrace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_Building,_Penzance
https://www.penwithlocalhistorygroup.co.uk/on-this-day/?id=248
Penzance Town Deal further reading:
https://lovepenzance.co.uk/pz-healthy-streets/plans/market-jew-street/
https://penzancebid.co.uk/market-house-project-penzance-town-deal-penzance-bid-blog/
Lead image: Market Jew Street, Penzance, towards Davy’s Monument. Photographer unknown. © Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance.
Thanks to Penlee House Gallery & Museum for the incredible images and help with this article.