The St Ives street where only one house belongs to a local (and he’s selling up)
FROM a distance, Island Road, in the ancient seaside town of St Ives, looks like a typical terrace of Cornish fishermen’s cottages. Only when you get closer do you realise that it’s a long time since the street was home to any working fishermen.
Many of the 18th-century cottages have small signs advertising the holiday letting agencies that rent them out. Lots of the doors have coded key-boxes next to them — as people renting the properties are given a code by the agents to let themselves in.
Only one permanent resident, born and bred in St Ives, remains — in the charming granite house at the entrance to Island Road.
William Thomas, 65, a retired fisherman and former mayor of the town, has lived in St Ives all his life. And now he is selling up.
‘My family and my wife’s family have been fishermen here for generations,’ says Mr Thomas. ‘ When I was a boy, every house was occupied by uncles and aunts. You could leave your door unlocked. Everyone knew each other and everyone cared for each other.
‘Back then, there were shops for residents — bakers, butchers, needlework shops, curtainmakers. Now there are only shops for tourists — pasty shops, surf shops, fudge shops.
‘There’s now just one butcher and no fishmonger.’
No wonder St Ives is at the heart of a national debate about how the rise in the number of British holiday homes is damaging the social fabric of such places, from the Lake District to Oxford.
St Ives epitomises the dilemma of what happens when a picture-postcard-pretty place is targeted by rich out- of-towners. Inevitably, property prices rise and become out of reach for locals — particularly first-time buyers.
For the good folk of St Ives, the answer was simple: to prohibit second-home-owners from buying any new-build developments.
Recently, residents voted in a local referendum for the ban by 83 per cent, on a 42 per cent turnout.
As you would expect, the decision has not gone down well with property developers. An architect who works on such projects is seeking to overturn the decision through the courts.
But, regardless, the initiative by St Ives — which lured visitors to its famed artistic community and sweeping beach — could be copied by towns across the country.
Already, two other Cornish seaside towns — Fowey, where a third of the houses are second homes, and Mevagissey, where a quarter of them are — are planning similar proposals.
The scale of the problem is revealed by the statistic that last year there were 242,213 main-residence houses in Cornwall, and 29,015 second homes.
‘ I’m really pleased with the referendum result,’ says Linda Taylor, the mayor of St Ives.
‘We live in a beautiful place and you can see why people want to come and live here. But we’ve got to preserve the community and keep a range of ages and occupations. The children and grandchildren of St Ives residents can’t afford to live here.’
Nor, in fact, can she. Ms Taylor, a former manager of the local HSBC bank branch, lives just outside the town: ‘I would love to move to St Ives but I couldn’t afford the prices.’
Second-home-owners come from all over Britain to snap up properties in the resort’s most charming area, around Island Road.
Known as Downalong, the old fishermen’s quarter clings to an arm of land that reaches out to sea, forming a natural harbour, with golden sand beaches on both sides.
HM Land Registry records show house-owners in Island Road from as far afield as Hertfordshire, Cardiff, Putney in London, Bracknell, Exeter, Bristol, Essex and Birmingham.
‘ The only time you see a big load of local people now is at funerals,’ says William Thomas wistfully. ‘I’m saddened that those days are gone — and I don’t think they will ever come back. That’s why we’re putting our own house on the market.
‘We’re moving further out, to live near the “natives” we grew up with. It’s quite a wrench.’
DOWNALONg was home to local people for centuries. The initials of Mr Thomas’s uncle, Richard Quick Stevens (a member of the town’s lifeboat crew who drowned in a storm in 1939), are carved into the granite steps of the nearby house in which Mr Thomas was raised and where he spent the first 50 years of his life, before moving to his current home.
He and his wife, Patricia, are
moving from Downalong to Uplong,ng the part of town further away from its tourist heart.
Their two adult sons both still ill live in St Ives, but not in the oldld fishermen’s quarter.
‘When we grew up round here,re, there were 20 or 30 children playing ng games such as British Bulldog,’ saysys mr Thomas. ‘The street rang with th children’s voices. Now there’s only nly one young lad round here who’s at the local school.’
All this means that, come winter, er, many roads in the area are almost st empty as the sun-seeking holidayaymakers stay away.
‘In many streets, you won’t find daa light on in the winter months,’ says ys Andrew mitchell, 50. A carer for his mother and town councillor for St Ives West, he has lived in the town wn all his life.
‘Out of 20 houses, you might find nd only two or three people actually lly living there. There are elderlyly residents who suddenly have thehe shock of realising they’re on theireir own because their neighbours arere second home-owners.
‘It’s gone way past any resemmblance to a normal street.’
As a result of this invasion of outside money, the market in holiday lets is so intense that Island Road has witnessed a property boom, with prices quadrupling over the past 15 years.
For example, one house was bought for £85,000 in 1999; last October it went for £ 375,000. Another, bought for £90,000 in 2001, was recently sold for £445,000. A third house is being offered on a holiday lettings website at up to £1,425 a week.
And it’s not as if Island Road is especially grand, however picturesque it may be. most houses have three small bedrooms, no garden and no garage.
With no street parking, the holiday-homers use visitors’ car parks and do a daily commute on foot or by bus to their cars to go to the supermarket or explore Cornwall.
Round the corner, local estate agent Harding Laity is selling a space in a town-centre car park for no less than £49,950.
Inevitably, the colonisation by second-homers has had a drastic effect on the look of the place. Shops have opened up in the town centre aimed squarely at the wealthy visitors, not the much poorer permanent residents.
Among these shops is Cornwall SoapBox, selling ‘handmade soaps; aromatherapy candles’.
On Fore Street, a bar called 18A offers ‘coffee and yoga by day, cocktails by night’.
A contemporary art gallery called inside out — note the fashionable lack of capital letters — is selling battered vintage oil drums, with retro branding, for £35 a pair.
The streets are dotted, too, with rental agencies — the most expensive lets in town go for up to £6,000 a week.
The richest of the second-homers don’t even use their properties.
‘Some places are empty all year round,’ says Toni Carver, 68, who owns the St Ives Printing and Publishing Company.
‘Bankers with bonus money stick it into bricks and mortar and then pop down here occasionally to see how their investment’s doing.’
ALL this means that the average house price in St Ives is now £324,000 — 19 times the average local salary of around £17,000. meanwhile, there are 600 locals in the area on a waiting list for a council home. An affordable housing project is planned in Carbis Bay, a mile from St Ives — though neither this nor the new ban on second home-owners buyin buying into new-build developments is likely to solve the town’s housing p problem. One of the biggest co concerns among local pe people is that there will be an unintended knock- on ef effect from the ban, with old older houses increasing in pr price because of a shortage of properties available for out outsiders. O Of course, there are some wh who welcome the ban. K Keith Varnals, whose career has been in the tourist indu industry, is one. Th The 80-year-old, who has lived in S St Ives for 52 years and is own owner of the Regent Hotel in the t town and president of the St Ives Tourism Association, says: ‘The ban might just preserve the town town.When I first came here in the S Sixties, this was an incredible pl place to live. ‘you had people such as Paul mcC mcCartney and Antony Arms Armstrong- Jones [the photographe rapher and film- maker who marrie married Princess margaret and becam became Lord Snowdon] driving throug through, but it was still a real place w with plumbers and fishermen, w with engineers and a net factory a and a steam laundry.’ Let’s hope that his optimism for the future prevails and this beautiful Cornish town manages to become a model for all Britain’s other pretty places — and that ‘ natives’ and ‘ non- natives’ can manage to live in harmony, even if it’s only for the summer months.