Penzance

Penzance (/pɛnˈzæns/ pen-ZANSS; Cornish: Pennsans)^[3] is a town, civil parish and port in Cornwall, England. It lies 64 miles (103 km) west-southwest of Plymouth, 255 miles (410 km) west-southwest of London, and 9 miles (14 km) east of Land's End. Penzance railway station is the terminus of the Cornish Main Line and is both the southernmost and westernmost station in England. Situated in the shelter of Mount's Bay, the town faces south-east onto the English Channel. As well as Penzance itself, the parish also includes the fishing port of Newlyn and the villages of Mousehole, Paul, Gulval, and Heamoor. At the 2021 census the population of the parish was 20,734 and the population of the Penzance built up area as defined by the Office for National Statistics was 14,960.

Penzance was granted a market charter in 1404 and was formally incorporated as a borough in 1614. Chapel Street has a number of interesting features, including the Egyptian House, The Admiral Benbow public house (home to a 19th-century smuggling gang and allegedly the inspiration for Treasure Island's "Admiral Benbow Inn"),^[4] the Union Hotel (including a Georgian theatre which is no longer in use), and Branwell House, where the mother and aunt of the Brontë sisters once lived. Regency and Georgian terraces and houses are common in some parts of the town. The nearby sub-tropical Morrab Gardens has a large collection of tender trees and shrubs, many of which cannot be grown outdoors anywhere else in the UK. Also of interest is the seafront with its promenade and the open-air seawater Jubilee Pool, one of the oldest surviving Art Deco swimming baths in the country.

Penzance is the base of the pirates in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance. At the time the libretto was written in 1879, Penzance had become popular as a peaceful resort town, so the idea of it being overrun by pirates was amusing to contemporaries.