St. Ives, Cornwall

[SteamyTea]

This place has come up in conversation because a new member is building here.

I meant to say welcome to @Ruben, so hello.

St. Ives is an interesting place, I like it a lot.

But I thought I would show you a house I spotted last week while I was working here.

They have mixed traditional with modern.

Be fun to work out the price per metre squared, I think about 450 quid.

[Ed Davies]

Intriguing. It's probably more obvious to you from walking past and seeing it from different angles but is that three storey or two storey with roof space or what? Is it a conversion or purpose built? Infill replacing an old garage, perhaps?

[SteamyTea]

22 minutes ago, Ed Davies said:

Intriguing

Not really sure, I intend to go and have a proper look sometime.

I think it must be on 3 floors, though the top floor may be a bit grey, unless there are roof lights in it.

I do quite like it, but then I like a lot of contemporary (odd) places.

Judging by the large concrete beam, I suspect it was a relatively new build, but no idea if it was gobbling up an old place.  There is a lot of very old, badly built, places down here.  They get sold as holiday homes to up country folk.

I want to build a new shed, may take some design cues from this, and if the people from World Heritage come around, I shall just point them to this house overlooking the long term car park and say 'and your point is'.

 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

51 minutes ago, Ruben said:

 

What I have seen a lot in Cornwall generally with new builds is 1.5 storey construction. Anyone know if there’s a specific reason for this? Maybe cost, or maybe planning policies/style of an area? Call me old fashioned but I like a full 2 storeys without the wasted space you get with 1.5 storeys (that is, unless the roof is high enough so that all the space directly under it is usable).

 

 

As @SteamyTea has mentioned, Cornwall is a pretty poor and deprived area (my family are all there, and I lived there for many years before escaping).  Many older houses are really badly built, and were often only single storey, with rooms in the roof.  Low ceilings were commonplace, three of the houses we had when living in West Cornwall had ceiling heights that were barely 6ft under the beams.  Part of that may be because many Cornish people were quite short, which is probably related to the poor diet and relative poverty of the county.  In many ways, traditional cottages in Cornwall remind me of rural Ireland.

 

 

[SteamyTea]

50 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

In many ways, traditional cottages in Cornwall remind me of rural Ireland.

Generically they are very closely related.

Can follow a migration path up from Northern Spain, through West France, Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and Scotland.

But the genetics flow both ways and sea routes to the Mediterranean were also common.

There is the theory that the 'Briton' comes from 'Picton', which is meant to be 'painted people'.

The Romans said 'get some tin from those painted people'.

No idea how true it is, but an interesting idea, especially as the Celts were a very large and dispersed group in Europe.

[joe90]

6 hours ago, Ruben said:

 

What I have seen a lot in Cornwall generally with new builds is 1.5 storey construction. Anyone know if there’s a specific reason for this? Maybe cost, or maybe planning policies/style of an area? Call me old fashioned but I like a full 2 storeys without the wasted space you get with 1.5 storeys (that is, unless the roof is high enough so that all the space directly under it is usable).

 

I am just over the border in Devon and we had a hell of a fight to get proper two stories, had to go to the Secretary of State on Appeal to get our way. Planners were hell bent on either bungalow or room in roof. The quoted our neighbour as a “good design “ it was not till I told them next door was 1.4m higher than the planning application for theirs was (20 years ago) and my two story “cottage” was shorter by 500mm.

[redtop]

just moved to conrwall, albeit just inside the border in Looe where we are self building.  I dont think this area is poor at all, everything stays open all year and lots of work at plymouth with good train routes from there to the rest of the country.  West cornwall may be a different story.  I think with increased home working we are seeing more people (like me) who can live anywhere in the UK without having to change jobs. In my industry its very common and we employ people from york, n wales, midlands, london, newport, devon and cornwall.  Technology makes it very easy

[SteamyTea]

In all fairness, for every 1 of you, there may be 100 others doing minimum wage jobs.

A mate of mine is an experienced ME, but after all the free hours he does to keep his job, he is not earning much over minimum wage.

But most of us put up with the very low wages for the other benefits.

 

[Jeremy Harris]

15 minutes ago, redtop said:

just moved to conrwall, albeit just inside the border in Looe where we are self building.  I dont think this area is poor at all, everything stays open all year and lots of work at plymouth with good train routes from there to the rest of the country.  West cornwall may be a different story.  I think with increased home working we are seeing more people (like me) who can live anywhere in the UK without having to change jobs. In my industry its very common and we employ people from york, n wales, midlands, london, newport, devon and cornwall.  Technology makes it very easy

 

 

Worth looking at the situation a bit further down the county.  The area around Camborne/Redruth has always suffered from high unemployment and low income levels.  There are areas where incoming wealth has raised income levels, but there are a lot of people living on very low annual incomes, and who are struggling to earn enough to be able to afford to buy a home, in large areas of Cornwall.  It's one reason why the county has been receiving aid for many years now.  This quote sums things up well:

 

Quote

Cornwall is one of the poorest areas in the United Kingdom with a GVA of 70.9% of the national average in 2015  and is one of four UK areas that qualifies for poverty-related grants from the EU (European Social Fund)

 

[SteamyTea]

A few years back there was an area of St. Ives that was one of the poorest in the EU. Median household wage was 60% of national average.

Was 'cured' by moving the people.

I park in one of the streets as it is free, but a steep climb back to the car.

Places like Ruan Major and Minor on the Lizard are so remote they are effective out side the economy.

[ProDave]

1 minute ago, SteamyTea said:

A few years back there was an area of St. Ives that was one of the poorest in the EU. Median household wage was 60% of national average.

Was 'cured' by moving the people.

I park in one of the streets as it is free, but a steep climb back to the car.

Places like Ruan Major and Minor on the Lizard are so remote they are effective out side the economy.

I like the Lizard.

 

If you think that is remote, come and take a tour round some of the off the beaten track parts of the north Highlands. (off the North Coast 500 route)

[SteamyTea]

Yes, I suspect it is the same economically too.

 

[ProDave]

4 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Yes, I suspect it is the same economically too.

 

Unless you are a crofter one wonders what you do for a living in some of the very remote places up here. But it does seem to attract a lot of artists etc who work from home.

[redtop]

statistics... In know there are lots on min wage.  But then in the midlands its exactly the same, and wealthy london or bristol... Plenty of people in both places on very low income however due to the large number of highly paid jobs the average income is higher.  I agree not everyone is as lucky as me, but then its taken me until mid 50's and working all over UK and europe to get to this position however having lived in Bedale, Aldershot, 3 areas of the midlands, Aborfield, sunderland over the last 30 years i can certainly say the area in and around Looe feels far from deprived.  

[Jeremy Harris]

Cornwall has a bigger divide between those who are comfortably off and those who are living in poverty than many might suspect.  All my family live in West Cornwall, have done for decades, and a fair percentage of them have been out of work for years on end.  There are few well-paid jobs in the county, and most of the attempts to try and create them, often using economic development grant funding because the county is a deprived area, have failed.

 

Looe is probably one of the better off areas in the county, as, like a few other places (Padstow, for example) it attracts people who move there having made money up country.  You only need to spend some time in and around the relatively large Camborne - Pool - Redruth conurbation to get an idea of how poor large areas of the county are.  Even places that used to be considered reasonably affluent, like Newquay, are struggling.

 

The average salary for Cornwall compared to the rest of the UK illustrates just how big the income difference is.  The average salary now is pretty much what I was earning there (on a national pay scale) when I moved away from the county nearly 30 years ago.  I was viewed as being "well off" on around £25k way back then:

 

 

 

 

The Wikipedia page on the economy of Cornwall seems reasonably accurate, and also sums up how attempts to kick start employment haven't really worked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Cornwall

 

 

[SteamyTea]

10 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

I was viewed as being "well off" on around £25k way back then

That was your personal salary, I suspect that the median of £25,000 now (or whenever the survey was done) is household salary.  The way it was measured changed sometime in the 1990s.  It also now includes benefits, which as anyone knows who has claimed Working Credit, knows is a pigs ear of a system.