From the North Foreland to Penzance

From the North Foreland to Penzance is a book by Clive Holland. The preface says the pages deal with the most important or most picturesque of the harbours and seaports of the South Coast, and that no attempt has been made to give guide book information or technical sailing directions. The text says the galleys drew very near the shore of the said place, and their men of war at the same time played their cannon on the shore for the space of about an hour or an hour and a half.

The text adds that there was never a house in the place but was thatched except the parson's, which was covered with Cornish slate. The writer says it is certain that on several occasions in the Middle Ages the men of the Ports were not backward in entering into a little war of their own, to their immediate and great advantage. The text describes a town that, according to a contemporary writer, was not much more than a straggling assemblage of fishermen's huts, with a few family mansions and merchants' residences along the sea-front, but soon became a fashionable resort.