Research and inspiration: St ives local stories..

Some of the stories told by Capt Tomas Bassett Paynter whose nickname was "man friday" and who often slept for warmth at the gas works and also lived in the tenement in Digey Square known as "The Digey hotel".
These stories were told with straight face and were often accepted...

Here are some of them....

"I once sailed with a cargo of little green men"

"we were rounding Cape Horn in a fog, the cap'n sent me up the mast to see where we were to.when i came down the ship had gone"

" I once sailed on a ship that was on the same tack for so long that it wore the ships side through"

"We were up in the Baltic on a long tack; the cap'n put us over the side and we scraped the barnacles off the bottom. Then he put us on the other tack, and we did the same to the other one."

"I once sailed with a cargo of umbrella seed"

"Down the Antarctic we sailed on the same wave for seven years"

"We were in Bassetts Bay one time, in a fog so thick we were all leaning on it. suddenly the fog cleared away and we all fell overboard."

"On being asked if he had ever been ship wrecked. He said "many's the time" "we were coming home once from Trevail with a cargo of blackberries, and we were wrecked on a place called the island"

"I landed a cargo of grass in Clodgy Cove for Vivians cows but they would only eat grass from Clodgy, so i had to take um bak again"


Local stories are a big part of what keeps a place's history alive, I want to use local St Ives stories within my design process. Hidden stories within the designs, tiny sections that when you look closer you can see the history and get a feeling of the place...

I write poems and I have done since I was 9 years old, alongside my sketches I want to use poems that I wrote about the places I have been to and use them in my work. I want to combine sketches, photos and poems to piece together the places in my life.







Man friday stories from local fisherman
Harding Laity