Where Does Penzance Derive Its Name?
Penzance gets its name from the Cornish Pen Sans, which means “holy headland”. This is because, over a millennium ago, there was a chapel named St. Anthony’s that stood to the west of what would become Penzance harbor. Until the 1930’s, the symbol of the town was St. John the Baptist’s ‘holy head’. Both the chapel and the symbol were lost in time but traces of them still linger. The severed head (of St. John the Baptist) can be seen even today on the civic emblem of the Mayor. The only object of the chapel that remains is ‘St. Raffidy’, a carved though extremely eroded figure which has been placed in the local parish church grounds. There is also evidence of other chapels such as St Anthony, one of them being a chapel dedicated to St. Clare.
