ST IVES

St Ives is the name of several places in England:

• St Ives, Cambridgeshire
• St Ives, Cornwall
• St Ives, Dorset

St Ives is also the name of a suburb of Sydney in Australia:

• St Ives, Sydney

St. Ives may also refer to:

• St. Ives: A book by Robert Louis Stevenson
• St. Ives: A film produced in 1976 starring Charles Bronson
• St. Ives: A 1998 film starring Jean-Marc Barr and Miranda Richardson

---

This page deals with St Ives in Cambridgeshire only. For other places of the same name see St Ives. St Ives is a medium-sized market town around 15 miles north-west of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England.

Previously called Slepe, its name was changed to St Ives after the body of a Persian Bishop, Saint Ivo, was found buried in the town. For the past 1000 years it has been home to some of the biggest markets in the country. Modern markets have, however, been dwindling.

Built on the banks of the wide, fast-flowing River Great Ouse between Huntingdon and Ely, St Ives has a famous chapel on its bridge. In recent years, St Ives has been the victim of severe yearly flooding during winter. However, property development on the main flood plain continues, risking more severe floods in the future.

St Ives has one main secondary school (St. Ivo), 3 primary schools (Thorndown, Wheatfields and Westfield, which was recently named outstanding by Ofsted), 1 fire station, 1 police station and 1 bus station shared between a population of around 15,000 in 1991. There used to be a train between St Ives and Cambridge, but this closed during the 20th century.

St Ives is most famous for the riddle:

As I was going to St Ives

I met a man with seven wives.

Each wife had seven sacks,

Each sack had seven cats,

Each cat had seven kits;

Kits, cats, sacks and wives --

How many were going to St Ives?

anonymous

---

This page deals only with St Ives, Cornwall. For other places of the same name, see: St Ives St Ives is a seaside town in Cornwall, England, north of Penzance, and west of Camborne. In former times it was commercially dependent on fishing as an industry. The decline in fishing, however, has caused a shift in commercial emphasis and the town is now primarily a holiday resort.

The town was the site of a particularly grotesque atrocity during the Prayer Book rebellion of 1549. The English Provost Marshall came to St Ives and invited the mayor, John Payne, to lunch at an inn. He asked the mayor to have the gallows erected during the course of the lunch. Afterwards the mayor and the Provost Marshall walked down to the gallows; the Provost Marshall then ordered the mayor to mount the gallows. The mayor was then hanged for being a Roman Catholic.

Modern St Ives came with the railway in 1877, a branch line from St Erth. With it came the new generation of Victorian seaside holidaymakers. Much of the town was built during the latter part of the 19th century.

In 1928, the artists Alfred Wallis, Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood met at St Ives and laid the foundation for the artists' colony of today. In 1939, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo settled in St Ives. In 1993, a branch of the Tate Gallery, the Tate St Ives, opened here. The Tate also looks after the Barbara Hepworth Museum and her Sculpture Garden. It was the wish of the late sculptor to leave her work on public display in perpetuity.

---

This page deals only with St Ives in Dorset. For other places with the same name, see: St Ives. St Ives is a village in the county of Dorset in the south of England. It lies close to the border between Dorset and Hampshire, near Ringwood, Verwood and Ferndown.