Scillonian History

Scilly may have been a military or penal settlement under the Roman Empire. In AD 384, the Emperor Maximus exiled two Spanish bishops, Tiberianus and Instantius, to the islands for heresy. Contact with traders from France and the Mediterranean brought the introduction of Christianity at the end of the 5th century. A 6th century tombstone with a Latin inscription found on Tresco is now in the island church. Remains of three 8th century chapels can be seen on St Helens, Tean and St Martin's. The chapel on St Helen’s was part of a hermitage dedicated to St Elidius, who is buried there. A 13th century Norse saga claims that Olaf Trygvasson, King of Norway was converted to Christianity in AD 989 by one of the holy men living in the islands. More plausible is the tale of St Mary's plunder by the Viking King of Orkney and Caithness in 1155.

Following the Norman Conquest, Scilly became the property of the English Crown. From 1141, it was part of the Earldom of Cornwall; after 1337 the Duchy. A charter from King Henry I granted all churches on Scilly to Tavistock Abbey. Abbots and monks based at St Nicholas's Priory on Tresco built new churches on the site of St Elidius's hermitage and at Porthennor (Old Town) on St Mary's, Scilly's main settlement and port, protected by Castle Ennor. In 1248 Drew de Barrentine, who also held the Channels Islands, came to the castle as Governor by order of Henry III. Early in the 14th century, the estate was in the hands of Ranulph de Blancminster, who was obliged to maintain 12 men-at-arms to help keep the peace and paid a yearly rent to the Crown in either money or puffins.

By the reign of Richard III Scilly had slipped to an official peacetime valuation of just 40 shillings and nothing at all in time of war. Before the end of the 15th century both the church on St Helen's and Tresco Priory were in ruins, probably attacks by Barbary pirates. In 1547, England's Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour, having acquired Scilly and married Henry VIII's widow Catherine Parr, was accused of turning the islands into his own privateering stronghold. He was beheaded two years later for organised piracy and plotting against the young King Edward VI. Conflict with France, Spain, Holland and Civil War confirmed Scilly's strategic position in the Western Approaches and prompted major fortification work on the islands: Star Castle, Harry's Walls, Cromwell's Castle, King Charles's Castle and the Blockhouse known as Dover Fort on Tresco.

Seymour's execution marked the start of the Godolphin link to Scilly. Sir Francis Godolphin became Captain of the Isles, and in 1570, Queen Elizabeth granted his son the lease as Governor. For the next 215 years, except during the Civil War period, this Cornish family owned Scilly. The Dukes of Leeds, heirs to the Godolphins, assumed the lease in 1785, and in 1831, it reverted to the Crown. The Godolphins and Star Castle, built in just 18 months during the 1590s to ward off a second Spanish Armada, transformed Scilly. A semblance of law and order came to the islands. So did an influx of new residents from Cornwall. Houses were put up against the Garrison walls, and then the ‘Old Quay' was built as the development of Hugh Town began

In 1623, the future King Charles I stayed four days at Star Castle on his return from a failed bid to court the King of Spain's daughter. In 1646 Charles's son, the future King Charles II, with the Cavalier cause in the Civil War in disarray, also sought refuge in Scilly. Parliament's fleet attempted a blockade. After six weeks, Prince Charles left for the Channel Islands with a retinue that included his Groom of the Bedchamber Sir John Grenville and the Governor, another Sir Francis Godolphin. In 1648, soldiers of the Roundhead Governor Colonel Anthony Buller mutinied and declared for the King. A struggle ensued in which 10 islanders died. Buller was captured at worship in Old Town Church. Grenville returned from Jersey to take over as Governor and to proclaim the exiled Charles II as King, when news of his father's execution reached Scilly early in 1649.

Scilly was to be the stepping-stone for a Royalist re-conquest of the mainland. Troops built new defences on St Mary's, Bryher and Gugh. Grenville based privateers in Scilly to damage the English Republic's sea-borne trade, much of which was carried by the Dutch. Amsterdam merchants complained that the Governor was holding 28 of their ships in the islands. Dutch Admiral Maarten Tromp's appearance at St Mary's in 1651 demanding his country's boats back rang warning bells at Westminster. General at Sea Robert Blake was despatched to Scilly with 20 warships and some 1500 troops.

Blake captured Tresco, then Bryher. Terms for surrender of the other islands were agreed at peace talks on Samson. To keep the Dutch at bay the Republic's Governor Lieutenant Joseph Hunkin's first task was to replace the burned-out King Charles's Castle with the more redoubtable Cromwell's Castle at sea level. In three Dutch Wars between 1652 and 1674, the only casualties around Scilly were the Penzance packet boat in 1653 and sheep on St Agnes taken by enemy seamen 14 years later.

In the 1740s, when Britain was at odds with Spain and France, Master Gunner Abraham Tovey put up a curtain wall three quarters of the way round the Hugh. In the Napoleonic Wars circular gun and signal towers were erected at Telegraph and on the Garrison. More batteries were built between 1896 and 1905 in the false expectation of Scilly becoming a huge naval base. During both World Wars, 1,000 service-men were billeted on the Garrison. In 1917, seaplanes to help defend Atlantic convoys against U-boats were housed at New Grimsby. From 1941 to 1944, a flight of six Hurricanes was based at the airfield; motor torpedo boats were moored in St Mary's Pool. Twenty-seven concrete pillboxes were established at points around St Mary's so machine gunners inside could rake possible enemy landing beaches. In Tresco Channel, 'spy' trawlers operated clandestinely to pick up or drop off resistance fighters or other operatives at sea or on the coast of Brittany.

Population climbed steadily on the islands between 1600 and 1900. Residents numbered 250 in 1551, 650 in 1651 and peaked at 2600 between 1821 and 1851, 500 more than today. St Martin's was reduced to two households during the Civil War but had 280 residents in 1821, when St Agnes had 289. Economic prosperity fluctuated greatly. Trinity House built one of its first lighthouses in Britain on St Agnes in 1680. In 1684, the Nance family from Falmouth settled on Tean and introduced the kelp industry. For the next 150 years, it was the main source of employment on Scilly. Seaweed was gathered, dried and burned in small stone-lined pits. It took more than 20 tons of weed to produce each ton of kelp. This fetched about £5 in the glass and soap-making trades of Bristol and Gloucester.

During the 18th century, Scilly ling and mackerel were widely exported. Smuggling of wine, spirits and tobacco was lucrative. A customs house was set up in 1682 and a naval cutter stationed in 1784 to staunch the loss of excise duty. Scilly was home to many pilots. Their gigs carried contraband but also ensured that ships made safe passage into and out of the islands. The Napoleonic Wars, with increased military and naval activity, brought financial benefit, not least with the trade in locally grown potatoes. However, the post-war failure of the ling fishery, the decline of kelping, bad harvests and a peacetime slump in pilotage all combined to bring destitution to Scilly. Penzance sent aid to ease the poverty. In 1825, there was drought: only one day's rain between March and September. In 1826, Parliament was petitioned about Scillonian suffering.

A new 99-year lease was taken on by Hertfordshire squire Augustus Smith in 1834. Three years earlier the Duke of Leeds had returned his old lease to the Duchy. Smith lived in Scilly until his death in 1872. With his notions of self-improvement based on the theories of Jeremy Bentham, he took over from a regime of absentee landlords and lacklustre land-agents. He found declining trade and failing crops supporting an inflated population on holdings split between all a family's surviving sons. As Lord Proprietor and chief magistrate, Smith re-allocated tenancies. He insisted that only the eldest son could succeed to land. The dispossessed found work building the new church and the quay extension in Hugh Town. Smith forbade marriage unless a couple had a house of their own. He made parents pay a penny a week for sending children to school, tuppence if they stayed at home. In 1838, he built his home next to the old Abbey. He planted trees as windbreaks and created Tresco Gardens from species brought home by Scillonian sea captains. Smith introduced fire and postal services. In 1855, he emptied Samson to create a deer park, which failed. He helped to organise and finance a local shipbuilding industry. Locally known as the Governor or the Emperor, he changed the whole character of Scilly.

Scilly's shipbuilding industry began in the 1770s, driven by the kelp-carrying trade. By the 1850s, there were five yards on St Mary's: three on Town Beach and two on Porthcressa. In 1851, 59 vessels were registered in Scilly: wooden ships owned and crewed by Scillonians. Some of the larger boats traded around the world. But unable to compete with steam-powered, iron ships the industry had virtually disappeared by 1880. By the end of the 1880s, Scilly was no longer a port of call. The 18th century isolation hospital, built on St Helen's to take plague victims from passing ships, was surplus to requirements. The St Agnes light was supplemented during the 1880s by Round Island and the final version of Bishop Rock, at 175 feet the tallest of Britain's 82 lighthouses. An open, cast-iron structure had earlier been constructed on the rock but was demolished by a storm in 1850 before the light could be attached. Its granite replacement in 1858 needed to be gradually heightened and strengthened over the next three decades. When the new steel-framed tower on Peninnis was erected in 1911, St Agnes light, originally coal-fired, was finally put out. White-painted, it stayed as a daymark for seafarers, like the red-and-white 17th century tower on St Martin's and the 21st century gable-end on Tinswalbert.

The growth of the flower trade came just as island shipping, shipbuilding and potato farming were on the wane. The Isles of Scilly Bulb and Flower Association was founded in 1885. Back in 1865, Augustus Smiths was said to have sent the first box of Scillonian scented narcissi to reach Covent Garden. The father of this trade is usually thought to be William Trevellick of Rocky Hill Farm, St Mary's. He sent blooms by hatbox in 1867 and received 7s 6d for them in return. The earliest bulbs, Scilly Whites, are thought to have arrived with the monks of St Nicholas Priory. Others came from the Mediterranean or China. It was the first steamer link to Penzance in 1858 and the onward rail connection the following year that made the cut flower trade from the islands potentially viable.

Traditionally Scilly's link with the mainland has been problematical and the journey sometimes hazardous. Travelling with the Prince of Wales in 1646, the pregnant Lady Anne Fanshawe arrived 'almost dead' in the islands, having been extremely seasick and had money, clothes and other belongings pilfered by the crew. Fog obliged Queen Victoria to stop off on the royal yacht in 1847 en route from the Isle of Wight to Balmoral. In 1743, John Wesley on board a fishing boat soothed his nerves with hymns while crossing during a heavy swell. Dr William Borlase claimed the islands went 17 weeks in 1752 without provisions and, in 1872, two packet steamers were wrecked. For part of World War I, islanders had to rely on Government vessels for supplies, although the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company's Scillonian ran uninterrupted through World War II. Scilly's first lifeboats predated the formation of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in the 1850s by fifteen years but were initially no match for the island gigs. The station at Periglis on St Agnes was built in 1890; its twin slipways in 1903. The low-water slip was among the longest in Britain and the lifeboat was mounted on rails to take it to water. The present station and slipway at Carn Thomas on St Mary's dates from 1899. The arrival of the first motorised lifeboat in 1920 at St Mary's triggered the closure of Periglis.

Passenger air transport came to Scilly in 1937 when Channel Air Ferries rented two fairways on the golf course as landing strips. The Duchy, which had taken back its lease in the 1920s on all the islands apart from Tresco, allowed runway construction above the Old Town in 1938. De Havilland biplanes and Dragon Rapides provided early transport links. A family of five, shot down by a Heinkel on a day trip to Scilly in a Dragon Rapide, led to the temporary suspension of services in 1941. A pioneering helicopter service started from Penzance in 1964. Mainland post transferred from sea to air in 1967. Twenty years later, the runway on St Mary's was extended and Skybus, run by the Steamship Company, began flights to and from Land's End. The only post-war air fatalities came in 1983 when a helicopter approaching Scilly in mist flew into the sea. Lifeboat coxswain Matt Lethbridge picked up six survivors from the 26 passengers and crew on board.

Tourism on Scilly started in earnest once the railway link from Penzance to London was completed in 1859. The main hotel was Tregarthen's owned by Captain Frank Tregarthen, skipper of the Ariadne. Guests crossed over with him and three of his daughters ran the hotel. On the garden terrace in 1860, Alfred Lord Tennyson composed his poem Enoch Arden. Before World War I, steam launch excursions were running between St Mary's and the off islands for two or three shillings, Sundays excepted. Star Castle became a hotel in 1933. In 1949, the Duchy sold off most of its freehold property in Hugh Town, which led to a huge surge in guesthouse provision. In 1967, Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who holidayed in Scilly and lies buried in Old Town, conducted an al fresco press conference on the beach at Samson. There he told the world of his dramatic plans for dealing with oil seepage from the Torrey Canyon, the 60,000 ton tanker wrecked on the Seven Stones. The Boatmen's Association was launched in 1958 to streamline inter-island travel for visitors. In 1960, the Island Hotel opened on Tresco, Hell Bay followed on Bryher in the 1970s with St Martin's Hotel at Lower Town in 1989.

Electricity came to Scilly in 1931 with a generator under Buzza Hill. To conserve power in the early days, it was turned off after midnight. Off-islanders relied on their own generators until 1985 until links were sunk from St Mary's. In 1989, mainland energy arrived thanks to a 30-mile undersea cable laid from Sennen to Porthcressa. Scillonians were asked to pay Income Tax for the first time by Chancellor of the Exchequer RA Butler in 1953. Good television reception reached the islands in the 1960s with the erection of a booster mast at Telegraph. From the adjacent Telegraph Tower, in 1898, Marconi picked up wireless signals transmitted from Porthcurno in Cornwall. Augustus Smith built the first proper roads on Scilly. Before World War II, a 15 mph speed limit applied in Hugh Town. Driving tests were introduced on St Mary's in 1966; road tax in 1971.

The Council of the Isles of Scilly was set up in 1891. It became an Education Authority in 1902. Until 1955, Augustus Smith's successors were hereditary Chairmen of the Council. In Hugh Town, the present Church Hall was the old infants' school. The girls' school was the present Catholic Church and the boys' school was at Carn Thomas, opposite today's Five Islands School secondary base. The Isles of Scilly Museum opened in 1967. In 1974, the islands' entire coastline was granted Heritage Coast status. In 1975, the whole of Scilly became a Conservation Area and in 1976 was designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty too. A water desalination plant was opened at Porth Hellick in 1992 to ease seasonal water supply problems on St Mary's. At Porthmellon, an earlier incinerator was upgraded in 2001 to help Scilly cope with its waste disposal. Sea defences all over the islands were extended in the 1990s, and in 1987, the Duchy leased the uninhabited islands and all untenanted land to the Isles of Scilly Environmental Trust, (since 1999 the Wildlife Trust), for an annual rent of one daffodil. In 2004, the islands contained 26 Sites of Special Scientific Interest, 129 Listed Buildings, including 4 at Grade I and 238 Scheduled Ancient Monuments.