PENZANCE, a municipal borough, market town and seaport in the St Ives parliamentary division of Cornwall, England, the terminus of the Great Western railway, 3252 M. W.S.W. of London. Pop. (root), 13,136. It is finely situated on the western shore of Mount's Bay, opposite St Michael's Mount, being the westernmost port in England. The site of the old town slopes sharply upward from the harbour, to the west of which there extends an esplanade and modern residential quarter; for Penzance, with its mild climate, is in considerable favour as a health resort. The town has no buildings of great antiquity, but the public buildings (1867), in Italian style, are handsome. By the market house is a statue of Sir Humphry Davy, who was born here in 1778. Among institutions there are a specially fine public library, museums of geology and natural history and antiquities, mining and science schools, the West Cornwall Infirmary and a meteorological station. The harbour, enclosed within a breakwater, has an area of 24 acres, with 12 to 16 ft. depth of water, and floating and graving docks. There is a
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