nt twenty vessels and 315 men to
the siege of Calais is given to East Looe, but it may be guessed that
all the residents on the banks of the Looe rivers joined in this
great patriotic effort. Those were the days of the town's fiercest
activities, though its business as a port trading with the Continent
endured till long afterwards; and the pilchard-fishery was once more
important than it is now. Pilchards now for the most part keep further
west. There is still much fishing done, and some small coastwise
shipping gives occasional bustle to the rugged little banjo-shaped
pier. There was anciently a great animosity between the two Looes, as
was natural with such near neighbours; and the two still nourish a
lurking contempt for each other, not always successfully concealed.
They are at one, however, in their scorn for the pretensions of Fowey.
An intense local patriotism, that really cannot tolerate outside
claims, is a feature of many Western towns; a man from the next parish
is almost as much a foreigner as if he came from "the shires." The two
Looes have been brought to an enforced companionship, but they are not
mutually conciliatory. East Looe can claim to be the business portion
of the town, having the pier and the principal shops, while West Looe
is more select and residential. The debate as to the greater antiquity
may be left for the two to settle between themselves, but its harbour
and pier must long have given East Looe the practical precedence. At
the harbour some coal and limestone are imported, and there is a
shipment of fish, bark, granite, and china-clay. East Looe boasts a
further relic of its past in the ancient pillory preserved at the
porch of its town hall. St. Martin's, the parish church, has a Norman
door, and a font that appears to be of the same date; there is also a
more modern church, St. Anne's, whose dedication recalls that of the
chapel which formerly stood on the old fourteen-arch bridge, long
since displaced. At West Looe the church of St. Nicholas was once used
as a town hall and room for general entertainment, and very curious
indeed were some of the amusements that used to come here. Mr.
Baring-Gould tells us that when he first saw Looe it struck him as one
of the oddest old-world places in England. There was a booth-theatre
fitted up, and luring the folk to its dingy green canvas enclosure.
"The repertoire comprised blood-curdling tragedies. I went in and saw
'The Midnight Assassin; or, Th