SIR HENRY IRVING

 A famous resident of Halsetown was Johnny Broadribb (Brodribb) who became the famous actor-manager Sir Henry Irving. He was the only son of Samuel Broadribb, a one-time farmer who became a traveling salesman and who met and married Mary Behenna, daughter of a Cornish farmer.

Life was hard and the family moved to Bristol, but Mary was determined that her only son should not breath the polluted air of Bristol so she took young Johnny to Halsetown to live with her sister, a Mrs Penberthy, the wife of a mine captain Isaac Penberthy. Johnny was a very sensitive boy of a nervous disposition and had a stammer. This was the best move for him as, years later ,Henry Irving himself referred to that time as his ‘free and open healthy years’.

He spent his boyhood in one of the tiny cottages in Halsetown and attended the village school; he was even part of Halsetown’s militant Methodism because his Aunt was a strict Methodist.

It is understood that his interest in the theatre may have come about because a Mr Crinks, a theatrical impresario, regularly toured the villages of West Cornwall with a company of actors and performed such melodramas such as ‘Maria Marten’ and ‘Sweeny Todd’ in a tent. He eventually opened an Assembly Room Theatre in St Ives, which was literally a tent on the ForeShore. Here he staged Shakespearean plays. It was here that young Johnny would have no doubt crept under the canvas flaps with the other local children, and would have obtained his first glimpse and impression of the world of the theatre.

He never lost touch with his Aunt after he became well known, and he brought his famous teacher Dame Ellen Terry to call upon his Aunt Penberthy when the old lady was over 90 and still living in the tiny cottage where she had run a dame’s school for the infants of Halsetown. He also invited his Aunt once to a first night at the Lyceum Theatre in London; but at the very last moment she decided, having consulted ‘the Lord’, that to have attended the theatre would have been alien to her creed.