Everything you want to know about the history of St Agnes Parish
From March 24th to 30th, St Agnes Museum is joining museums and galleries big and small from across the UK and Europe for the first ever #MuseumWeek on Twitter.
Every day we’ll be joining in with quiz questions, museum memories and interesting facts, so check out our St Agnes Turtle’s tweets and get involved!
Thanks to generous grants from the Art Fund and the V&A Purchase Fund, and with the help of privately donated funds from Museum members, an informal portrait of 12-year-old Joanna Opie by her elder brother Edward, painted in 1831 when he was just 21, has been purchased for the Museum’s collection. The painting is especially poignant as Joanna died a year later, possibly of cholera which was ravaging St Agnes at the time. Edward went on to become a Royal Academician and a respected portrait painter, like his great uncle John Opie, “The Cornish Wonder”.
The Opie family was, at the time of the portrait, living comfortably in Churchtown in the heart of St Agnes where Edward and Joanna’s father, also named Edward, was a shopkeeper. There were seven children of the marriage.
The portrait was previously owned by Lady Sibell Rowley, daughter of William Lygon, 7th Earl of Beauchamp, and it was on the Lygon family that Evelyn Waugh based his book “Brideshead Revisited”.
On Saturday 16th November crowds poured into the Church Hall for our Winter Coffee Morning which raised a record £576. In addition Membership Secretary, Beryl Thomas, took £375 in subscriptions and was delighted to recruit two new members.
All the money raised goes towards meeting the running costs of the Museum. As Sue Amor, our Treasurer, who had the task of adding up the money, said: ‘It was hard work, but I think we can give ourselves 10/10 for effort’.
We are very grateful to everyone who worked so hard to make the morning a success. Thanks go to all those who contributed items and those who came to buy them as well as to the stallholders, the washers-up, Paul and Lynn Euden and Julia Arntsen for the loan of her coffee machine!
For the record the breakdown of the total of £576 is: Books £60, Bric-à-brac £78, Cakes £106, Coffee £60, Raffle £115, Shop/cards £137, Silent Auction £20.
Very many of the 55 Voluntary Stewards at the Museum met there on 9th November to mark the end of the 2013 season and to pay tribute to Isobel Burrows who has retired after 18 years as the Stewards’ Rota Organiser and Mentor to new Stewards.
Chairman of the Museum Trust, Roger Radcliffe, paid a warm tribute to all the Stewards “for keeping the Museum’s doors open”. Visitor numbers were slightly down on 2012’s record number due to the hot summer, but importantly, the spend per visitor was up and income from visitors increased by £400 over the previous year. The peak day for visitors was 31 July with a total of 73.
It was, said the Chairman, the “Year of the Till” when the Museum installed a commercial till with which the Stewards had coped admirably. He praised Shop Managers, Mike and Lynn Furness, for all their help with the till installation and training.
There was prolonged applause as the Chairman presented Isobel with a bouquet and thanked her for all her hard work over so many years. Isobel said she had really enjoyed working with such super, reliable Stewards.
St Agnes Museum now has a Facebook page. We hope our many friends will follow us on Facebook to keep updated with all the latest news and events from the Museum.
