We are looking forward to reopening on Good Friday, 6 April 2012.
We will have our new touchscreen, with a virtual tour of the first floor, information on our fascinating reserve collection, and all our Family History information up and running. We will also celebrate the Olympics with a new display Sporting Activities in the Parish, and having been given a Cornish Range during the winter, which came from one of the iconic Stippy Stappy cottages, we will have a Cornish kitchen, so realistic that you will smell the saffron buns cooking!
For families we will have two new high quality resin rubbings, bought with the help of a generous grant from Cornwall Council, to add to our Cuckoo Hunt, Treasure Chest and story Sam and the Leatherback Turtle. All our family activities are free.
On Wednesday 15 June 2011 Radio Cornwall‘s Martin Bailie told listeners about the Museum’s recent recognition by Her Majesty with the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. Publicity Officer Liz Thompson explained what is so special about the Museum and the 60+ volunteers and described some of the artefacts we look after in order to preserve the local heritage.
St Agnes Museum Trust is absolutely delighted and tremendously honoured to have been awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service 2011 and is very grateful to all our volunteers whose hard work in so many different ways has made this award possible.
We have more than 60 volunteers helping to run the Museum, doing everything from stewarding seven days a week during a long season, to maintaining our working longcase clocks, providing hanging baskets, helping at coffee mornings (including baking cakes and growing plants), maintaining a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about St Agnes Parish, and painting and decorating.
This winter many of our regular volunteers braved the freezing weather to help with the major refurbishment of the Museum, emptying and refilling cabinets, removing old carpets, painting internally and externally, and cleaning the listed building from top to toe after the building works had been completed.
But as our citation makes clear, the Museum does much more than recruit and care for volunteers who help at the Museum:
“Volunteers take exhibits out to schools, allowing schools that cannot visit to benefit from its work. The Museum’s internet site and postal response means that it serves not only the wider community but also a worldwide Cornish Diaspora.
This is an outstanding local charity providing not only a local community focus for the village, but also reaching a wider audience, giving an excellent volunteering experience for a large number of people as well as aiding a diverse group of beneficiaries.”
Some of the letters of support for the Museum’s nomination came from students at St Agnes School. Here is a flavour of what they said:
The Museum people helped me find a photo of my house when it was bombed in the war
The ladies at the Museum have photocopied my family tree for me. They are really kind and helpful.
There’s a turtle at the Museum and do you know how it died? It swallowed a plastic bag because he thought it was a jellyfish.
Museum spokesman, Liz Thompson, said that “being nominated had been a very helpful experience, focusing on our volunteers and beneficiaries rather than on the care of the collection or our listed building.” We now look forward to the Award Presentation, while representatives of our group will attend a Royal Garden Party.
On a bright sunny Saturday morning St Agnes Museum threw open its doors to its members after a hectic winter of renovation largely funded by a £50,000 share of a £2 million grant to Cornish Mining World Heritage sites from the Rural Development Programme for England’s Discover the Extraordinary Project.
Ann Oxley, Roger Radcliffe and Clare Murton
Visitors were enthralled by the light and spacious ground floor with its floor to ceiling glass cabinets, the new wheelchair-friendly route, new carpeting throughout the Museum, generously donated by Curator, Ann Oxley, in memory of Murray Thomas, and the new computer in the study corner which takes visitors on a virtual tour of the first floor, enables them to search the Museum’s extensive Family History library, and includes many objects from the reserve collection not currently on view.
Outstanding among the many new displays is the iconic Leatherback turtle now diving to the depths; a rebuilt Natural History display; one commemorating the Chacewater-Newquay branchline; an underground mining scene from Blue Hills Mine featuring everything from a kibble to a pasty; a maritime display featuring the last rocket to be fired in a Breeches Buoy rescue from St Agnes; and a display commemorating one of St Agnes’ greatest sons, John Passmore Edwards, the centenary of whose death is marked this year.
There are many events around the county marking the centenary, with proceeds of some going towards the proposed refurbishment of the Blackwater Institute which is only metres from where Edwards was born.
On view for the first time is a magnificent 18th century silver ewer given to the Parish Church by John Worth of Penryn and on loan from the Church Council.
Younger visitors have not been forgotten with the story of “Sam and the Leatherback Turtle” kindly recorded for the Museum by actor Bruce Alexander, perhaps best known as Superintendent Mullett in “A Touch of Frost”, and written by Carol Morgan and also a new “brass” rubbing activity.
Upstairs has also been transformed with a selection of the Museum’s paintings on view, some for the first time, along with village shop signs from businesses no longer in existence.
Welcoming members, Chairman Roger Radcliffe, paid tribute to the ongoing support of Mandy Kimmins and The Bolster who provided the delicious refreshments, and to everyone who had worked so hard on the Museum refurbishment and especially the two Honorary Curators, Clare Murton and Ann Oxley, who were presented with tokens of everyone’s gratitude, as were Mandy and her helpers, Jain and Alison.
On 8 April four representatives from St Agnes Museum, Roger Radcliffe, Stephen Roberts, Beryl Thomas and Liz Thompson, accompanied by Mandy Kimmins, who kindly nominated us, and our County Councillor, Les Donnithorne, attended a reception at County Hall, Truro, jointly hosted by the Lord Lieutenant, Lady Mary Holborow, and the Chairman of Cornwall Council, Mrs Pat Harvey, to be presented with a certificate to mark the Museum’s achievement in being nominated for the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service.
Committee members receiving the certificate
The Museum was among thirteen groups nominated, including the Cornwall Samaritans and Shelterbox Warehouse Volunteers. Before each certificate was presented by the Lord Lieutenant and Chairman, a citation was read by Cornwall Council’s Chief Executive, Kevin Lavery. The Museum’s included: “This is an outstanding local charity, providing not only a local community focus for the village, but also reaching a wider audience, giving an excellent volunteering experience for a large number of people, as well as aiding a diverse group of beneficiaries.”
The Museum will have to wait until the Queen’s Official Birthday to learn if it has been awarded the Queen’s Award, but it is delighted to have been nominated.
