Spring 2014 newsletter

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the spring edition of our e-newsletter. The newsletter covers news from Record Office and the Cornish Studies Library and is sent out quarterly. If you know anyone who would like to subscribe, please ask them to send a blank email to [email protected] with ‘Subscribe to E-

newsletter’ in the subject line. We hope you enjoy this edition and take this opportunity to wish you a happy Easter and a bright and sunny spring!

Kind regards,

The Archives and Cornish Studies Team

KRESEN KERNOW PROJECT NEWS

The consultation programme is now in full swing. We launched the programme at the end of February when the online questionnaire went live and held our first roadshow event in . We had over 220 people drop in to find out about the project, the site and the services, and we were delighted that our project and the redevelopment of the brewery site were met with such enthusiasm and support. We have also attended events at the Tremough campus (Penryn), , Wheal Martyn and a roadshow at , where we spoke to lots of people and also took part in a great radio interview.

We are holding more roadshows across Cornwall over the next few months, giving you a chance to discuss the project and the new and improved service with members of the team. The roles of the three services which will come together in the new building will also be explained (i.e. Cornwall Record Office, the Cornish Studies Library and the Cornwall and Scilly Historic Environment Service). There are also opportunities for people to sign up and get involved in the project, as well as share thoughts and make suggestions. The dates and locations are:

Falmouth - Thursday 3rd April. The Poly, Church Street, 10am to 3pm - Monday 7th April. 4 Saltash Shop, Fore Street, 10am to 3pm. - Friday 11th April. BCA Rooms, Mount Folly, 10am to 3pm. Launceston - Tuesday 22nd April. Launceston Town Hall, 10am to 3pm. – Saturday 26th April. Trevithick Day (tbc) - Thursday 1st May. Pop-Up Penzance (in Market Jew Street), 10am to 3pm – Saturday 3rd May. Lemon Quay, Farmers Market, 10am to 3pm. – Saturday 10th May. Bude Castle Heritage Centre, 10am to 3pm. Family History Day – Thursday 15th May. Fowey Library, 10am to 3pm. Royal Cornwall Show – 5th-7th June. Showground.

User Forums Users of any of the three services are also welcome to attend one of our User Forums which will be held in April and October 2014. They will be a great way to hear what's happening with the project and to have your say. The first sessions will be introductions to the Kresen Kernow project on Tuesday 29 April, 5.30-6.45pm at Cornwall Record Office, Truro or Thursday 1 May, 4-5.30pm, at the Cornish Studies Library, Redruth. For more information or to book a place please contact Iain Rowe at [email protected] or phone 01872 323127.

Focus Groups Later this year we will be holding focus groups on particular themes and for specific audiences. These include: volunteers, depositors, the creative sector, educators and students, the building, our services and access. You can sign up for any of these at one of the roadshows or by emailing [email protected].

For further information on the consultation programme, and to complete the questionnaire, visit our dedicated webpages at www.cornwall.gov.uk/kresenkernow.

WHAT'S ON?

As well as the consultation programme we have other events and activities coming up in the next few months. These include our How Does Your Garden Grow? exhibition at the Cornish Studies Library from April 17th-May 2nd (during Library opening hours). This small exhibition will showcase some of the wide range of material we hold relating to Cornwall’s gardens and gardeners, including diaries and photos.

On May 14th we will be taking part in an event at the National Trust’s Cotehele house, near , bringing some of our documents related to the family and the house back ‘home’. These include a fascinating series of letters related to a whale washed up on the Edgcumbe estate in 1647, as well as Piers Edgcumbe’s 17th century diary of his travels in Europe. Staff from Cornwall Record Office and the National Trust will be on hand to answer any questions. You can find out about visiting Cotehele here: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/cotehele/.

On Saturday June 15th we’ll be celebrating Murdoch Day in Redruth, and will be holding an exhibition and free children’s craft activities at the Cornish Studies Library from 10am until 2pm.

To stay up to date with what’s on, Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/kresenkernow.

RECENT ACCESSIONS

The Record Office has had nearly 50 new accessions since our last e-newsletter, dating from 1639- 2014. They include records of churches produced by Decorative and Fine Arts Societies, records of several mines including Geevor, Pedn-an-Drea (Redruth) and West Chiverton (Perranzabuloe). We’ve also taken in records from Fowey Port Health Authority and Falmouth WI as well as a new accession of scorebooks from Grampound Road Cricket Club, which help to provide a detailed and comprehensive record of the activities of the team.

Individual items include a printed and bound transcript of the Journal of Thomas Gwin, Quaker merchant, of Falmouth, covering the period 1703-1717 (SF/787). The original is held at Friends House Library in London but it was temporarily transferred here for one of our volunteers to transcribe; this is the result of that work. The journal is a key document for the study of early Quakers in Cornwall as it is the only surviving long manuscript other than minute books. As it was written as a private journal it is often franker than other Quaker works of this period and also contains invaluable information on Quaker ministry in Cornwall at this time.

We have also acquired a printed prospectus for a private school at Penzance called Penalverne Home School for Girls and a lovely photograph album kept by one of the mistresses, Eleanor Hare. It contains photographs of school buildings and of the pupils in the gymnasium and playing cricket in 1908. In the late 19th and 20th century there were a number of small private schools such as this in Cornwall which leave hardly any documentary traces so this is an important addition to our collections (AD2289/2-3). Along with other school records we have also received a significant accession related to St Austell Grammar School, formerly St Austell County School. This covers its whole existence from 1908-1975. Of particular note within this is a set (sadly incomplete) of 50 school magazines covering the period 1909 to 1971, reference SAUS8/11/1-50.

Unusually, we have also received some artefacts for our collections! Among a large number of Methodist records we have acquired a silver presentation trowel used at the laying of the foundation stone for Wesleyan chapel in 1903 (reference MRN/1654), as well as a medal struck to celebrate the centenary of Sunday Schools in 1880 which features an image of Robert Raikes (1736-1811), the founder of the movement (reference MRL/1363).

Meanwhile, at the Cornish Studies Library, the theatre in Cornwall is explored in two new books. Theatre in the round: the staging of Cornish medieval drama by Sydney Higgins (published by Alldrama, 2013, ISBN – 1484947053) looks at Cornish medieval plays and their staging in circular theatres. Higgins examines the surviving manuscripts of the Cornish plays Beunans Meriasek (The Life of St. Meriasek) and Gwyrans an Bys (The Creation of the World).

In Theatre by the sea. The story of Newquay's Cosy Nook by Chris Blount (published by the author, 2013, ISBN – 0992737907) the author recalls the glory days of Newquay’s Cosy Nook Theatre (which was open from 1929 to 1991) when professional shows and local productions provided entertainment throughout the year. It was loved by all who patronised it or performed there, including stars like Benny Hill, Clive Dunn, Ray Allen and Philip Schofield.

LEARNING UPDATE

It’s been another busy few months for the learning team. Our art competition, launched in association with My Cornwall magazine, received over 600 entries from schools across Cornwall! The judges had a hard time choosing winners from four categories (infant, junior, secondary, senior) but reached a decision after much deliberation. Winners were chosen on the basis of relevance to a theme (‘My Cornwall’), creativity and originality. Winners received art materials and passes to local attractions, and their entries will be published in the next edition of My Cornwall magazine. In the meantime we displayed all 600+ entries at the Cornish Studies Library for two colourful weeks in March!

On the evening of March 25th, the Cornish Studies Library was packed to the rafters for another talk by witchcraft author and researcher, Jason Semmens. The talk, which explored the life of Cornish conjuror, Tammy Blee, as a means to understanding witchcraft in the 19th century, was based on the content of Jason Semmens’ new book, ‘Tammy Blee’s Cabalistic Agency’, which is published this summer.

We’ve also been very busy with the usual range of school learning events, delivering everything from family history workshops to those on themes of the Tudors, Henry Trengrouse and ‘Wild Cornwall’. We are noticing a significant growth of interest in World War I and have delivered a number of workshops on this theme. Our Learning Officer intends to work on building our school provision for this topic over the summer, as it’s going to be high on the agenda for the next few years.

Our six second year Public History students from Exeter University have finished their projects related to the Stephens family of Ashfield, WWI literature and a report on theories of heritage centre design (for the Kresen Kernow project) and have all produced work that will be useful to us over the coming months. We’re looking forward to taking on some more students next year and building our partnerships with Cornwall’s universities.

COLLECTION HIGHLIGHT

In this edition we have a rather special Collection Highlight from David Thomas, one of our archivists, who writes: “On 26 March 2014 I celebrated exactly 30 years of working at Cornwall Record Office, first as an Archive Assistant and later as a fully qualified Archivist after passing my qualifications in 1996. When I took my archive examinations in London, I submitted my dissertation entitled ‘The archives of the Basset family of Tehidy; the theoretical reconstruction of a dispersed archive.’ One of the items from the Basset family’s main collection is a dark green bound photograph album (B55), illustrated with a large number of photographs, dating from around 1870, of both the exterior and the interior of what was, until its destruction by fire on 26 February 1919, one of Cornwall’s greatest mansions belonging to the

landed gentry. The house was built in the 1730s and greatly enlarged and enriched in the 1860s with many gilded and painted ceiling features, which typified the vast profits generated from the dues from the highly lucrative copper and tin mining industry and the rental of land and property. The family left Tehidy during the First World War, triggering the sale of the great house and estate in November 1916. The book is well worth close study as it records Tehidy at the zenith of its glory just before the collapse of the Cornish mining economy after 1873 – the entrance hall is pictured here.”

FEATURED ARTICLE: n this short article, one of last year’s Public History students from Exeter University reflects on her research experiences, looking at the collection of master mariner William Jolly (AD2136).

The Unexpected Life and Times of Captain William Jolly

The AD2136 catalogue was donated by descendants of Captain William Jolly to Cornwall Record Office. For my second year public history project at the University of Exeter, I was asked to create something that displayed this new collection to the public. After sifting through the countless receipts from across the world that are in the archive, I found there were so many interesting and unexpected elements to his life. I decided to create an exhibition for the record office because it was so different to anything I had done at university, and a big display is not so often seen there so I thought it would be the best output for my research.

William Allen Jolly was born in June 1856 to Joseph Smith Jolly and Helen Mercy Tadd in Fowey, Cornwall. One of six children, he married a dressmaker called Ann Ashton on 15th May 1889, and they went on to have six children too – although the third child, Wilfred Joseph, died at three days old.

One of the main sources I used for my exhibition was AD2136/1/1 which is a journal from 1888 – 1889, when Jolly was captain of the brigantine, Mary Johns of Fowey. One of the reasons this log book is so fascinating is because at the start it contains a paragraph on Jolly’s views on marriage. He says that a woman ‘must be willing to lay aside the delightful occupations which have made her girlhood pleasant’. He goes on to say that ‘I pity from my heart the unhappy man who had a bad wife. She is shades on his feet, a palsy to his hands, a burden on his shoulders, smother to his eyes, a shave to his hide and a dagger to his heart.’ His views are shocking to us now – but highly typical for a man in the nineteenth century. From a historical point of view, it was great to have this insight from one person, as it makes it much more relatable for the reader as well as gives a new perspective on the subjugation of women that is common knowledge.

This log book is also so incredible because it contains poetry that Jolly wrote during his time on board. The topics of the poems vary from ‘Home’ (about Fowey) to one about his wife. They show an entirely different side to his life, and a very sensitive side to his personality. About Fowey he writes ‘but no men in the world can build that precious thing called home’. I took this to mean that he was perhaps nostalgic for home as he had been travelling away a lot. In the poem about his wife he writes, ‘the sky was bright for it shone above her, the earth was fair that she walked upon’. This is contrasts to his earlier statements! He also wrote ‘she must not daily love to roam, from the house to shop, from street to street’, and ‘she must be wise and witty too’. He is almost giving instructions on how to be a good wife, whilst also implying that his wife is what he would class as the perfect woman – hence why he loves her. It is very unexpected to see such poetry within a log book as this, as they are usually used for tracking the weather, tides and such other maritime activity, so this was a fascinating find and extremely interesting to read.

The catalogue for Captain William Jolly is AD2136, and I would urge you to go and look through some of this great archive at Cornwall Record Office. There is much in there that I have not written about, but it contains items related to adventures from all over the world so is worth exploring further!

By Amy Shakespeare

Cornwall Record Office Cornish Studies Library Old County Hall The Cornwall Centre Treyew Road Alma Place Truro Redruth TR1 3AY TR15 2AT