We recently visited Kresen Kernow in Redruth, a project that developed the old brewing house site with funding from the National Lottery Fund and Cornwall Council. The work was completed 2019. This site is now home to the world’s biggest collection of library material relating to Cornwall.
Our guide for the morning was Tamsin Mallett, the Collections and Development Manager. After Tamsin’s introduction we toured the public spaces created in the original brewing house which now comprises learning rooms, exhibition spaces, reading rooms plus the library itself. They have certainly created a wonderful, modern, beautiful space retaining as much of the original architecture as possible.
We were then shown behind the scenes to a temperature controlled purpose-built secure strong room. Here we saw some of the 14 miles of shelving and a selection of the 1.5 million items they care for, spanning 850 years of history in the form of books, newspapers, manuscripts, photographs etc. We visited the digitisation and preservation suites where we met volunteers who were busy cleaning and caring for documents.
On our return to the public area Tamsin showed us manuscripts that she had researched for us relating to Crowlas and Ludgvan.
I think I can safely say that we all had a very interesting and enjoyable visit and are looking forward to a return visit to research more of our local history. (Rosie)
Crowlas & Ludgvan WI 