Happy New Year 2018

The collage above celebrates the final opening of the Boathouse in 2017, when Friends of the Archive provided light refreshments for visitors and there was some mulled wine on hand. We were closed for a Christmas break from 22nd December until 2nd January but are now in full swing again.

It is hard to believe that we have moved into our eighth year as an archive. The archive has expanded exponentially, and our committee and helpers are kept constantly busy with new material that comes to all three of our archives: Newlyn, Lamorna and West Cornwall Art.

The most exciting event of the year was the opening of the Archive at the Boathouse to the public on July 7, 2017. The ground floor of this listed building was made available through the generosity of the Newlyn Harbour Commissioners and made habitable by the hard work of our Friends led very ably by Ron Hogg, our Treasurer but one-time Engineer. Our new venue, which is open to the public Tuesday-Friday 9.30-12.00, is remarkably popular and as a result more people are committing themselves to becoming Friends of the Archive.

The move to the Boathouse was eased by generous Heritage Lottery Funding which has provided all our new IT equipment. Very soon we hope that visitors will be able to see some of our amazing film footage on a screen at the Boathouse. What a marvellous institution is the HLF to support grass roots projects like our own.

HLF funding has also contributed to the revamping of this website which has been done by our special friend Gabriella Nonino. You can see Shauna Osborne-Dowle’s short film called ‘The Boathouse Diary’, if you click on the section ‘About the Archive’. The film is about the move of Newlyn Archive to the Admiralty Boathouse. Shauna interviewed friends of Newlyn Archive who tell the story of the Boathouse, its history, its former use as a post office and of the renovations which have made the Archive what it is today, an easily accessible, cultural facility and community hub.

There have been other exciting developments this year which we will share on the website in due course. Amongst these is the Archive’s involvement with the Sensory Trust who have developed an app for handicapped people to use when they walk around Newlyn, to tell them something of its history. Ron Hogg has given advice about possible walks and other Friends of the Archive have been filmed and interviewed.

Our other great achievement this year has been the publication of our new book, The Story of Newlyn Harbour, which is the fourth in our popular series of books about Newlyn, edited by Pam Lomax and Linda Holmes. We can report that sales have already covered the cost of the book so that profits can now go to a future publication. We have many ideas for this but welcome others.

Despite our move to the Boathouse, we will continue to hold our Open Days at Trinity Centre which is such a fantastic venue for them. The first Open Day of 2018 explores historic shipwrecks around West Cornwall, and particularly the involvement of the lifeboats which were stationed at Wherrytown, Penzance and Newlyn from 1865 until today.

We will be posting the information for this Open Day called ‘Rescue at Sea’, soon, but do put the date in your diary: Saturday 24 March 2018 10.00-3.00.