New Premises for the Cornwall Record Office

On October 15, 2018 Richard Cockram, Ron Hogg and Brian Newton visited the new location to which the Cornwall Record Office will be transferring in 2019. The photo on the left shows the team with the building in the background

Kresen Kernow – or Cornwall Centre – will be an amazing new base for the Cornwall Archive, the Studies Library and the Cornwall and Scilly Historic Environment Record when they are brought together for the first time in April next year. The historic Redruth Brewery building at the heart of the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site is being converted to house the world’s largest collection of manuscripts, books and documents related to Cornwall. When we visited in mid-October, we were confidently informed that building works would be completed by Christmas and the miles of shelves would be filled and ready to be accessed by April 2019 – it was hard to believe! Filling any gaps in our own Archive will be far quicker and easier. There will also be a cafe on site for weary researchers.
Ron Hogg

The site is that of the disused brewery at the lower end of Redruth and quite near the Tesco store. A high standard has been adopted for external finishes and materials used to compliment and blend in with the existing old buildings. Work inside continues apace and there are miles of cable and wiring looms hanging in great loops waiting to be run along their cable trays and connected up. There has been extensive thought given to the future requirements regarding storage capacity and two very large rooms arranged with high capacity travelling shelving installed. Extremely sensitive smoke alarms will be fitted, and the rooms have only one entrance and no windows; temperature and humidity control of a high standard is included. There is much to say but suffice to say here that we can be well assured that design and planning to a very high level has been applied throughout by the CRO team.

Richard Cockram