Review of Open Day 2-3 October 2014

Margaret Follows has managed a project with children from Newlyn School on the theme of Newlyn at Play. This resulted in an outing to Wheal Betsy in June when the children learned about the painter TC Gotch and his treatment of Chinese Lanterns, and a visit to the recent Open Day at Trinity Centre where they did a quiz and this photo was taken.

The recent Open Day on October 4-5 was the culmination of the project for which we have received funding this year which we called ‘When Newlyners Walked to Lamorna’, really a metaphorical title to indicate the integration of the Lamorna Society Archive with the Newlyn Archive. Thanks must go to the following organisations for the funding: Heritage Lottery (£3000), Co-operative Membership Community Fund (£500), Cornwall 100 Club (£500), Cornwall Council (£300), Q Fund (£250), Lamorna Society (£250), WH Lane & Sons (£150), and Penzance Council (£100).

The Open Day was a two-day event, with extended hours on the Friday, being open from 10am until 7pm so that members of the Lamorna Society in the area for their AGM could attend. There was also a lecture at 7.30 given by Pam Lomax with the assistance of Anne Forrest and Margaret Follows (both members of the Lamorna Society and Friends of the Newlyn Archive) and Ron Hogg. We had 122 visitors to the Exhibition on Friday as well as the 40 or so people who looked at the exhibition before attending the lecture on Friday evening.

On Saturday the exhibition was open from 10am to 3pm. Jerry Drew provided some much appreciated Cornish pasties for people around at lunch time, and we had 83 visitors though the door; so all in all 245 people saw the exhibition.

The exhibition was about Newlyn at Play with displays including galas, carnivals, water sports, rugby, choirs, amateur dramatics and many other festive activities but the prime position went to the Good Friday walk to Lamorna. Anne Forrest did most of the research for this project, interviewing people in Lamorna and Newlyn and asking others to contribute written memories. Most of the people she met also allowed the archive to copy photos and documents so that we have expanded both the Newlyn and Lamorna sections of the archive as a result.

We had many first time visitors to an Archive Open Day as a result of the publicity; one lady was disappointed not to find her memories of the Good Friday walk on a display board but over the moon when she found her husband’s father in one of the choir photographs.

The other important event of the Open Day was the launch of the third of our series of Archive books, Newlyn at Play which includes some of the material shown at the exhibition and much else besides. The book covers the period from the end of the nineteenth century until the immediate post war years and includes a section on the Good Friday walk to Lamorna. It costs £8 and all the proceeds go towards the archive. We should have it available to purchase from the website at any time now.