Museum of Cornish Life Helston

A museum of everyday and extraordinary objects, art and cultural joy, curated by its communities, free for one and all.

Under the auspices of the town mayor, Helston had a museum briefly in the late 19^th century, called Penberthy’s Museum that closed in 1893. Its contents were sold to Burton’s Old Curiosity Shop in neighbouring Falmouth. None of these objects constituted the current collection.

The current collection was constituted by the Helston branch of the Old Cornwall Society in the 1930s and included agricultural objects, relics of civic history including the Helston Railway, Cornish trades and occupations, archaeological artefacts, photographs and documents, numismatics, domestic items used for making, preserving, cooking and mending, Victorian textiles and dress, and items relating to Henry Trengrouse and his significant lifesaving inventions.

The idea for a museum to preserve material folk memories, especially of everyday activities that were beginning to fade in local communities followed the ruptures caused by the First World War (1914-18) and the impact of the increasing globalisation of Empire. The museum came to fruition in 1937 when the museum’s objects were systematically catalogued for the first time and the collection and project gained the financial backing of Helston Borough Council which took on its governance.

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