Currently, Cornwall’s largest museum, the Royal Cornwall Museum at Truro, is temporarily closed to the public. This is the result of ‘continued reduction in grants and consistently low visitor numbers’. The museum’s origins date back more than 200 years. On the 5th February 1818 a number of gentlemen met together at Truro Library. From that meeting came the Cornwall Philosophical Institution, which soon added ‘literary’ to its title. It later became the Royal Institution of Cornwall (RIC). The RIC remains the managing body for the museum.
(to the right)
Literary societies in the 1800s provided lectures and in the days before mass education were often associated with libraries and museums. The RIC was one of a triumvirate of literary societies that were established in the 1810s in Cornwall. The first had been the Cornwall Geological Society at Penzance in 1814 and the third was the Cornwall Physical Institution at Falmouth. This latter body folded but in 1833 the Cornwall Polytechnic Society took up the baton in the same town.
Falmouth, Penzance and Truro were the three Cornish towns with the largest and most confident professional and middle classes, who comprised the bulk of the membership of these societies. They were also situated on the edge of the mining districts of west Cornwall. Those districts had from the 1730s onwards created the wealth from which the urban middle classes benefited.
Three lit and phils in such a relatively confined district reflected Cornwall’s dispersed population structure but could prove a drawback in terms of collaboration and ability to take advantage of economies of scale. Some sporadic efforts in the 1840s to combine the societies came to nothing, foundering on the rocks of small town patriotism.
Unfortunately, a museum explicitly devoted to the pan-Cornish story with widespread popular support never emerged. The recent failure of the RCM to discover a viable ‘business model’ for the museum, in a Cornwall with twice the population as in 1818 and many times wealthier, presumably tells us something about the nature of modern Cornwall and its prevailing priorities.
Cornish studies resources 
This is terribly worrying news. I love the RCM! It has great exhibits. I wonder if the issue is more reduced funding rather than reduced visitor numbers? I also wonder if they have really consulted far and wide with different sectors of the public, and with tourists?
Think of the British Museum, where I was in the last weekend of January, absolutely groaning with immense queues and some rooms packed to the brim. I cannot imagine what it is like in high season these days. Must be awful. It is not that the nebulous public is not interested – the story really is deeper than that.
I am sure the RCM can recover and I really hope it does. I just think we need to know if funding is the deeper issue – I feel the analysis is wrong somehow that people aren’t interested. It would be a crime to close it and perhaps we need more adventurous thinking and more adventurous management.
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Prior to the museum, the current building housed Henderson’s mining school and consultancy (Charles Henderson the historian being a scion).
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That’s very sad. I know that before coming to Cornwall, we googled shipwreck museums because we didn’t know what else to google. We found Charlestown and Bude. The Tate didn’t sound like us, we’d seen the fantastic Tate Britain in London. What a pity, now this site has given us more knowledge of Cornwall.. We hope it has reopened when we get back in a couple of years.
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The Royal Cornwall Museum at Truro has been fading away over the years. It provides a dull, mist-mash collection of unrelated items and nothing flows or links. It seems to lack a core reason for existence, when the reason for its existence is screaming out, but is unheard. It could provide a wonderful – must see – introduction into the Cornish, our language, our heritage and culture, but unfortunately what we get is rocks & a mummy! Get rid of the English middle class from London and put some Cornish people in charge ! FIVE million tourists a year – FIVE MILLION – all potentially looking to discover the real Cornwall and what do we give them a Greenhouse in a Clay pit and a ‘kiss-me-quick’ experience at Lands end.
The RCM could be the must see, our history is fascinating, absorbing, rich and engaging. Tell the story of Cornwall and the Cornish and put the rocks and the mummy in store
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Put David Brown in charge!
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