Redruth has celebrated its most famous resident, inventor William Murdoch, with a day of live entertainment.

Murdoch’s major innovation was the use of coal gas in lighting as a replacement for oil and tallow. The house where Murdoch lived in Redruth was the first house in the UK to be lit by gas lighting in 1792.

Murdoch, although not born in Cornwall, is revered locally as a mechanical genius who improved the efficiency of steam engines in Cornwall’s tin mines.

He also built the first working model of a steam carriage which he demonstrated in and around Redruth in 1784.

Events included a children's dance and art procession, all day music and entertainment., a street market with more than fifty stalls, an old time fair, locally themed exhibitions and a variety of live concerts and other events dotted round the town.

Organisers say that while numbers are still being counted the event was the most successful they could remember, with people in the town from first thing in the morning right through the day.