Cornwall Record Office has been awarded a grant of £24,800 to reveal the contents of an archive charting 400 years of life at Lanhydrock House.

Dating from the 1570s to the 1970s, the collection captures the fascinating story of the Robartes family, who owned Lanhydrock House before giving it to the National Trust in 1953.

The grant, from the Cataloguing Grants Scheme, will enable Cornwall Record Office to work with volunteers to sort, clean and catalogue the collection, making it more accessible to members of the public.

Among the treasures the team will be working on are papers from the English civil war era, records relating to the rebuilding of the house after the 1881 fire, and over 500 plans of properties and land.

The collection includes the records of prominent family members including Charles Robartes, who commissioned the stunning Lanhydrock Atlas dating from around 1695, as well as holding a large amount of information on tenants and community life on the estate.

Paul Holden, house and collections manager at Lanhydrock, who helped to develop the project said: “The Robartes family were one of the most notable gentry families in Cornwall and this collection tells their story. Who knows what we may uncover in this project? My hope is that we can facilitate future research by having a better understanding of what is in the archive.”

The Cataloguing Grants Scheme is sponsored by a range of charitable foundations and administered by The National Archives. It aims to help archives in the UK tackle their cataloguing backlogs.