Telegraph museum wins £1.5 million grant (From Falmouth Packet)

Telegraph museum wins £1.5 million grant

8:40am Saturday 4th February 2012 in News

A project to develop one of West Cornwall’s most important pieces of history has taken a big step forward thanks to more than £1.5 million in grants.

Described as the home of the “Victorian internet” and a vital hub of global communications for over 100 years, Porthcurno Telegraph Museum is now the site of one of the county’s most popular museums.

Now, thanks to a £1.44 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and another £125,000 from the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS)/Wolfson Fund, the museum near Land’s End can finally reveal plans for an ambitious development project to preserve and celebrate its unique heritage.

At the centre of the plans is an improved experience for visitors. The team behind the museum hope to build a new introduction gallery, to tell visitors the main themes of what they will see, as well as extra gallery space to accommodate new permanent and temporary exhibitions and events.

A purpose-built Learning Centre will provide space for learning and community activities, as well as a new café and improved visitor facilities.

Museum director Libby Buckley said at Friday’s announcement: “We are delighted by this result. The heritage we have here is so important, not only to Cornwall, but globally. We’re often told that we’re a great small museum, and that we punch above our weight, and I think today’s news certainly supports that.

“The exciting thing is that this funding will enable us to get even better, and take our story to even more people. Just like Cornwall’s famous mining landscape, the telegraph story is a huge part of Cornish and British heritage that deserves to be celebrated.”

Porthcurno was the site of the first undersea telegraph cable to be laid, in 1870, which led to it becoming one of most important communication points linking Great Britain to America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. Thousands of miles of telegraph cables were laid under the sea, converging in the cable hut on Porthcurno’s beach and then on to the cable station further up the valley.

During Second World War the site was deemed so critical to allied communications that Cornish miners were employed to excavate secret bomb-proof tunnels to house the telegraph cable station, protecting it from attack.

Both grants were announced last week and take the museum significantly closer to its £2.68million target to fund the development project, which is due to be completed in 2014.

Since 1998 the historic buildings have housed the independent museum, where visitors can explore the telegraph and early wireless, and their impact past and present. It also covers themes including the Second World War, the global and social impact of telecommunications, and the story of Porthcurno itself which sprang up around the cable station.

Just as the museum’s collection is treated with care, so too are the museum’s historic buildings. Built in 1904 to accommodate the growing Eastern Telegraph Company cable station (predecessor of Cable & Wireless), Eastern House is the iconic home to the museum’s main galleries. The Grade II listed Edwardian building will now undergo a sensitive redevelopment.

Development project manager Henrietta Boex said: “We are extremely proud of our beautiful Edwardian buildings, but they were built to accommodate a busy cable station, not a buzzing museum, which means they don’t work as well as they could for our growing number of visitors. By sensitively redeveloping them we will not only be able to accommodate more visitors, but to make visiting even more enjoyable, even more fun. It is about making the most of the wonderful assets we have and coaxing them gently into the 21st century.”

Extra funding has come from Cornwall Council, the Clore Duffield Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Edith Murphy Foundation, The Headley Trust and individual donations.