Our Looe Museum in Higher Market Street is now being run by Volunteers through the approval and support of the East Looe town council. The following is an update of how things are going from the Curator.
First of all, a great big "Thank you" to all those volunteers who are now with us at the Museum. Your work & commitment has ensured that theMuseum is open & doing well. We would still appreciate any new volunteers who would like to join the merry band so that we can stay open for many years to come.
As usual, we try to feature anniversaries of events relevant to Looe & this year we are celebrating two!
The GWR is 175 years old & The Looe Valley Line is 150 years old. There will be special celebrations in September, meanwhile, we have gathered up all our railway photographs & put them in the Railway file along with lots of information. The railway lines used to pass through what is now the Harbour car park & on along the quayside. Ore & granite, from the Caradon mines, were shipped out & coal for the mines was unloaded from ships onto the waiting trucks. Where now children try to fish for crabs, railway trucks once trundled, boosting the trade which Looe needed. Later, with the decline in mining, the railway carried fish to wider markets & visitors came to Looe, providing a boost to the tourist trade.
Our second exhibition remembers the dark days of the onset of World War 2 in 1939/1940. We have many artefacts from this period & have put those which can be handled, on the round table upstairs. The most popular item is the tin hat which I think will feature in many photos this season!
We have been very lucky in having been loaned a register of many of those Looe men who joined the Home Guard. Whilst a couple of pages are missing, the details of the rest are valuable, especially to those trying to trace their family history. There are a few photos of the Home Guard & Evacuees.
On the lower floor we are displaying a model of the B17 to compliment our file of information & a piece of the plane. Looking at the young faces in the crew photo it is clear that they did a great job bringing the plane down without casualties in Looe or among the crew.
We look forward to seeing old friends & new this season.
Family History
2008 was the year in which Looe hosted not only the Gorsedd but also Dewhellans, a festival at which descendants of 19th century emigrants who left Cornwall to find work abroad, return to their roots. The focus this year at the museum, was on Family History and events are being organised for research. We have fiches of Parish Registers for 13 local parishes and Census information for all except 1861 & 1901. In addition, we are collecting information about local properties and have some Deeds. Wills & Caradon listings to help people to trace the history of local buildings. Our visitors may even be able to find an image of family members or former family homes in our extensive photograph archive. For more on this go to "
Exploring Family History".
Looe Photo Archive
Many new owners come in to look through our large photographic archive for images of their house. We were given access to 3 local collections of photographs in 2007, these have been copied and, thanks to the generosity of the original owners, we are able to sell copies. We find that people like to look back at how Looe looked in the past. So come in and browse through a century or so of people, places & fishing boats.
Documents
We have collected a number of deeds and wills and are currently indexing these together with details of the deeds held by LOCS. Whilst it adds to the excitement of discovery to see an ancestor’s name in a document, it is not always possible to trace the exact position of a property, but it can be fun following the clues. Wills are, of course, very useful but so far we only have a few.
Watercolours
Our famous Samuel Cook watercolours have been restored and re framed and are now on view again giving a snapshot of Looe groyne ( pre Banjo Pier) the old mill and old bridge in about 1850. We have a few more watercolours depicting the bridge and the river. Prints of these paintings are on sale as is a print of the huge photograph of Looe in 1870.
Here are two photos that have recently come to life. The first is of the evacuees that were sent to Looe at the start of the WW2
And this one is of the local Home Guard. Anyone recognise anyone??!!
Barbara Birchwood-Harper B.A. Curator
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