Thanks to an award of £78,000 from the Museums Association Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund, the museum is embarking on a major reappraisal of its farming collections. From April 2023 to October 2025 we will be conducting new collections research, undertaking innovative conservation, and considering how to update our collections to better reflect Cornish farming from the 1970s to today.
Follow our latest research on farming themes:
- The blind egg merchant of Leedstown by Paul Phillips
- Violence in the system: Man traps, landowners, commoners, food and farming by Billy Warren
- Making of the new wassail bowl for Cornwall by Tehmina Goskar
- Where are the women in Cornish farming? by Sue Roberts
- Cornish butter for one and all by Andy Blackwell
- Whimsey bottles research project by Frederick Proctor
- News: Ammeth: A summer of farming art and heritage
- From cradle to the grave: Cornish scything by Andy Blackwell
- Rabbits, daffodils and broccoli: Helston Railway and Cornish farming by Sue Roberts
- Time for croust: reviewing the museum’s dairy and talking to our collections by Tehmina Goskar
- Magic of bullocks’ hairballs by Andy Blackwell
- Cornish customs of the corn by Julia Webb-Harvey
- Will farmers like it? by Tehmina Goskar
We will be conducting the majority of this project in public so visitors can speak to us while we make inventories, undertake preventive conservation and think about new interpretation. This project is as much about starting new conversations about Cornish farming as it is better researching and looking after what we already have.
Our museum is full of fascinating objects that arouse much curiosity and nostalgia, but we are also aware that the stories of the folk that produce our food and flowers are hard to find and remain undocumented in our records. We hope that by the end of this project farmers and their communities will be brought closer together.
We will also use this opportunity to develop curatorial methods that are fit for a sustainable 21st-century social history museum and share this learning with colleagues in our sector.
Documenting the undocumented agricultural workers of Cornwall
The museum opened in 1949 to the headline: “Farmers will like it” because of the historic agricultural and horticultural artefacts at its heart. This collection is at serious risk from environmental degradation owing to the conditions in the old market buildings, and interpretation neglect as little research has been conducted on these collections since they entered the museum.
Our project urgently addresses: sustainable conservation methods, prioritises research and documentation of the human stories behind the tools and machines, and rekindles our relationships with contemporary farmers so they can help us make decisions about the people, species and issues that matter to them. We are especially focused on under-represented people and topics, especially, women, young farmers, itinerant labourers, seasonal workers, rural affairs and biodiversity.
Nurturing a circle of farmer-curators
We want the farmers who are interested in working with us to guide our decision-making about what we prioritise conserving and what and who we should document and collect. We would like to focus the contemporary collecting part of this project on working with members of the Young Farmers Club, many of whom will be working alongside the Seasonal Workers and travelling labourers with whom we should also like to connect.
If all goes to plan we will commission and collect photography and informal films of their activities in the field or in processing, the customs they practice such as annual ploughing competitions and fundraising events. As such we want to enable farmers to document what is important to them, including their hopes, plans and fears.
We would like to invite members of the local Young Farmers Club to select and prepare a hero object to add to the collection for a revamped display, along the lines of the rescue and restoration of the 17th-century, one tonne slate clockface that used to belong to the old Market House in Helston. Having ended up as a pond-feature for many years, the clockface was removed from Nancemerrin Farm in 1989, restored and presented to the museum by St Keverne Young Farmers Club. We know anecdotally from farming families among our volunteers, as well as friends, that a host of rare Cornish heritage remains in fields and barns all over the Duchy.
