St Michael’s Mount

It is a glorious day looking out at St Michael’s Mount. The high noon sun is shimmering on the surface of this vast curved horseshoe bay. People are walking across the cobbled causeway from the mainland to the island at low tide and the water is crystal clear. In the distance are the fishing villages of Mousehole and Newlyn and of course, much larger Penzance.

I’m in one of the UK’s oldest towns, Marazion, dating back to 1257 and Henry III. Although markets were recorded there from 1070. This part of the Penwith peninsula is awash with the histories of the sea. The ships, battles, wrecks and of course, pirates and smuggling. Whether it’s the Pirates of Penzance and the tunnels leading directly to the sea from the Admiral Benbow pub in Penzance town, where Treasure Island begins, Marazion is no different.

Whichever way you turn, there’s a quaint cottage, a staggering view of the castle perched magnificently on top of the mount. You will be surrounded by the day trippers and families wandering to and from the beach, looking for food and trying to hide it from the seagulls.

In the town square, inevitably more of a triangle, is the town hall. It’s a wonderfully quirky tall curved shape of big granite blocks, edged in red wood and metalwork and with a lead or zinc clocktower. It appears more suited to a fairytale French Renaissance village, but here it sits, dating back to 1871 when it replaced an old market hall.

Inside this building was once the home of the local fire brigade and for a short time from 1933, it became a branch of the UK’s Barclay’s Bank. In the late twentieth century, the clever locals decided to turn it into their local history museum. It is at this point that I wave the flag for all small independent museums run by volunteers, just trying to keep their histories alive. With no money to pay staff, or even pay for upkeep and maintenance work, every little museum needs as much support as possible. If it’s free, then I still donate. If it has a charge, I will gladly pay it. The wonderful St Ives Museum, 8 miles away, is larger than most and charges £5 to enter. I go every year and I pay my money, because I always want it to be there.

Not too far from St Ives was the Wayside Museum at Zennor. This was a very small museum of farming history with machinery and implements, set in a few rooms of barns and with a mill wheel. As a small child I was always amazed by the pre-industrialisation rusting tools and the ever fearful and huge man traps that were on display. Sadly the museum closed and many of it’s exhibits were redistributed to the St Ives Museum and the Royal Cornwall Museum of Truro. The Wayside is now just a ghost, lost and no longer on the map, haunting fewer and fewer memories of poachers trapped with broken legs in metal teeth. This is what will happen to more of our little gems. If the funding is being pulled by cash-strapped councils from larger museums and galleries in bigger towns and cities, then what hope is there, for these small places? Just keep coming and keep paying and keep saying thank you.

The delight of a small, volunteer run museum, is the lack of boast and ceremony, of health and safety, of security and expensive displays and information panels. It is clear that at Marazion, someone has had to type the display notes, print them out on a basic printer and then stick them in place with blu-tac, duct tape or double sided sticky tape. There’s hands on love to be seen in the smallest seemingly random placement of everything. They’ve done the best they can, with no support.

The exhibits are divided into various social history scenes. The town hall used to be the jail, so there it is at the back. There is one metal bed with a mannequin covered in an old grey blanket. You can’t see the criminal, just his shape and his feet sticking out from the fabric. Another mannequin is dressed as a police officer, stood nearby. But of course, they are old shop mannequins and the clothes don’t quite fit. The expression on the officer’s face is that of a young model. Sometimes he has an almost comic beard and other times he’s clean shaven. Has someone just used a Sharpie to give him a moustache? His hands gesture at unusual angles and the white gloves are too large. It’s wonderful. There’s also a stuffed rat, to add to the ambience.

Throughout the rooms are more mannequins, each more comical than the last. Eyes have been repainted and now stare out like crazed psychopaths, but from the Army warden, lady in a fur coat and ironmonger. I am not deriding the efforts of those who have created this vignettes of Cornish life.

There’s memorabilia from generations of locals. Look out for classic signage of shops and Post Offices. The floors are full of old machinery, furniture, mangles and memories of your grandparents lives. Interspersed amongst the objects are documents and photographs. Snapshots of the real people and their real voices quoted, reminding us of when they were alive and dealing with the issues of their days. The cornucopia of old telephones, cameras, projectors, sewing machines. I can hear the volunteers asking for objects from the locals, by walking through the streets with a cart shouting ‘bring out your dead,’ as people scurried to find an old teapot or washtub, lawn mower and bicycle. It looks like they have tried to exhibit everything. It would be an incredible antique and flea market if they put price tags on everything.

One of the main exhibits is a display dedicated to a World War 2 battleship, the HMS Warspite. It won the most battle honours, having also been active in the First World War.

In 1947 the ship ran aground on rocks at Prussia Cove, four miles from Marazion. Prussia Cove is famous for smugglers bringing in their ill-gotten cargo from cargo ships dashed on the nearby rocks. One such character was known as the King of Prussia, 18th century ship-wrecker John Carter.

If the sun is beating down on you ( it really does here, sometimes) and you need to find a cool place to retreat for half an hour to an hour, then come inside the Marazion Museum and enjoy it’s riches of local history. If the weather is lashing down on you (it really does roll in off the sea often) and you need to find a dry place to reheat from the rain, then come inside the museum and enjoy all it has to offer. You don’t need an excuse really of course. Show your support and let’s all be very grateful to the volunteers who struggle to fit clothes on broken mannequins and who give us interesting cabinets of curiosities to peer into and reminisce over.

Knowing when the museum is open is quite difficult to pinpoint. The website is honest in it’s problematic offerings. 10.00am – 4.00pm Monday to Friday, but states ‘it’s best to plan your visit for a Monday, Thursday, Friday as the museum is staffed solely by volunteers and there maybe occasions when volunteers are not available to open the museum.’

There is a large beachside car park, just a short walk into town. Regular buses from Penzance and St Ives also stop in the market square. It’s a very pleasant walk along the bay from Penzance bus station and is 2.7 miles on the flat. The walk from Prussia Cove to Marazion is approximately 4 miles on the south west coast path, (sturdy shoes required), but walk further from Praa Sands (5 miles in total) if you would like facilities at the start or end. There is a great cafe at Perranuthnoe, approximately half way along the route.

Anne-Louise Quinton

I studied as an Exhibition and Museum Designer at Art College, back in the late 1980s, so I approach exhibitions and museums with an added viewpoint. After 24 years as a Secondary Art teacher (11-18), I now work at the University of Leeds. I am a tutor on the Post Graduate ‘Developing Research and Practice’ course for Art teachers and also on the annual residential course for Art teachers. This takes place every July at the university and is supported by The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. I also deliver online courses through the year. In my spare time I visit a heck of a lot of exhibitions, museums and art galleries!