Newquay Museum

Our Story

Newquay Museum opened its doors at Central House in the centre of Newquay in March 2014 to serve the community by offering a window into the town’s fascinating history.  With a small team of dedicated volunteers, we were able to offer set weekly opening hours and have attracted thousands of visitors, priding ourselves on being an additional attraction for tourists and, staying open for most of the winter months for the locals too.

Sadly, many of our older volunteers have had to step down and since re-opening after the pandemic, we no longer have enough people to keep the museum open fully manned. Cornwall Council had supported us for over 25 years years allowing us to have a archive storage and visitors room at the Newquay Town Council building. Following the Newquay Town Council taking over the building we were evicted with no alternative offered. To adapt to our current situation, we closed our dedicated museum room moving many of the exhibits into the Corridor Gallery situated outside of the archive room. The former museum room will now be used for storing documents, photographs and artefacts relating to the history of Newquay.  The museum will remain albeit in a reduced state and the archive will continue collecting items relating to Newquay’s heritage as it has done for the past eighty years.

Whilst we have been here for over 10 years, it seems it’s only visitors to the town that seek us out and we appear to remain a mystery to those who live close by. We have tried hard to make ourselves known with external signage, social media and website including putting out flags and banners. We are on Google Maps and we often get a mention in the local and regional Voice newspapers.  Over the years the volunteers have carried out many external events throughout the town. We have had displays at Newquay’s past Fish Festival, the Lifeboat Day, with our friends at Newquay Library and Trenance Heritage Cottages. Unfortunately the lack of volunteers means this is now impossible. However, there is a continuing numbers of tourists visiting the museum from Europe, USA, Australia and other places throughout Cornwall.

The Newquay Museum and Archive is not supported by the Town Council as many other local museums are throughout Cornwall and relies entirely on donations and fund raising. With too few volunteers to carryout sufficient external fundraising and few regular local visitors supporting the museum, financial resources need to be preserved. Our landlords have been very understanding and provide facilities well below market value to support the museum and the town also allowing us an additional gallery display and meeting room. The artefacts and displays at our seasonal museum at Dairyland have been returned to our storage facilities following that sites closure.   

We have huge amounts of artefacts and photographs. Newquay and districts heritage will continue to be shared with museum exhibits in the Corridor Gallery and in the new gallery display room Monday to Friday. The archive will be open for visitor queries and take donations of items of interest most Wednesdays.

The volunteers at Newquay Museum have worked with a number of other voluntary groups in Newquay on projects sharing information and promoting local history, culture and environmental issues. These include Blystra Arts, Newquay Marine Group, Fistral Beach Clean, Bridging Art, Newquay Society of Artist, Kneehigh Theatre and many more. The museum has won many awards for their work at the annual Cornwall Heritage Awards. We have carried out guided walks with schools and other educational groups and have worked with history and heritage classes and groups at Truro College for many years.  

To better share the content of the Newquay Museum Group partners over the coming months the museum will be moving towards new online methods of sharing. We hope to encourage the next generation of volunteers with computer skills and interest in local heritage to participate in preparing online exhibitions.

There will be a resumption of illustrated talks as social events and as museum fundraisers. We hope that many people will support these events and the museum with our ongoing projects and thank the Great Western Hotel for their support in hosting our monthly meetings.

Newquay Museum is a partnership of Newquay Old Cornwall Society and Kowethas Ertach Kernow also integrating the St Mawgan History Group and Newquay Old Cornwall Archaeological Group as part of the wider Newquay Museum Group

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