Cornwall Record Office

Kresen Kernow ( Cornish for Cornwall Centre) in Redruth, United Kingdom is Cornwall's archive centre, home to the world's biggest collection of archive and library material related to Cornwall. Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Cornwall Council and opened in 2019, it brings together the collections which were previously held at Cornwall Record Office, the Cornish Studies Library and Cornwall and Scilly Historic Environment Record as well as in various outstores.

Kresen Kernow was the name of the building in Alma Place in which the Cornish Studies Library was formerly held. The new archive centre, which has been constructed on the former Redruth Brewery site in Tolgus Hill, Redruth, has the same name. Kresen Kernow has more than 14 miles of shelving in total which will house around 1.5 million items, including over 100,000 books, 40,000 maps and 220,000 photographs and postcards.

Facilities

Kresen Kernow is home to 14 miles of shelving in two secure strongrooms, purpose-built to care for over 1.5 million documents covering 850 years of history, including books, maps, newspapers, manuscripts and photographs. The centre also features digitisation and preservation suites to facilitate caring for the documents, along with learning rooms, exhibition spaces and reading rooms. The public spaces in the building are built in the former brewhouse of Redruth Brewery.

Background

The concept of a National Archive and Heritage Centre was born in Redruth in the early 2000s. This resulted in the creation of the Cornish Studies Library in the town. The old brewery at Redruth was chosen for the location of Kresen Kernow, Cornwall's new archive centre, out of a shortlist of three sites.

Various proposals were put forward for improving the facilities for Cornwall's archive and library collections, which were stored in different locations across Cornwall and beyond. Calls for a Cornish National Library, National Library of Cornwall, or Cornish National Archive were made.

A Cornish archive and library facility formed part of Cornwall council's Heritage Strategy for 2011-14.

The Cross Group Working Party Review of Cornwall Libraries in March 2011 stated its aim to repatriate many culturally important manuscripts to Cornwall, for instance, medieval Cornish language plays like '' Bewnans Ke'' currently held by the National Library of Wales, or the '' Ordinalia'' held by the Bodleian Library. The possibility of getting the ''Prophecy of Merlin'' from the Vatican Archives has also been mooted. It is agreed that the library of Joseph Hambley Rowe, currently held by Redruth Library, will go to a National Library of Cornwall when one is set up. Towns were asked to submit proposals to house the new archive centre with the former Devenish Brewery site in Redruth being chosen in 2012.

It was proposed by Cornwall Council's Community Overview and Scrutiny Committee that a new building costing between £8-12 million was to be constructed. The new facility was named as one of ten cultural projects adopted by Cornwall Council's cabinet. Others include a National Theatre of Cornwall, and an expansion to the Tate St Ives art gallery.

In 2013, the National Lottery Heritage Fund awarded Cornwall Council a grant to begin developing the project and to carry out consultation. The following year, groundworks were carried out on site, funded by the European Regional Development Fund, to ensure it was suitable for construction work to begin. In spring 2015, Cornwall Council submitted a bid for £11.7 million to the National Lottery Heritage Fund to build the archive centre, designed by architects Purcell, and for an accompanying programme of events and activities. The award was granted in summer 2015, the largest ever to be given to an archive project. Midas Construction started on site in autumn 2016 and finished building Kresen Kernow in 2019.

Cornwall Record Office

Cornwall Record Office (CRO), part of Cornwall Council, was situated at Old County Hall in Truro and is the main repository for the historical archives of Cornwall. The Old County Hall site closed in September 2018 to enable staff to prepare the collections for their move to Kresen Kernow, which was due to open in 2019.

Cornwall County Council was persuaded by Kenneth Hamilton Jenkin and others to set up Cornwall Record Office in the 1950s.Justin Brooke
‘Jenkin, (Alfred) Kenneth Hamilton (1900–1980)’
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 30 December 2008. Today its three and a half miles of shelving holds millions of individual historical documents, including deeds, leases, manorial records, parish registers, correspondence and diaries, maps and plans, council records and photographs; many of these relate to mining, fishing, farming and most other aspects of life in Cornwall. The documents range in date from the mid-12th century right up to the 21st century and they comprise an exceptionally valuable resource for local historians, family historians, ecclesiastical