Wheal Martyn to catalogue 100,000 photos from China clay archive

Somewhere in the stores at Wheal Martyn sits the paperwork of an industry that shaped mid-Cornwall for over a century, and until now nobody has been able to properly search it. That is about to change.

The grant

Wheal Martyn Clay Works, the UK’s only china clay mining museum, near St Austell, has been awarded a £49,942 grant from The National Archives’ Archives Revealed partnership programme. The programme is funded by The National Archives, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Pilgrim Trust and the Wolfson Foundation, and exists to help unlock collections across the UK and build the skills needed to care for them into the future.

The money will let Wheal Martyn begin cataloguing its nationally significant archive, a collection that documents an industry which drove the Cornish economy for more than 100 years. The funds will pay for an archivist to lead the work, making the archive properly searchable and more accessible to the public. Working with volunteers and engagement colleagues at the museum, the project will also run school workshops, work experience placements, micro-internships and “Show and Tell” sessions to bring in new and existing audiences.

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Twenty years in the making

The archive itself is the product of decades of work by the China Clay History Society, a volunteer group associated with the museum, which has collected and cared for the collection for more than 20 years. It is the largest single collection of china clay companies’ administrative records in existence, and includes records from English China Clays (ECC), once one of the UK’s top 100 companies and a leading exporter in the 1980s, alongside records from smaller companies and associated industries.

The scale of it is hard to take in. Around 400 document boxes, 2,000 maps, 400 aerial photographs, 100,000 photographs, 200 films and several hundred engineering drawings, covering everything from transport, geology and engineering to local culture and labour relations. Beyond the technical record of the industry itself, the collection also holds the history of the wider communities that worked in it, lived alongside it and were supported by it.

Sarah Jane, Collections Manager at Wheal Martyn, said: “We are delighted to receive an Archives Revealed grant, unlocking the potential of this nationally important archive, which has been amassed and cared for by our dedicated China Clay History Society volunteers for over 20 years.”

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A UK-wide programme

Archives Revealed is the only grant programme in the United Kingdom dedicated to cataloguing and unlocking archival collections, with the aim of ensuring that significant archives representing the lives and perspectives of people across the UK are made accessible for public research and enjoyment.

Wheal Martyn (PL26 8XG) sits two miles north of St Austell on the B3274, six miles from the A30, set in 26 acres of preserved collections and historic buildings that tell the story of Cornwall’s largest mining industry.

Archives Revealed has recently awarded three new Consortium Grants and 17 Cataloguing Grants across the UK, totalling £1,234,260.97, the most awarded in a single round for either programme.