We’ve just completed a mini-tour for Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, based on the virtual tour that appears on the website. Porthcurno wanted a way to show visitors parts of the museum where access is difficult.

The escape stairs at the underground communications centre were built to provide an emergency exit from the tunnels in the event of enemy attack during World War II. Thick steel doors were designed to withstand bomb blasts as well as gas attack. There are 120 steps leading to a hilltop platform, from which you can see the valley below.

We produced a mini virtual tour including panoramas of the escape stairs and viewing platform. A link at the top of the escape stairs takes you up to the platform and, when you’ve had enough fresh air, you can come back down the same way. The tour lives on a Mac in the museum’s underground tunnels.

One of the interesting things about the tour is that you can move around within the panoramas, this is something we are exploring and hoping to introduce on the website. If we manage to pull this off you will be able to see other locations within a panorama and click a hotspot to go there. for example, in the Truro, Boscawen street panorama you’ll see a hotspot in the window of Charlotte’s Tea house which you can click to go inside.

One of the things we don’t want to do, though, is clutter the view with loads of hotspots, so there will have to be a way to switch them on and off.

We’ll keep you posted of our progress on this. Sign up to the RSS feed at the bottom of the page or subscribe to our email newsletter.