The Royal Cornwall Museum

The Royal Cornwall Museum - ground floor

The Royal Cornwall Museum is run by the Royal Institution of Cornwall, founded in 1818 as the Cornwall Literary and Philosophical Institution, one of several similar societies established in England and Wales in the early Nineteenth Century. It occupies an imposing building on River Street, the former Truro Savings Bank, built in 1845.

The museum holds permanent collections of archaeology, social history, fine and decorative arts and geology. These relate mainly to Cornwall and the South West, though other parts of the UK and the World are also represented. There is also a varied programme of temporary events and exhibitions, follow the link opposite to the museum website for details of current events and exhibitions.

You're standing in the main gallery on the museum's ground floor in front of the Trewinnard coach, one of the earliest coaches in existence in Britain. The coach is thought to have been originally made c.1700 and was kept at Trewinnard, the home of Christopher Hawkins (that's his family crest on the door), from 1757 to 1909. In 1909-1910 it was extensively restored by J Fuller & Co. in Bristol.

The device you can see through the stone arch is a mile meter, a road measuring machine invented by Thomas Hicks of Truro and made in 1843 by coach builder Samuel Carvosa.

Turn in the opposite direction and through the left arch you can see a painting of Anthony Payne (1621-1691) by Sir Godfrey Kneller. Payne stood 7 feet and 4 inches tall and was nicknamed the Cornish Giant. He was a Yeoman of Stratton in North Cornwall and the personal retainer of Sir Bevill Grenville, a leading Royalist.