Opening hours

Mon - Sat: 10am - 4:45pm
Closed: Sundays and Bank Holidays

Free Entry

There may be a charge for special exhibitions. Please call to confirm.

Early closing

Please note that the museum will be closing early on the following days:

Wednesday 8 September closing at 3pm.
Thursday 16 September closing at 4pm.

We appologise for any inconvenience that this may cause.

Photographs provide information about the past but they can also provide enlightenment and understanding of our family and social history. From photographs we also find a sense of place, and a sense of our own heritage.

Collection Contents

The collection contains over 50,000 images from 1845 to the present. The content of the collection provides a broad picture of Cornish life and culture captured by both amateur and professional photographers.

The majority of our images are negatives of various sizes from A3 sized glass negatives to modern negatives and transparencies. We also hold prints in a variety of forms, including albumen prints, tintypes and daguerreotypes.

Access

Our collection is housed in an environmentally controlled store. Immediate access is therefore not possible as material has to be retrieved from the store. However, we are currently in the process of digitising our images in order to improve access for our visitors. The mining images (approximately 5000) and the Shipping Collection (over 3000 images) have already been digitised and can be searched and viewed on a museum database.

If you would like to research other areas of the photographic collection that have not yet been digitised, you can view the photographic prints and the indexes to the negative collection.

Please make an appointment to view the databases, prints or negatives list.

Copies

Copies can be supplied at the prices shown for personal and research use only, and not for further reproduction. Prints and Negatives are supplied as high resolution digital prints.

Publishing and commercial reproduction of images from the collection can be arranged. Images can be supplied in electronic format to suit your publication needs. We have a scale of fees which will reflect the size of the image and the scale and type of the publication. Please see the ‘Prices’ page on the left hand navigation bar for fees or click here.

To make an appointment or order photographic copies please contact Sarah Lloyd-Durrant, Curator of Later Human History:

Tel: 01872 242785
E-mail: sarah.lloyd@royalcornwallmuseum.org.uk