St Ives Archive Open Day at the Market House on 15th December
Archive aweigh! St Ives Archive invites you to an Open Day at the Market House on the 15th December from 10:00am – 15:00pm. The St Ives Archive is on the move, having been in its present home for the last five years in Carbis Bay an opportunity has arisen to move into the town centre again.…
The Night of the Cintra Gale – 130 Years Later
Today marks the 130th anniversary (17 November 1893) of a notorious night/early morning in St Ives Bay when five ships were wrecked on what became known as the Night of the Cintra Gale. A crankshaft broke loose in the engine room of steamer Hampshire, tearing a massive hole in the hull. The ship went down within an hour 10 miles north…
2024 St Ives Archive Calendar – Preview and How to Buy
Featuring images from the St Ives Archive’s large photography collection, our 2024 calendar showcases photos of St Ives from the past and the present. Each month is a different scene around town — from the Harbour to the High Street — taking you on a nostalgic trip through time. Calendars are £13 each including postage…
The History of Halsetown: An Illustrated Talk by Tony Liddicoat
Join St Ives Archive volunteer Tony Liddicoat for his illustrated talk on the history of Halsetown at the Balnoon Inn on Thursday 16th November. The talk is free to attend (no booking required) and will begin at 7.30pm with food and drinks available on the night. Donations to the Archive will be collected at the…
Plagues, Pandemics and Epidemics Through History: Part 2
Smallpox and Cholera with Particular Reference to S.W. England By: Dr John Sell Smallpox For a long time, it was thought that smallpox was one of the most devastating diseases of mankind for over 5,000 years, the earliest known cases being in Egypt or India. More recently doubt has been cast on the antiquity of…
St Ives Archive at the September Festival 2023
St Ives Archive is delighted to return to this year’s St Ives September Festival with two guided history walks and a specialist talk about Troika ceramics. Archive Trustee Tony Mason will be leading the ‘The History and Mystery of St Ives’ on the two Wednesdays of the Festival – 13th and 20th September – and…
St Ives Archive Celebrates World Photography Day
In celebration of World Photography Day on August 19, St Ives Archive is putting on a special one-week photo sale featuring 16 limited edition prints by local photographers. Beginning this Saturday and lasting until August 26, the photographs – all taken of St Ives by emerging artists and established professionals alike – will be available…
Plagues, Pandemics and Epidemics Through History: Part 1
Introduction and the Black Death with Particular Reference to S.W. England By: Dr John Sell The first living things on earth were single celled organisms from which all other life forms developed. What many people have still to realise is that we are still totally dependent on them to produce an environment in which the…
Plans for a new Archive to Unlock the Secrets of Market House
St Ives Town Council Joint Press Release 21 June 2023 Plans for a new Archive to Unlock the Secrets of Market House St Ives Town Council, working in close partnership with St Ives Archive are about to embark upon an exciting new heritage project to create an Archive Resource Centre in the centre of the town. The…
St Ives History Walk with Tony Mason: Summer Series
St Ives Archive Trustee Tony Mason leads a 90-120 minute stroll from Porthminster Beach to Porthmeor Beach.
Volunteers’ Week: Meet the St Ives Archive Team
This Volunteers’ Week (1-7 June), St Ives Archive is celebrating their amazing volunteers without whom we would not be able to do the important heritage work that we do. While every day is Volunteers’ Day to us, we are excited to share our endless appreciation for everything that they do with the wider community. From…
1953 Coronation Street Party: Remembering the Day
On the 7th April 2023, St Ives Archive volunteer Wendy Grove submitted the photo below to the Times & Echo inviting readers to get in touch if they recognised anybody in the photograph. Shortly after, Brian Mitchell contacted the Archive and asked if we had any more photos of the event – fortunately, we did.…
St Ives Archive Secret Photo Show in the Press
St Ives Archive is delighted to have their first Secret Photo Show featured in the St Ives Times & Echo and The Cornishman. If you missed reading about the recent photography show in print, we have shared digital copies of the articles below. A special thank you to Archive Trustee Celeste Allen for bringing the…
Just Where Is Chitta?
Here at St Ives Archive we take an interest in anything connected to the history and life of the town and area. So when our attention was drawn to an article in the Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries which claimed that Lelant was probably the target of a Spanish raid in 1405 which left…
Secret Photo Show: Meet the Photographers
For the first time, St Ives Archive is collaborating with local photographers to put on the Secret Photo Show, a two-day art sale to raise money for the Archive. The show will include works by a talented group of photographers from a range of specialities and expertise. All photos, to go on display next week,…
St Ives Archive’s New Catalogue System
The refresh of our website has spurred us on to modernise our Archive “catalogue”. For many years we have been using two separate systems, one for recording scanned photographs and the other for recording acquisitions. In order to provide a single web browser-based search facility we have, with the help of Cornwall Council Cultivator funding,…
Celebrating the Life and Legacy of John Passmore Edwards
The Archive Centre was asked to put together a display to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of John Passmore Edwards. Over the past few months, two volunteers sifted through the information and photographs held in the archives and put together a display to be held at the St Ives Library. From humble beginnings, Passmore…
Cornwall Heritage Trust CEO Visits St Ives Archive
The St Ives Archive are delighted to have been featured in the launch edition of Cornwall Heritage Trust’s new magazine, An Gwithyas, which is Cornish for ‘The Custodian’. Written by Cornwall Heritage Trust’s CEO, Cathy Woolcock, the article recounts Cathy’s first visit to the Archive, including a pleasant discovery of family photographs from our collection.…
2023 St Ives Archive Calendar On Sale Now
A photo of St Ives has been selected for every month from the Archive’s extensive database. This year’s calendar in particular features a selection of photographs by Andrew Lanyon. You can purchase our calendar by visiting the Shop page or by visiting the Archive during our opening hours.
Pop-up Archive
St Ives Archive opened a pop-up Archive at 1A Bedford Road, St Ives, between the 12th and 17th September as part of this year’s St Ives September Festival. The purpose of the pop-up was to raise awareness of the wealth of local historical information that is held by St Ives Archive in their Research Centre…
St Ives September Festival
St Ives Archive is excited to have been a part of this year’s St Ives September Festival! In addition to having a ‘Pop-up Archive’ during the Festival, there were guided walks and specialist history talks around town. A huge thank you to Trustee Tony Mason, social historian Janet Axten, volunteer Madie Parkinson-Evans and all of…