Trinity House National Lighthouse Museum

Trinity House National Lighthouse Centre was a museum in Penzance, Cornwall, UK which housed the national collection of Trinity House. It included significant amounts of lighthouse memorabilia which visitors could interact with, as well as a recreation of a light house keeper's bedroom. In February 2005 Trinity House announced the museum's closure and relocation of the collection to Plymouth. Trinity House confirmed that they would not be relocating the collection in 2009, and were in negotiations with National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth where some of the material was subsequently put on display.

Trinity House National Lighthouse Museum
Former museum building in 2012
Location	Penzance, Cornwall, England
Coordinates	50.11651°N 5.53159°W / 50.11651; -5.53159
Listed Building – Grade II
Official name	National Lighthouse Centre
Designated	6 March 2003
Reference no.	1350316
Location of Trinity House National Lighthouse Museum in Cornwall

History

The National Lighthouse Centre was a museum opened by Trinity House, an organisation with a history of building and maintaining lighthouses, in 1989. The museum building was converted from the Trinity House buoy store, part of the Penzance Depot, where buoys were stored and repaired.^[1] It featured an interactive experience of lighthouse keepers, as well has housing Trinity House's collection of lighthouse equipment. It also featured a recreation of a lighthouse keeper's bed room where visitors were able to touch the exhibits, a collection of optics, lighthouse keepers' uniforms and documentation^[2][3] The museum also traced the history of Trinity House, and featured a selection of buoys from the buoy store.^[1]

Between 1989 and the museum's closure in February 2005,^[4] the museum hosted approximately 10,000 visitors each year.^[1] Despite a campaign to keep it open, in 2005, Trinity House closed the site as they were contemplating opening a replacement museum at a busier site in Plymouth.^[2][5] Trinity House confirmed that they would not be moving the museum to Plymouth in 2009, and that the memorabilia would no longer be visible to the public, though they would possibly display some at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth.^[6]

References

• Cornwall portal

1. "The Trinity House National Lighthouse Museum". Lighthouse Digest. Retrieved 13 August 2016.
2. Heal, Sharon (March 2005). "Campaign to save the Lighthouse Centre in Penzance scuppered". Museums Journal. 3 (105): 6. Retrieved 13 August 2016.
3. Pope, Rita Tregellas (15 March 2006). Landmark Visitors Guide Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly. Hunter Publishing, Inc. p. 130. ISBN 9781843062110.
4. "Trinity House National Lighthouse Centre (Closed)". Cornwall guide. 6 December 2015. Retrieved 13 August 2016.
5. "Lighthouse museum to close down". BBC. 16 February 2005. Retrieved 13 August 2016.
6. "'Attraction's closure was unnecessary'". West Briton. 24 July 2009. Retrieved 13 August 2016.^{[permanent dead link‍]}