TRENANCE  ANNOUNCED WINNER AT CORNWALL HERITAGE AWARDS!
 
Trenance Heritage Cottages are celebrating success at the first Cornwall Heritage Awards which took place at Scorrier House in Redruth on Tuesday 20 March, having won the category Best Project on a Budget.
 
The heritage organisation won the award for short play depicting the Wartime relationship between  Vine Cottage resident Mary Pearce and a child evacuee from London, Mavis Fernee.
 
Not only did the Cottages receive the accolade of winning the award, they were also presented with a cash prize of £500 to help support any work or projects they wish to develop. This money has been kindly granted by Heritage Lottery Fund.
 
Trenance Cottages trustee, Chris Blount,  exclaims: To win such a prestigious award on our first attempt at a ‘Living Museum’  production is truly staggering. We aim is to do more of this, and we’ll be looking for more volunteers who enjoy the idea of role play within our heritage rooms”..
 
In their first year, the Cornwall Heritage Awards have been developed to commend museums and heritage organisations’ achievements, celebrate what makes them so special and to give those unsung heroes their greatly deserved moment in the spotlight. The Awards have been organised by South West Museum Development in collaboration with Cornwall Museums Partnership, and were made possible by investment from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
 
Cornwall Museum Development Officer, Bryony Robins, comments: “There are more than 70 museums in Cornwall, each offering something unique and special and providing fantastic services for their communities and achieving high standards.
 
“Recognising the excellence within these diverse heritage organisations, we believe there is a lot we can learn from each other and have organised the Cornwall Heritage Awards to reward the wonderful work they do, and to share their achievements. We have been utterly delighted with the quality of the applications and nominations we received for this year’s awards and are already looking forward to discovering more examples of brilliant work next year!”

The 16th July saw our third wedding ceremony to take place at Trenance cottages and wow what a day!

Before, I tell you about the day itself, let's rewind a little.

Fleur and Mark booked the function room for their wedding ceremony earlier in the year, not long after we had finalised our prices and ideas for weddings at Trenance.
Fleur came to see us at our wedding open day and loved the venue. We were able to put Fleur in touch with Rose, our retired florist and helper and together they discussed ideas for flowers for the function room.

On the weeks leading up to the wedding, Fleur came to visit the function room to try out the music system and run through what would happen during the ceremony itself.

The day before the wedding, our volunteers set to work, preparing the room. Fleur and Mark chose the ivory lace and organza chair sashes, red carpet and topiary bushes which were included in the Trenance wedding package. In addition, Fleur chose to hire the vintage white wooden ladders and wooden love letters with several lace covered jam jars filled with purple gypsophilia.

As Fleur and Mark had chosen purple for their wedding colours, the room was enhanced with beautiful purple floral displays created by Rose who came down the night before, armed with buckets upon buckets of fresh flowers and greenery. During the course of the afternoon and evening, Rose worked her magic transforming the room and creating her arrangements on site.

Rose chose mixed purple and mauve stocks to decorate the wooden ladders and created beautiful displays for the ledges and window sills. In addition, Rose created a stunning purple pedestal display along with outdoor purple arrangements to frame the entrance way.
The aisle chair sashes were brought to life with mauve carnation heads,

​Other details in the room included the lovely hessian bunting (made by one of our clever volunteers) and Fleur personalised this with a beautiful bespoke lucky horse shoe which had been made as a gift from a friend.

Although the outdoor area is currently looking beautiful with all the geraniums in full bloom, Rose created purple displays to fame the door and Fleur chose the pink vintage delivery bike with bunting and hydrangea heads as extra decoration. Both the bike and the floral displays complimented each other perfectly. Spookily enough, the flowers in the gardens were also purple which matched Fleur and Mark's theme perfectly.

When the big day came, we couldn't have asked for better weather! Beautiful blue skies and gorgeous hot temperatures. Guests arrived early and mingled on the patio, with many enjoying a drink from the coffee shop as they waited. The patio area was roped off giving the wedding party their own private space.

Fleur arrived at the cottages in a beautiful white and green camper van called Lucky (available to hire from honey bugs wedding cars in Newquay). Whilst the ceremony took place, a couple of the younger members of the wedding party chose to play in the gardens and have a few photos 'driving the camper van'.
Fleur's purple floral hair decoration, button holes and bouquet were made by Kelly Ann's in Newquay.

After the ceremony, the guests enjoyed the the sunshine on the patio whilst Fleur and Mark had photos on the bridge followed by photos in the rose gardens.

Following photos, the wedding moved onto the Plume of Feathers in Mitchell for a reception and carried on the camper theme by hiring the awesome Cornwall Photo Bus, a mobile photo booth (www.cornwallphotobus.co.uk).

We wish Fleur and Mark our heart felt congratulations! Xx

It was September 2005 – ten years ago.

St Michael’s Church Hall was creaking at the seams, as it appeared the whole town had turned out in a common cause – and that doesn’t often happen in Newquay!

All credit must go to Councillor Lesley Clarke who had taken up the bidding on behalf of Restormel Borough Council to enlist massive support for its grandiose scheme to save Trenance Cottages. Grade II and listed, surely somebody would throw a Million Pounds at the authority – for that is what they told us it would cost. Would nobody dare to ask why the Landlord had neglected the maintenance of our dearly beloved icon, to the extent that its last remaining tenants had had to be rehoused nearly thirty years before?  Nobody did, not one – we were all swept along by plans and speeches.

Questionnaires were filled in – what would we like to see the cottages become? Some spoke up for affordable housing, others wanted a community hall, while there was one Town Councillor who honestly favoured filling the shell with concrete and just leaving the facade!

Restormel, however, had loftier sights. Their architect had envisaged ‘Workshops’ – three in all – with offices for start-up businesses. Not many months later, with the enthusiastic backing of the newly formed ‘Friends of Trenance Cottages’, the bid went in to Heritage Lottery Fund and Objective One for the best part of a Million Pounds. With the massive backing of 800 members, who were already planning a programme of fundraising events to celebrate the acquisition in 1906 of the Trenance Valley area for leisure purposes, how could the scheme possibly fail? Very easily, as it happened.

After many hours of meetings and a lot more fundraising, it became clear to both the council and ourselves that we, the community-led group with all the enthusiasm and drive, would stand a better chance of winning grants to save the cottages. The Trenance Cottages Community Interest Company was formed and, by 2007, Restormel had pledged that it would transfer the buildings to our ownership – if we could secure the funds to fulfill a viable scheme.

This is when the shape of today’s project began to be formed - an extension for tearooms, heritage display rooms and a hirable room for meetings, plus a shop. Behind the scenes there was also negotiation going on with those increasingly co-operative owners, the Borough Council, to cough up money they should have spent on the upkeep of the buildings during the past twenty years. Perhaps their vision of the cottages as a future asset was beginning to look like more of a liability and the sooner they could offload their financial burden the better . At any rate £100,000 was found to be available: just the job for stabilizing the place and putting a new roof on! Even the presence of bats didn’t prove the ecological stumbling block we thought it would – suddenly, like peter and paul, they were gone…

The tide was turning. OK, a further grant application to the Government’s Big Lottery Fund failed – more hours of work wasted – but all was not lost…Heritage Lottery Fund loved our project, advising that they might be able to help us – if the Cottages were ours, and if we were a charity. Oh yes, and another small thing – we needed to come up with a robust Business Plan. More hours of meetings and consultation, including journeys to Exeter and canvassing support from local organisations and the community at large. Our MP backed us, as did councillors from all three  local authorities.

Santa backed us too. He’d had enough of sitting in drafty, damp old makeshift grottos, year after year. One day, surely, he could look forward to underfloor heating – and a handy toilet!!

There was great excitement when Restormel Borough Council handed us the key to the property on 31st March, 2009. Money changed hands too – they charged us £1 for the privilege! There was no going back now – mainly because the council ceased to exist on the following day!