28.08.08
AHRC award for neglected histories in telecommunications

A highly innovative project to re-examine the concentration of telecommunication industries in late-Victorian and Edwardian Cornwall has been awarded £300,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.  The collaborative project between Porthcurno Telegraph Museum and the University of Exeter's Department of History at the Tremough Campus, Penryn will be conducted over an 18 month period.

The aim for 'Connecting Cornwall' is to transform the understanding of some of the key aspects of telecommunications history, drawing on the underexploited archival material at the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum.

The project will focus on two themes that have largely been neglected in histories of telecommunication.  Rather than focussing solely on the technology, the research examines the lives and careers of the telegraphers who trained at Porthcurno which was the location of the major operating station and training school of the Eastern Telegraph Company.  The trainees went on to manage the global telecommunication network which helped keep Britain's empire together in a period of fierce international competition.

Director of Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, Libby Buckley explains: "A trawl of the archives reveals new insights into the way they were recruited and trained as well as the technological and practical innovations they devised.  We are finding out how they coped with stresses and illnesses caused by working in often harsh conditions far from home."

She added: "Using diaries, photographs, instruments, and a wealth of other items PorthcurnoTelegraphMuseum's 'Connecting Cornwall' exhibition, publications and website will give voice to a largely forgotten community of workers."

The original project will combine the expertise of academic historians and museum professionals to create a major new exhibition, a new website featuring a fully-searchable database of research materials, and virtual tours of Porthcurno and other major sites of Cornish telecommunications history.

University Lecturer in History, Dr Richard Noakes explains: "Preliminary research is already yielding material that will transform our understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of building and operating remote telegraph stations, the responses of local inhabitants to symbols of metropolitan power, and the way that cable and wireless telegraphy came to be seen as part of the identity of locales not associated with cutting edge technology."

The £100 million Tremough Campus is a Combined Universities in Cornwall initiative ­of which the University of Exeter and University College Falmouth are two of the founding partners. It is funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One), the South West Regional Development Agency, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall County Council. Set in 70 acres of countryside, but close to the waterside towns of Penryn and Falmouth, the campus offers a lively student community. The University of Exeter now offers degrees in Biology, Modern Celtic and Cornish Studies, English, Geology, Geography, History, Law, Mining Engineering, Politics and Renewable Energy on the Tremough Campus, which has expanded rapidly as part of the Combined Universities in Cornwall initiative.

For further information please contact Sarah Hoyle, Press Officer, University of Exeter, on 01392 262062/07989 446920 or email s.hoyle@exeter.ac.uk.

The Objective One Programme for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly has invested in the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC) project, both Phase 1 and Phase 2, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Social Fund (ESF). University of Exeter is a partner of the CUC.

Editor's notes:

Clare Morgan
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