Old Guildhall & Gaol - Looe Museum

07/06/2023

Another reminder about this event in Liskeard.

08/05/2023

A huge thank you to all of our museum volunteers who give so much of their time, not just today, but for most of the year. It is much appreciated.

12/04/2023

The museum is open today in answer to an enquiry earlier. 11.00 - 16.00.

29/03/2023

Thank you to all of our amazing volunteers - a great Pre-Season meeting. Our Opening is on Monday3rd at 11.00.

22/03/2023

Many thanks to Dawn from Seasalt Looe who has been volunteering for us today.

20/03/2023

Our 2023 Museum Season starts on April 3rd with our opening at 11.00 and the Season closes on October 29th.

We look forward to welcoming all of our visitors this year. There are activities for children and two new exhibitions about Ship and Boat building in Looe and Thomas Bond.

Please look at our website www.looemuseum.co.uk for more information about our opening hours and disabled access. Our entrance fee is now £3 for adults as our running costs have considerably increased.

museum.co.uk | Search for everything museum related

04/03/2023

Motor Torpedo Boat 40K (40 knots) was built in Looe for the French Navy in the late 1930s, the only boat of her type ever built in Looe for the French by Frank Curtis at his boatyard at Polean. The assistance of a French engineer was provided to the Looe boatyard during her construction. The French were going to sell her to the Republican Government of Spain but in September 1939 she was acquired by the Admiralty and allocated to the 4th MTB Flotilla at Portsmouth where, unarmed and was employed in training MTB personnel. She carried out various roles during the war in and around Portsmouth and is believed to have been sold in 1947.

MTB40K is just part of Looe's maritime history that can be discovered in the museum when it reopens at Easter.

28/10/2022

The museum is not open on Saturday day due to our volunteers being unwell. It will be open on Sunday 11.00-13.30.

27/10/2022

Can you help us with our project with Exeter University. Either contact the museum or Jenny Wittamore.

20/09/2022

Who knew that Looe supplied pilchards to both the Himalaya and Mont Blanc?

13/05/2022

Not come across this before...

Our Local History Month theme today is work and this painting by Alfred Ashley from 1870 shows labourers on the Looe and Liskeard Railway. The watercolour is part of a collection of over eighty small, coloured illustrations in an album covering two trips to Cornwall by Alfred Ashley and his family in 1870.

04/04/2022

Well done to our British Legion for organising this. Never forgotten

14/03/2022

Very sad news today that Jeanne Di**le has passed away. She was involved with the museum for many years, collating much of the information we now hold. We shall miss her smile and knowledge.

22/02/2022

A grand day out in 1885

02/08/2021

11/02/2021

Please note that if you are looking at our Social Media post the 'Apply Now' button says we are in Edinburgh. This is incorrect, we are in Looe, Cornwall.

09/02/2021

This is the start of our brilliant journey with the Coastal Communities Wave project - we can't wait to get back in the museum and get our two new displays installed. We will send photos once we start the installation work.

https://www.coastaltimetripping.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXxSUj-UyLM

COMING SOON to Porthcurno, Bude, St Agnes, Looe, and the Isles of Scilly...Coastal Timetripping is a new and different kind of travel. Via timetripping, you'...

18/01/2021

To all our young members who want to learn about history - as well as our older ones if they want to join in too!
Look on our website www.looemuseum.co.uk and go to our Learning Page where we have some lesson plans about the Second World War in Looe for you to have a go at. Many thanks to Mandy for putting these together for us.
Also remember our Covid-safe free virtual days out.
Fun, accessible and educational.
Visit beautiful Looe in South Cornwall and take a tour of our Old Guildhall Museum and Gaol.
https://www.ocean3d.co.uk/Gallery/Show/?tourId=182
Have Fun everyone and learn some more about Looe.

Ocean3D or, Ocean 3D UK as some people write it, have created for The Old Guildhall Museum and Gaol. Ocean3D produce interactive 3D environments for businesses across the UK. National Autistic Society friendly award holders, our interactive 3d tours can be viewed on the web, tablets, iPad and smartp...

24/12/2020

In Thomas Bond’s history of Looe, published in 1823, he talks of the fishermen of Looe drinking a concoction of two parts spirit, (usually gin) and one part black treacle to keep them warm on...

11/11/2020

11/11/2020

29/10/2020

Christine Butler met Looe Museum's Volunteer Manager Petra Stephenson

24/10/2020

We have something big to announce... we have a new website!! https://www.looemuseum.co.uk/ Please take a look, we hope you like it and find it interesting? In these times when we can't all visit (although the museum is open for bookings) we want to be able to share some of the history of the town through the website, and of course facebook.

We still have plenty to add, but we thought it was about time we let you all see what we have been working on this summer.

If there is anything you would like to see on the website, please tell us!

21/10/2020

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/VCZVCVL
This is the museum's survey about what our visitors want to do and see in our museum. If you have a few spare minutes please could you fill it in as it will give us very valuable information about now move forward in this COVID time.

Many thanks to all of you that help us.

Delighted to let you all know that the museum has filled all of its time slots for last week and the last two days and we are thank all of our visitors for supporting our museum.

08/10/2020

We are excited about the museum opening next week and have our COVID training for our 8 volunteers this morning.
New times for all of us!

05/10/2020

PRIVATE MUSEUM TOUR for your party of four - same great value £2 per adult and children free
Book an Old Guildhall Museum and Gaol visit.
The museum will be operating a pre-booked timed slot system from October 13th (with COVID regulations now being in place). All visitors will be required to wear face coverings at all times during the visit and can only be in groups of a maximum of four people.
Our brilliant museum volunteers will be opening the museum on Tuesday 13th October and the days that we will be open are Tuesdays and Thursdays between 11am and 4pm, and Wednesdays and Sundays between 11am and 1.45pm. Each visit will start on the hour and will last up to 45 minutes.
To book a visit, please email us at .. [email protected]
Give your preferred date and time (plus an alternative) and your name, number of people in group and a contact number. We will endeavour to get back to you as quickly as possible to confirm your booking.
If there is a specific topic relating to the history of Looe that you are interested in, please also include that in your email so we can prepare.
We are so pleased to be able to welcome back visitors to our museum again.

26/08/2020

https://ocean3d.co.uk/Gallery/Embed/?tourId=182
This is the link to our virtual tour of the museum. Many thanks to Chris Wood at Ocean 3D for all of his hard work and patience with my computer skills!!

Ocean3D or, Ocean 3D UK as some people write it, have created for The Old Guildhall Museum and Gaol. Ocean3D produce interactive 3D environments for businesses across the UK. National Autistic Society friendly award holders, our interactive 3d tours can be viewed on the web, tablets, iPad and smartp...

24/08/2020

24/08/2020

15/08/2020

Welcome to all of our new friends to the museum. There are lots of things happening behind the scenes and we hope to open 2 days a week in September, having put all of the necessary COVID measures into place first. We will have a book a slot system in place and this will be advertised here, and on the new website which I will let you all know about once we have it finished.
We will be adding all of our information points onto our virtual museum tour on Tuesday, and as soon as we have finished the new website the tour will be available for you all to see. We are hoping to add a donation button to encourage anyone visiting the museum tour to give us a little to help us out in what has been a very difficult year for us financially. We welcome many of our followers and many new ones to this new page. The the next six months in the museum will be very exciting with our new website, the creation of the Looe Island Immersive display, the digitisation of the Raddy plates which will be returned to us soon, the Island AR model and the ability to use our donation buttons and hopefully a shop on our website.
The museum team, all of us volunteers, have worked so hard over these difficult months, and we look forward to keeping our small, but very much loved museum alive and well.
Please keep following us!

15/08/2020

August 15 marks Victory over Japan Day – the end of all hostilities in the Second World War. While peace arrived in Europe in May 1945, those fighting in the Far East continued until Japan's surrender in the wake of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs.
All of the memories below come from the World War 2 Memories book which will be printed and for sale in the very near future.
There was a parade through Looe on VE Day with all the boy's gangs leading the way. People from Looe can remember everyone dancing in the streets and Alan Di**le playing his accordion.
The boats went out into the harbour for VJ Day and there were fishing trip parties.
We were on the train going to school, when the guard came through the carriages and told us that there would be no school as the war had ended. There were flags put up along the streets and we danced and sang all night.
Looe people remember that if you entered any of the races at the VJ Sports Regatta Day you were given a cardboard milk bottle top and could take it to Mr Bassets ice cream shop in Fore Street, to get an ice cream cone. They entered a lot of races that day!! Lots of events for the children happened on East Looe beach.

15/08/2020

Come and see our new museum page and we look forward to sharing our virtual tour on here very soon