Two newsletters in less than
three months!
That is because we have seen
much action. This newsletter brings you up to date following the
completion of the excavation of the Old Church, and our successful
hosting of the Gorseth.
The excavation of the Old
Church was managed by the Archaeology Unit of the County Council, and
undertaken by the Trust and the Unit in partnership. We raised £7,000 as
our contribution to the costs: the rest of the money came from a variety
of sources, including the Heritage Lottery and English Heritage, as well
as from the budget of the Archaeology Unit. We were hugely supported by
Dick Cole of the Archaeology Unit, and we cannot express enough our
thanks to him. The excavation is our first major achievement after all
these years, having involved over a year of negotiation and discussion
to implement. Of course, we also thank those who contributed to our
£7,000, both in cash and with labour – we had wonderful support from all
sorts of people from over Britain as well as Cornwall – and I think
everyone could see where their money was going and how worth while it
all is! We will shortly be erecting signs to represent the site, and
developing a management plan in cooperation with the County, District
and Parish Councils to ensure that the site is well looked after and
never allowed to fall into neglect again.
You can, of course, see the
excavations on the web site.
This project has strengthened
the Trust, given us more hope that we can achieve our other goals, and
also shown us that we have the capacity to initiate a large project.
So we now need to turn our
attention to two continuing tasks: uncovering the Oratory and getting
performances back into Perran Round. Both of these tasks are
complicated, require negotiation and patience, and above all require
finance. So our fund raising will now focus
on these two areas.
As far as the Oratory is
concerned, we hope to start discussions with English Nature when we have
completed the final report about the water levels. We are far too
experienced to expect rapid progress, but we hope that the various
statutory bodies will now work in partnership with us to achieve our
dream of excavating the Oratory and protecting it so that it, too, is
never allowed to fall into neglect again. The work will cost much more
than the Old Church, particularly the protection and maintenance.
Ideally we would like to build up an endowment fund that would finance
running cost, and that will be an enormous task. On top of that we will
need to find the capital costs to finance the excavation and the
protection of the uncovered structure. We are now in the process of
developing a financial plan (we did a lot of work on this some years
ago), and I hope in my next Newsletter we will be able to share it with
you.
But we must not neglect the
Round. It is in private ownership (we have an agreement with the owner
to maintain it); and it still needs a lot of care. We have done a lot to
control the growth of weeds, gorse and heather on the inside, but the
outside is still wild, and we need to decide exactly how to deal with it
– at the moment it could pose dangers to anyone standing on the rim
who got excited by a performance and fell
backwards …
The Trust has now established
a very active sub-committee, including Donald Rawe
who we are fortunate enough to have as a Trustee, and we are looking
into the feasibility of encouraging players and performers to come back
to the Round – some of you will remember the performances of the 1960s
and 1970s (and even a few in the 1980s), before the Round fell into
neglect. We need to reconnect utilities, and establish an adequate
infrastructure to support performances. We then need to attract
performers and grant funding. Anyone who reads this newsletter who has
any ideas or who would like to help, please get in touch.
So, in summary, we are moving
on all cylinders now, and our confidence that we will achieve our
various objectives is increasing, although we are realistic about the
obstacles we face. Above all, we now need to replenish our finances
after the excavation of the Old Church, and in preparation for the next
year of activity.
Finally, we have produced a
calendar (of the perpetual variety), which will soon be on sale. It has
good photographs and also quotations for each month (in
Kernewek, of course). Please contact us if
you want to make an order.
