Wayside Folk Museum

The Wayside Folk Museum stood in the parish of Zennor, on the rugged west coast of Cornwall. It occupied a small private building at Trewey Mill, a former milling site with deep local roots. The museum traced everyday life in the area, focusing on Zennor and the wider Penwith district. Its displays brought together objects and reconstructions from ordinary homes and workplaces. Visitors found rooms arranged to show how people lived in past centuries. A miller’s cottage kitchen showed where families prepared meals over open hearths. Nearby stood a parlour furnished as it would have been in the 19th century, with simple wooden chairs and plain wooden tables. Outside, a blacksmith’s shop displayed tools and shoes used in local farming and mining. Other exhibits explored the region’s trades and crafts. Fishing gear hung on the walls, alongside models of boats that worked the Cornish coast. Farming tools and mining lamps illustrated how people earned their living from the land and sea. Archaeological finds added evidence of much earlier communities who once lived in the same valleys and hills.