On Wednesday 28th August, we will be celebrating all things bees with the West Penwith Embroidered Bees Project and Bumblebee Conservation Trust. 

Last year, Vicks Harrison got in touch with the Library to tell us about the West Penwith Embroidered Bees Project that she founded in 2019 to highlight the plight of wild bees. 

 The project aims to raise awareness of the 270 different species of bee that live in Britain, and their varied needs, while also teaching embroidery skills, fostering connection and raising money for wildflower projects, such as Treneere Grows in Penzance. Through stitching illustrations of different bee species onto quilting pieces, Vicks hopes to connect people with our environment, and each other. 

With the help of many eager embroiderers – who have stitched a multitude of different bees in a variety of styles at home and at workshops across Penwith over the past few years – the huge, hand-stitched, art quilt has grown substantially since Vicks sent us this introductory video about the project back in 2023!

Many of the bees now stitched into the patchwork were crafted here at The Morrab Library, where Vicks now hosts regular classes. A friendly and welcoming group of bee embroiderers have been meeting here since November to embroider together and they exhibited the quilt at our Spring Fair in April.

On Wednesday 28th August, we will be hosting a ‘Bee Day’ at the Library with bee-related activities taking place throughout the day. 

From 10am – 12pm, Vicks will be leading a free embroidery workshop to guide those who would like to learn how to make a bee to be stitched into the quilt. No experience is necessary and attendees do not need to bring any fabric, thread or equipment, but any donations of materials to contribute to the piece are always welcomed. Booking is essential and please email Vicks (vickyvicks@btinternet.com) to do so. Further workshops are listed at the bottom of this blog. 

The quilt, in its present but ever-growing form, will be on display in the Natural Sciences Room for the duration of the day. It will hang alongside a display of books about bees (which Library members can borrow on the day) and poems about bees by Vivienne Tregenza. 

Vivienne has created pieces for the quilt inspired by the wildflower garden in Treneere (Penzance), a bee-friendly habitat created by Treneere Grows, which the Embroidered Bees Project hopes to help to fund. Vivienne sketched wildflowers including Agrimony, Cornflower and Poppy that grow in the garden then turned her illustrations into beautiful embroideries for the quilt. Her poems about bees will be exhibited in the Natural Sciences room alongside the quilt.

Pop in anytime between 10am – 3.30pm to see the display.

At 2pm in the Reading Room, Pip Cook SW Project Officer for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, will be giving a talk about the bumblebees we can find in Cornwall.

In Pip’s role, she is particularly focusing on the Moss carder bumblebee (Bombus muscorum), one of the rarest and most threatened bumblebee species in the UK. It is a beautiful ginger-tailed bumblebee with a short velvety coat that was once widespread in the UK and is now found mostly in small, fragmented populations. You can find out more about the talk here and email or call the library before Monday 19th August to put your name into the ballot for a ticket. Entry to this event is free but donations are welcomed to help support The Morrab Library (suggested £5). Refreshments will be provided after the talk.

Upcoming workshop dates: 

Wednesday 28th August, 10-12: a free session as part of the “Bee Day”

Tuesday 3rd September, 10-12

Tuesday 17th September, 10-12

Tuesday 15th October, 10-12

‘Stories of the Stones’ talk by Dr Serena Trowbridge – Reading List

Every month at The Morrab Library we host talks in the Reading Room for library members and non-members alike. The programme is as eclectic as the Library’s collection – from the Holy Wells of Cornwall to the History of the English Miniature Painting – and meander through Literature, Poetry, Art, Geology and a host of other fascinating subjects in between. 

Often, the writers, academics, poets and artists we invite to speak at the Library generously let us record their talk so we can share them with a wider audience online. You can browse the selection of recorded talks here.

Some of our brilliant speakers also use the Library’s archive, newspaper and book collections for their own research. In homage to BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, we are hoping to share a “Reading List” to go with each talk recording, in case you would like to follow up on the talk by borrowing related titles from the Library or delving into our archives. 

We’ll be publishing these reading lists on our blog on a monthly basis so please do keep checking back for updated reading lists.

Dr Serena Trowbridge gave a talk entitled ‘Stories of the Stones’. Britain’s landscape contains many stone circles, especially in Cornwall. Their original purpose remains mysterious despite extensive archaeological investigation, and perhaps it is their obscurity which makes them so fascinating.

Over the centuries they have inspired many legends, most famously of girls turned to stone for dancing on a holy day, or stones which walk to a river and drink. The stories reflect the changing interests and concerns of society and tell us more about our culture than they do about the sites themselves. This talk will explore a few of these stories of the stones, including the Merry Maidens, and consider the significance of mythmaking and storytelling.

Member’s can look forward to a chance to watch Serena’s excellent talk which will be shared in the next Monthly Links email. 

The following suggestions are not currently part of the library’s collection but if you have a copy that you would like to donate to us then please email enquiries@morrablibrary.org.uk. They may be available to borrow from the public library too. 

Burl, Aubrey, Great Stone Circles

Cope, Julian, The Modern Antiquarian

Cooper, Susan, Over Sea, Under Stone (children’s fiction)

Hadingham, Evan, Circles and Standing Stones

Hayman, Richard, Riddles in Stone: Myths, Archaeology and the Ancient Britons

Grinsell, Leslie, Folklore of Pre-historic Sites in Britain

Soar, Katy, ed., Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites

Thomas, D.M., Birthstone: A Novel

Lively, Penelope, The Whispering Knights (children’s fiction)

 Last month, we shared a reading list to accompany Katrina Naomi’s poetry reading featuring collections of poetry, non-fiction and novels available to borrow from the Library. You can catch up on this Reading List, and others, over on our blog. 

Katrina Naomi is an award-winning poet, performer and mentor. She has returned to judge our poetry competition, the Patricia Eschen Prize for Poetry, in 2024.

Katrina’s poetry collections have won an Authors’ Foundation Award and Saboteur Award, and she is a recipient of the Keats-Shelley Prize. Katrina’s poetry has appeared on Poems on the Underground, BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and Poetry Please, and in the TLS, The Poetry Review and Modern Poetry in Translation. 

Her new collection, Battery Rocks, has won the Arthur Welton Award and is due for publication by Seren in July 2024. In May, Katrina gave a reading at the Library where she read work from previous collections (watch a recording here) and a sneak peek of her new collection. 

The reading, and audience questions afterwards, were rich in allusions to other writers and poets. Katrina has kindly shared a ‘‘Reading List’ of books – a mix of poetry, novels and memoir – that were useful to her in the writing of Battery Rocks.

The US poet Sharon Olds was a frequent touchstone in Katrina’s reading and her favourite of Olds’ many collections is Satan Says. If you’d like to read some of Olds poetry, we have Arias (811.6 OLD), The Father (811.54), and The Sign of Saturn (811.6 OLD) available to borrow from the library. She also talked about how she “always find[s] the poet Peter Redgrove a revelation” and recommended his collection In The Hall Saurians. We have The Moon Disposes (821.914), The Cycolean Mistress (C808) and The Nature of Cold (821.914) by Peter Redgrove available to borrow from the Library, and recommend trying the Penzance Public Library for other titles from Katrina’s list that we don’t have in our collection. 

You can watch a clip of Katrina reading a selection of poems from previous collections here and borrow her collections from the Library too. 

Photo of Katrina Naomi credit: Ian Kingsnorth

Their hope is the book – Holy Wells Cornwall: Odyssey & Memorial – will encourage others to seek these wells. Some are special for beauty, for remoteness, for the spiritual sense that many recognise, or for the stories which have accreted over time. At the very least, there are some good walks, and the discovery of parts of Cornwall not to be missed. But this is also a story of their partnership, and something of a memorial, being one part of the huge legacy of art and poetry left by Guy’s wife of fifty years.

All of the books mentioned in Guy’s Reading List below can be found in the Jenner Room (our Cornish collection) which is located on the ground floor of The Morrab Library. The Dewey Decimal Number for each book can be found next to the author in the list below. Please ask a member of staff if you need help finding the books, or email enquiries@morrablibrary.org.uk if you would like to reserve any of these titles.

Holy Wells of Cornwall by Catharine & Guy English – C291.35

Holy Wells of Cornwall by A. Lane-Davies – C398.364

Fentynyow Kernow by Cheryl Straffon – C628.114

Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall by Mabel Quiller Couch  – C398.364

The Saints of Cornwall by Nicholas Orme – C274.237

The Healing Wells, Cornish Cults and Customs  by P.O. Leggat M.D., F.R.C.P.D.V. Leggat – C628.114

Every month at The Morrab Library we host talks in the Reading Room for library members and non-members alike. The programme is as eclectic as the library’s collection – from the Holy Wells of Cornwall to the History of the English Miniature Painting – and meander through Literature, Poetry, Art, Geology and a host of other fascinating subjects in between. 

Often, the writers, academics, poets and artists we invite to speak at the Library generously let us record their talk so we can share them with a wider audience online. You can browse the selection of recorded talks here.

Some of our brilliant speakers also use the Library’s archive, newspaper and book collections for their own research. In homage to BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, we are hoping to share a “Reading List” to go with each talk recording, in case you would like to follow up on the talk by borrowing related titles from the Library or delving into our archives. 

We’ll be publishing these reading lists here on our blog on a monthly basis so please do keep checking back for updated reading lists. 

Several items in The Morrab Library collection offer us insights into how Cornish was being spoken, used, and regarded during the nineteenth century in West Penwith. The Reverend Wladislaw Lach-Szyrma of Newlyn carried out investigations into the use of Cornish during the 1870s and worked to promote the language. He instigated an essay prize, the entries for which are held in the Morrab Library’s archives (Ref. MAN/58). 

At the same time, Cornish was featuring in regional newspapers and novels. In March 2024, Kensa Broadhurst gave a fascinating talk on “The Cornish Language in West Penwith in the 19th Century” at The Morrab Library through which she explored what these sources tell us about how Cornish was being used during the nineteenth century and what this means for the wider history and status of the language

Kensa has just completed her PhD at the Institute of Cornish Studies, Exeter University. Her studies were funded by the Cornwall Heritage Trust and the Q Fund. She researched the status of the Cornish language between 1777-1904, that is, the period in which it is widely believed to have been extinct. A former modern languages teacher, Kensa is a fluent speaker of Cornish, a bard of the Cornish Gorsedh, and both teaches and examines the language. She is currently the Languages Coordinator for the University of Exeter’s Cornwall Campus. 

You can watch a recording of her talk here.

She has also kindly put together a “Reading List” if you would like to follow up on the talk with any further reading. 

Queen of the Guarded Mounts – John Oxenham

Deep Down – R.M. Ballantyne

Beatrice of St Mawes 

Tin – Edward Bosanketh

The Story of the Cornish Language – Peter Beresford Ellis

The Handbook of the Cornish Language – Henry Jenner

Pentreath and Victor’s essays on the Cornish Language are held in our Archive (MAN/58). Please email enquiries@morrablibrary.org.uk  if you would like to arrange an appointment to see these documents or if you would like to reserve any of the books mentioned on her Reading List.