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The Boom Years
About Redruth Town Trail
13
On the right at the junction with Clinton Road
is the Passmore Edwards Free Library (right), built in 1894, with
its prominent castellated tower. Edwards began his career in Manchester
and acquired great wealth from publishing. He paid for numerous hospitals,
art galleries and libraries to benefit the working classes, supporting 20
projects in Cornwall. The granite building is a fine monument to Victorian
philanthropy, and houses the Cornish Studies Library, with over 30,000 volumes
on local subjects.
14 Next door is the former Robert Hunt Museum (1889) adjoining the School of Science and Art and built as a memorial to its founder by the Miners Association of Devon and Cornwall. It housed a large mineral collection, which can now be found at the Camborne School of Mines (1882).
Across the road is St Andrew's Church (1883), built on the site of the Treruffe Manor House to a design by James Hicks (1846 - 1896). the pre-eminent local architect. Next to it, Hicks' own house has interesting decorative details. Stretching southward is a district of housing built by out-of-work miners during the mining recession of the late 1870s. The area was formerly intensively worked, and some of the material for the houses came from former mining buildings. There have been several cases of subsidence here caused by old shafts collapsing. These late Victorian dwellings are mostly semi-detached villas, quite a contrast to the rows of miners' houses in the town centre.
