Description: Local volunteers play a key role in the EPE projects.  In Cornwall volunteers have been recording religious sites in each parish in the county.  Volunteers have been trained to use location and grid references, to document evidence found on a site and to reference stained glass windows and furniture.

Strategy: Centrally funded by Heritage Lottery Fund, EPE is also working with local partners on each of its projects.  In Cornwall the key partners are Cornwall County Council, the University of Exeter and the Victoria County History Trust of Cornwall.

Outcome:

Materials discovered during our research, including images, historical documents and audio files, are also available from our free, interactive website ‘Explore’ (www.ExploreEnglandsPast.org.uk).  Resources on the Cornwall Explore site include photographs of the many beautiful churches in Cornwall. The parish surveys produced by the volunteers will be added to the website as their work progresses. A religious sites school project has also been completed.  Pupils from Camborne Science and Community College helped to create teaching packs showing how Christianity became established in Cornwall.  These have since been trialled in a local primary school.

A book ‘Cornwall and the Cross: Christianity 500-1560’ has now been published.
 
Through its learning and publications programmes EPE is also helping to develop new models of working for the future of the VCH.