A Grade II* listed building owned on behalf of the country by the National Trust, Lawrence House Museum lies on Castle Street in Launceston. It is a street said by Sir John Betjeman, the British poet laureate from 1972 until his death in 1984, to have Cornwall's best collection of eighteenth-century townhouses.
Built in 1753 of red brick, today Lawrence House is a mix of period home and modern museum displays. The ground floor covers local history, ranging from a model railway to displays on local astronomer John Couch Adams, the man who discovered the planet Neptune. The first-floor rooms are filled with a series of Victorian-era costumes, vintage toys, and other unusual artefacts, while the grounds around the museum incorporate gardens once used by the local mayor as his parlour, given the fine weather he could expect to enjoy for much of the year.
The museum is open Monday to Saturday and all bank holidays from April until October, and admission is free.
