Caerhays Castle has been crowned the best of British by winning the inaugural Historic Houses Collections Award, sponsored by Dreweatts.

The award was introduced to honour the creators, owners, curators, researchers, and conservators who preserve, augment, restore and interpret the beautiful and significant objects on show inside historic houses up and down the country.

In its inaugural year, the award attracted an overwhelming number of entrants.

It was the remarkable mineral collection recently discovered at Caerhays Castle, however, that stood out to the judges.

The Williams Caerhays Mineral Collection is the product of generations of collecting by the Williams family, predominantly in the Gwennap parish.

They were well established as successful mining managers by the early 1700s, living at Burncoose House, and subsequently Scorrier House.

John Williams senior (1753-1841) and his son, John Williams junior (1777-1849), were largely responsible for creating the collections in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

In 2008 Charles Williams, the current owner of Caerhays, met Courtenay Smale, a retired mining engineer and former President of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall and the Royal Institution of Cornwall, with a view to re-establishing a mineral display in the empty cabinets.

This was aimed at enhancing the visitor experience as part of the house tour.

The minerals were secreted throughout the castle’s old kitchen, old vegetable with no identification labels or catalogue.

However, the Williams family ploughed on and are publicising the mineral collection through exhibitions, lectures, research with learned societies, and articles.

Charles Williams, owner of Caerhays Castle, said: “We are very proud of the mineral collection at Caerhays.

“We would not have been able to achieve this without the help and guidance of the unbelievably knowledgeable Courtenay Smale.”

Courtenay Smale said: “I was first contacted by Charles Williams back in 2009, and it wasn’t until we started to search throughout the castle that the minerals started to reappear. I spent a considerable amount of time identifying the specimens and cataloguing them.”