Historic Charlestown’s Shipwreck Treasure Museum has brought back its popular Tunnel of Lights experience ready for the build-up to Christmas – and the Post is offering a competition to win a family ticket to the attraction.

Charlestown, near St Austell, has become familiar to many as a tall ships filming location for TV productions such as the BBC series of Poldark a few years back.

The village’s use as a film location stems from its 1994 purchase by the company Square Sail, but the unspoilt period charm of its buildings has also led to it developing as a tourist destination and restaurant quarters. The historic harbour is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The port was developed as a working harbour when in 1790 the entrepreneur Charles Rashleigh moved into Duporth Manor near what was then the tiny fishing hamlet of West Polmear. From 1791 Rashleigh used plans prepared by John Seaton of Eddystone Lighthouse fame to construct a modern harbour and dock, together with a planned village housing its workforce and an unusual for Cornwall straight and broad road to ease the transportation of goods in and out.

For a while Rashleigh prospered from his new port, and it was renamed Charlestown in his honour, but then he twice made the mistake of trusting the harbour’s management to younger men whom he had raised up from humble and impoverished origins – and who ended up swindling him and his estate so he in effect lost everything and was left bankrupt. The Rasheigh family had to pass the harbour to new owners in lieu of debts.

Although the port was originally built to ship out copper from local mines, as it evolved one of its main staples was shipping out the china clay for which the St Austell area became famous.

In 1906 new tunnels were built under buildings and walls adjoining Charlestown harbour to ease the transport of china clay to the ships, with narrow gauge rail lines laid through the tunnels and out onto loading platforms. It’s said that in that period one half of the harbour was covered in white dust from the china clay being shipped out, and the other half was covered in black dust from large quantities of coal being shipped in.

Now those days are long gone, but it is the tunnels once used by the clay wagons which today are used for the Charlestown Shipwreck Treasure Museum’s ever-popular Tunnel of Lights.

This year’s Tunnel of Lights: Arctic Adventure has seen more than 100 metres of the tunnels being transformed into a polar-themed wonderland, with the inspiration coming from the Arctic expeditions undertaken in the Edwardian era by men like Ernest Shackleton and, of course, Plymothian tragic hero Robert Falcon Scott.

The immersive experience, which took weeks to create with the team starting back in early September, aims to give family visitors the illusion of encountering shipwrecks frozen in time and passing through a world of ice where they discover frozen waterfalls, icebergs, ice caves and tunnels illuminated with thousands of lights and filled with an Arctic soundscape.

Real snow in Cornwall is a rarity, so the children attending the recent launch event were excited to experience snow falling as they headed outside onto a viewing platform disguised as a ship’s wheelhouse that overlooks the village harbour and sea. The intermittent snowfall is in fact from a cunningly hidden snow machine and seems effective at taking people exploring the wheelhouse unawares.

As visitors pass through the snowbound tunnels, some tinged turquoise like the inside of a glacier, they hear eery siren-like voices and music, and a tableau depicting a skeleton in pirate hat and frock coat rowing a boat perhaps helps to give the experience a Halloween twist appropriate for the recent half-term holiday. However, the Tunnel of Lights will be open until January 9, so it will be becoming increasingly more Christmassy as the weeks go by.

Lynné Raubenheimer, who is visitor engagement manager at the Shipwreck Treasure Museum and had a hand in coming up with the Arctic theme, said: “After another trying year for us all, we can’t wait to welcome visitors to lose themselves in this truly immersive and captivating experience. It’s chance for families to escape for a while, feed their senses with the sights and sounds of the Arctic and surely nothing brings joy and excitement more than falling snow! Our aim has been to create a magical winter feeling that will bring people together.”

The aim is that from December 1 a newly excavated tunnel will be opened to the public for the first time and will be resplendent in Christmas decorations and decked out with thousands of festive lights.

Quite apart from the snow and ice-themed tunnels, those attending the launch day enjoyed going on to view the fascinating exhibits relating to shipwrecks not only around the coastline of Cornwall and Devon but also in other locations around the British Isles, the Mediterranean and wider world. Posters promoting the famously doomed liners Titanic and Lusitania particularly caught my eye, but there are relics from shipwrecks from all periods of history, right from the age of the Phoenicians who first came from the Mediterranean to Cornwall seeking its tin with which to make bronze.

All in all the museum experience has something for all ages and further details about the Tunnel of Lights: Arctic Adventure can be found at http://www.shipwreckcharlestown.co.uk

In the meantime, buy the latest issue of the Post to be in with a chance of winning our competition prize of a family ticket to the Tunnel of Lights.