Programme 2023
Our talks and activities in 2023
Digging Deep: Dartmoor’s Key Archaeological Excavations
A Zoom talk by Andy Crabb on 24th January
Andy’s talk will focus on some particular excavations that influenced our understanding of Dartmoor’s past. He hopes to cover about seven digs and the artefacts that they revealed.
Andy Crabb is an archaeologist with Dartmoor National Park and Historic England. He has worked on Dartmoor for over 15 years. Andy’s role is wide ranging and diverse covering all aspects of archaeological management, providing advice, and even organising the occasional excavation! Andy has been a regular contributor to our programme of talks and oversees our summer archaeological walk and picnic.
Sandwell Manor
A Zoom talk by Abi Gray on 16th May
Since 2006 the Devon Rural Archive’s archaeological team has been researching and reporting on the history, significance and development of Devon’s manor houses and their landscapes. In identifying sites to study, the team makes use of a remarkable map of the county, published in 1765 by Benjamin Donn and from whom the project takes its name. For the modern historian the map is essential to understanding the social and economic geography of the county during the mid-eighteenth century, owing to its depiction of more than 650 “gentry seats”. Sandwell Manor, in the parish of Harberton, is one of the high-status properties recorded on Donn’s map. The present structure is of late Georgian construction, with some mid to late Victorian alterations, but it is on the site of a much earlier dwelling. In this illustrated talk Abi will discuss Project Donn and the changes at Sandwell Manor and its environs from prehistory to the present day.
Abi Gray is an archaeologist and historian and since 2011 has been Curator of the Devon Rural Archive.
Guided walk on the Dartington Estate with Matt White
Guided walk on 20th May
Matt White has been helping out around Dartington Hall since 2014, and started guiding last year when the private garden became RHS-affiliated. The tour encompasses: three sisters; Spanish treasure; a toffee apple ‘donkey’ tree; the Lucombe Oak; The Great Gatsby; refugees, evacuees and escapees, and Swampy.
Uncle Tom Cobley and Widecombe Fair and Harberton
A talk by Todd Gray in Harberton Parish Hall on 16th June
Widdicombe Fair became Devon’s most famous song and went on to be sung across the British Empire. Its history began long before Sabine Baring Gould published it in the late nineteenth century with foreign translations and adaptions by the most unlikely of people from Round the Horne, Ernest Shackleton and even a Harberton version.
The Time Traveller’s Guide to Regency Britain
A talk by Dr Ian Mortimer in St Andrews Church, Harberton on 11th July
Dr Ian Mortimer is a British Historian and is best known as the author of The Time Traveller’s Guides: to Medieval England (2008); to Elizabethan England (2012); to Restoration Britain (2017); and to Regency Britain (2020). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and has published research in academic journals touching on every century from the twelfth to the twentieth.
Dr Mortimer has been described by The Times newspaper as ‘the most remarkable medieval historian of our time’.
The Boatmen of Babbacombe Bay
A Zoom talk by Phil Badcott on 10th October
Listen to the story of the fishermen and pleasure boat skippers of Babbacombe Bay in Torquay from the 1850s to the 1950s using previously unseen photos from my family’s photo archive and the unheard stories of my nine ancestors who were Babbacombe Boatmen.
Philip Badcott is a Devonian and was born in Torquay. He grew up in the 1950s and 1960s and has lived in the town for most of his life. Being retired, he now studies the history of Devon and its people and has presented dozens of talks to clubs and societies. He published two books in 2021: ‘History Tours of Torquay’ and ‘The Boatmen of Babbacombe Bay’. He is now researching and writing his third book: ‘The March of William of Orange through Devon’.
‘The Boatmen of Babbacombe Bay’ book: This fully illustrated and untold story of the boatmen of Babbacombe Bay in Torquay follows the lives of those in one family who were fishermen and pleasure boat skippers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Their story is an interesting and important part of Babbacombe’s history and is told mainly through the family photo archives, family memories and the newspapers of the time. Descriptions and images of the beaches in Babbacombe Bay are included. Available from Amazon.
‘History Tours of Torquay’ book: Explore the history of Torquay by following six carefully planned tours of the town that contemplate its growth, buildings and natural beauty whilst recalling the experiences of those who lived and stayed in the place that became the English Riviera. Available from Amazon.
Totnes Workhouse
A Zoom talk by Maureen Godfrey on 21th November
In this talk, Maureen will describe how the Amendment to the Poor Law in 1834 changed the system of provision for the poor resulting in the building of workhouses throughout the country. The Totnes Workhouse demonstrates how the new law aimed to work and Maureen aims to demonstrate how Totnes, both workhouse and town, differed in its beneficial attitude to paupers, from other workhouses depicted in such volumes as ‘Oliver Twist’ which have given workhouses their poor reputation.
Since moving to Devon in 1995, Maureen has continued her studies, completing a Masters Degree in English Literature and also in History, with the subject of her dissertation being the Totnes Workhouse.