Yesterday we celebrated 5 years of Tales From the Archives by counting down our Five most read posts. Today we thought we would bring you 5 posts you may have missed over the years…
5. Discover the Effects of Beeching’s Axe…On Our Shelves!
Part of our Discover…On Our Shelves series, this post was written by assistant librarian, Sandi who also shared some of her memories of travelling down to North Devon on holiday by train before the cuts. Sandi went on to write a short series of posts covering the role of women during the First World War and gaining the vote.
4. End of An Era
While we celebrate our 130th Anniversary, we are also celebrating the 30th Anniversary of our partnership with the North Devon Record Office and Library Service which saw us come together in our current location. One person was there from the first and stayed with us until 2016.
3. On Our Book Shelves

It’s not just staff and work experience placements who write blog posts for us, we also get our directors involved from time to time. Written by Graham Keates, who retired earlier this year, this was the first post to talk about some of the more surprising items on our shelves. Graham did a lot of work on the library collection during his time as a director. Sadly he died earlier this month and he will be greatly missed.
2. Police and Troublesome Aliens

Whilst scouring the local newspapers covering the first world war, this headline stood out. The article it came with was too long to be posted onto our social media and so it made its way to the blog. There are several posts which contain stories taken directly from the North Devon Journal and North Devon Herald.
1. The Tale of Ulalia Page
Sometimes we come across fascinating stories whilst dealing with enquiries from members of the public. The story fo Ulalia Page is one of them, she was hung for murdering her husband just outside our current home on Castle Green.
…Barum Athena