2019 was another interesting year, exploring our collections and discovering new things.
January
Our Assistant Librarian, Sandi, wrote about the research she had been doing on the Plaster Ceilings of Barnstaple in the first post of the year.
March
Was a big month for us as we worked together with British Military History to put on an event on RAF Chivenor. The event was very well attended with standing room only for the talks given by Rob Palmer. We were also joined by family members of an air crew of a plane which crashed at Chivenor during World War Two, including Stanley Johnson, whose father Wilfred had been the pilot.
We also published a post commemorating the death of a local World War One soldier, Thomas Cork who survived the war, only to die before he reached home from the Spanish Flu.
April
We took part in #Archive30 again this year, with thirty tweets and Instagram posts in thirty days. Phew!
Sandi wrote a post to celebrate the anniversary of the publication of Lorna Doone
June
Another busy month for the blog as we commemorated the anniversary of D-Day and also celebrated the 200th Anniversary of Charles Kingsley’s birth in a slightly different post highlighting some of the many weird and wonderful connections which can be found within North Devon.
Meanwhile…on Social Media we celebrated International Archives Day #IAD19
August
Saw us commemorate the Battle of Peterloo and delve into an unusual Devonian connection in a blog post by one of our volunteers.
September
We celebrated People Power in North Devon with a joint event with the North Devon Record Office and Local Studies Library.
October
Saw the opening on the new extension at the Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon, it was wonderful to be able to explore the new space and see what they’ve done to our old home on the The Square.
November
We went along to the opening of the Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon’s major new exhibition of FR Lee’s paintings. The exhibition show cases several of his artworks which have come from across the country on loan and have been hung alongside his paintings we hold in our collections.
This year we took the decision to move our annual Founder’s Day celebrations forward a month. We took the opportunity to tell people about our exciting new project we are working on with the South West Heritage Trust and Museum of Barnstaple called Creative North Devon, keep an eye out over the next year on the blog and scocial media to see what we get up to!
We also took part in Explore Your Archive Week and unearthed some of archival gems, along with a mystery…
Looking Forward to 2020
The new year is also the begining of a new decade and we are looking forward to what it has to offer. We are already planning some new events and blog posts for the coming year as well as working on the Creative North Devon project. We hope you will be able to join us, but for now we wish you all a Happy New Year!
…Barum Athena
Tales From the Archives 