Literary Links, Discover Sir George Newnes…On Our Shelves!

To celebrate the life of Charles Kingsley a few years ago we traced the local links between him and PG Wodehouse via Rudyard Kipling and H H Munro (aka Saki). However, these are not the only Literary Links in North Devon. On this day in 1851 George Newnes was born in Matlock, Derbyshire, the youngest …

A Family Penance for a Murder Most Foul

Discover the Thomas Becket Connection...On Our Shelves! One of the oldest seals of Barnstaple commemorates one of the most infamous murders in English History…the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket on this day in 1170. The seal belongs to Barnstaple’s Bridge Trust and depicts the Chapel built at the town end of the now grade I …

Birth of the NHS

My mother remembered that in 1927, after her younger brother was born, he had to wear a shoulder and arm splint because his arm had been broken during his delivery. My Grandmother had been assisted during the birth, like most lower-class women, by an untrained local woman. The cost of a doctor per visit of …

The Ballad of Barnstaple’s Gaols

We often come across intriguing items which have a story to tell when we are looking for something else in our collections, this generally happens when we are doing something quickly for someone! This was the case when I kept coming across images of a rather imposing building from various angles and in various states …