An online journal for the North Devon Athenaeum
A few years ago, we celebrated the life of local author, Charles Kingsley by tracing the literary links between him and P.G. Wodehouse. This year, to celebrate the birth of Devon born poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, we take a look at some more interesting local literary links. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Ottery St. …
As the Queen celebrates her Platinum Jubilee, our Assistant Librarian looks back at her visit to Barnstaple in 1956. People always remember when they met the Queen or Prince Philip. When I was at Secondary School, we were taken to the Essex Schools Athletic Sports Championship. During the day three of us needed to go …
The 1920’s were known as the “Roaring Twenties” with the “Bright Young Things” of the wealthy classes life had never been better with their hedonistic wild behaviour shocking society. A legacy from the First World War was that women were much more independent. For young women, known as “Flappers,” gone were the tight corseted, floor …
As we entered 2021, we again saw ourselves being placed into lockdown, thanks to a new Covid-19 variant. This meant we were once again working from home. January & February We may have been working form home, but that didn’t stop us from creating plans for both 2021 and 2022. We started work with the …
As part of our joint event with the North Devon Record Office and Barnstaple Local Studies Library, Voices of Exmoor and North Devon, Rob Lamerton from Libraries Unlimited writes about one of the contributors to the Exmoor Oral History Archive which is held by the North Devon Record Office... I can’t claim to have been …
Continue reading "Voices of Exmoor: Remembering Ted Lethaby"
As part of our joint event with the North Devon Record Office and Barnstaple Local Studies Library, Voices of Exmoor and North Devon, Inca from The Plough Youth Theatre writes about working on their new film Listening to Lynmouth (the Rising of 1952)’. The film, which tells the story of the devastating flood that hit …
Continue reading "Voices of Exmoor: Helping to Unlock the Stories of Our Past"
This weekend sees the return of the Bath and West of England Society’s show at Shepton Mallet in Somerset. The Society was originally called the Bath Society and was established in 1777 ‘for the encouragement of Agriculture, Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in the Counties of Somerset, Wilts, Gloucester and Dorset’. By 1779 Devon and Cornwall …
The Veitch Family of Seedsmen, Nurserymen/women and Plant Hunters Part 1 Recently I opened a Spring Plant Catalogue and noticed Echinops rito Veitch’s Blue or Globe Thistle originally from Asia and Africa. I knew the name Veitch in connection with Horticulture but until I started researching them I did not realise the family were so …
Like many organisations we had several plans for 2020 including joints events, talks, blog posts and various other projects both large and small. However, for the second time in our history we were to find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic. As we start looking forward to the new year, we take a …
Assistant Librarian, Sandi, continues her look into past pandemics... My Great Uncle George Apps was a soldier in the 5th Middlesex Battalion in WW1 who survived the conflict only to die of Influenza, the “Spanish Flu”, in England on 25 February 1919. He is commemorated on the Commonwealth War Graves Memorial at the City of …
Tales From the Archives 