Spring 2013 - Devon County Council

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Devon Heritage Services Great Moor House Bittern Road Sowton Exeter EX2 7NL Email devrec@devon.gov.uk Web www.devon.gov.uk /record_office Tel 01392 384253 Fax 01392 384256 Editor Brian Carpenter Community and Education Development Officer Design Corporate Communications /Sally Skilton Please see our website for times of opening Front Cover Official Opening of the Devon Heritage Centre, 22nd October 2012. Editorial Devon Heritage Centre Opens! The Devon Heritage Centre at Great Moor House, Sowton, Exeter is bringing together under one roof the rich and varied collections of local studies and archive resources cared for by Devon County Council. The completion of the first stage in this process was celebrated at our Official Opening by the Chairman of the County Council, Councillor Jerry Brook, on 22 October 2012. Before cutting the ribbon, Councillor Brook told the invited audience that having such a wide range of records available in one place makes the Heritage Centre “one of the most important facilities in the county today”. Dr Phil Norrey, Chief Executive of Devon County Council, spoke of the significance of bringing historical resources together and how they can also bring people together, adding that “this is a service we can truly be proud of. In these times of financial constraints, it is important to hold on to such a facility; some things, once you have lost them, you can never get them back”. I also took the opportunity to say a few words at the conclusion of the formal Opening ceremony, and this is an edited version of my speech: “I would like to remind you all that today’s event marks the completion of the first phase only of our Heritage Centre project. The end result will be the complete integration of both county archive and local studies collections but at present we only have space to take the reading room stock from the former Westcountry Studies Library, together with the library of the Devon & Cornwall Record Society (to which we are offering, with the kind agreement of the Society, free public access for the first time). Additional storage areas elsewhere in this building will be available to us next year and, in the meantime, the local studies collections remaining at Exeter Central Library will continue to be publicly accessible. We will also be taking in the historic registers of births, marriages and deaths from the county registration service next year. These collections will be joining that of the National Meteorological Office Archive, with whom we have been sharing accommodation since 2005, to create a really comprehensive and publicly accessible resource under one roof. Looking further ahead, for us this is only the start, the springboard for what we hope will be a very different way of connecting with people, both our regular users and those who may not even be terribly aware of what we do. If I had to choose one word to sum up what I mean by that, it would be the word: ‘community’. Indeed, it is very fitting that we now come under the County Council’s ‘Services for Communities’ umbrella. The past couple of years, during which dire economic conditions have forced all of us to re-consider what we do and how we can best achieve it, have very clearly demonstrated to us that we are connected in a host of different ways to a huge community of individuals and organisations across the world with an interest in the heritage of Devon. There is an enormous amount of really valuable collecting, recording and researching work going on across this community but there is a very obvious need for an overriding co-ordinating body to provide professional assistance, avoid duplication of effort and to maximise outcomes. I see this Centre as the natural provider of that supporting role through the mechanism of a new body we are calling the Devon History Forum. We now have excellent facilities here for hosting meetings, presentations and training events and we will be showcasing these at our next annual Open Day on Saturday 16 March 2013. We can assist local history groups with all aspects of their activities, from collecting to preservation, access and presentation, and we can involve communities in our own projects, both through volunteering opportunities and by including work with specific groups in our external funding bids, or by advising and supporting groups who are submitting bids of their own. I want us to find ways to ensure that we are both approachable and available to assist in whatever ways we can, and the History Forum is a central element of that intent. I have always been an advocate of the value of community heritage work and we are very keen to support the huge range of such activity in practical ways. A couple of examples of current initiatives we are working on: since 2006 I have been managing a community 2 Devon Heritage Services Newsletter
Editorial archives project in north Devon called Explore North Devon – this began life as an Archives 4 All project working with 5 communities to develop and digitise their collections and present them on the Internet. Now the project has over 40 participating communities and we are currently in the process of migrating the huge amount of data collected by them to a more sustainable community archives website offering enhanced geographical search facilities, social media links and so on. We will be assisting other groups across Devon to join this resulting community to create an ever growing ‘Devon Heritage’ online resource. Alongside this, we are submitting a substantial Heritage Lottery Fund application called ‘Explore Devon’s Heritage’ to fund work with up to 30 Devon communities over two years on local research projects they want to explore, data from which will be added to the website I have just mentioned. Finally, I would like to say that the commitment shown by our County Council in bringing together its historic collections to create this Heritage Centre is not just a means to streamline services and achieve economies of scale; there is a genuine appreciation that what the Council possesses in its unique heritage collections, built up over many centuries and stretching back a millennia, is a treasure house of resources that holds almost limitless possibilities for connecting with many different agendas, economic, social and educational as well as historical. There is literally something for everyone in the collections we hold in both our Exeter and Barnstaple centres; witness the huge appeal that family history currently has, for example. Exploring our heritage makes us feel more connected to a family, a place, a community, or to society in general, and as such I have always been convinced that it has a wider social role. You may remember the widespread rioting that took place in our cities in 2011; I recall watching various TV commentators trying to explain what was going on at the time and the morning after a particularly bad night they were talking about it to Devon author, Michael Morpurgo, who said a very insightful thing that, for me, cut right through to the heart of the matter: he felt that the main contributing factor was that people no longer had any sense whatsoever of belonging to their communities. I am convinced that heritage services have an enormous potential to provide people with precisely that sense of belonging, and, in such a context, a huge responsibility to do just that. With no real end in sight to the current economic decline, and things perhaps set to get a great deal worse, increased social unrest may well be an inevitable consequence and we therefore have a crucial role to play in contributing whatever we can to combat instability in our communities. Continued investment in our ‘cultural capital’ when seen in this light begins to look like something of a future proofing social imperative from my perspective and something that should be central to government and local authority strategies. Tim Wormleighton Heritage Services Manager A Christmas Carol When sorting through a recent deposit of records from the parish of Chulmleigh, Heritage Centre staff came across a copy of a printed hymn sheet which had seen much better days. The hymn was entitled a ‘Hymn for Christmas Day in score Figured for the Organ & Piano Forte composed and most respectfully Dedicated to the Choir of Chulmleigh by William Howell’. William Howell apparently came from Chulmleigh, and presumably lived there, but the score was printed in London by Astor and Company, ‘Musical Instrument Manufacturers’ at 79 Cornhill. We suspect that the hymn was specially composed for the parish choir, and, given the poor condition of the sheet, it must have been well used in the early years following its composition, although it is probably many years since the music was performed or the hymn was sung. Unfortunately the score was discovered too late to be restored in time for Christmas 2012, but once our conservation staff have worked their magic it should be available to be sung again in Chulmleigh for many Christmases to come. Spring 2013 3
Page 1: Official Opening of the Devon Herit
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Page 7 and 8: The Right to Remain Silent? The Rig

Spring 2013 - Devon County Council

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