Teign Valley History Centre | DONATE | |
Preserving our common cultural and historical heritage | ||
About The Teign Valley History Centre. A Teign Valley History Group was founded in 2010. It acquired a number of archives of important documents and some artefacts. It decided to build a place for permanent exhibition and a secure storage area. In 2017 the Teign Valley Museum and Archive Trust was established to house and care for the archive. It is registered with the Charity Commission.We use the name Teign Valley History Centre for our current project as it better describes our objectives. Although it is still our hope to find a suitable site for and to build a History Centre, in the last two years we have come to believe that creating an online accessible archive of local documents and records is an exciting 21st century way of making our history known to the widest possible audience and we have focused on achieving this project. As a result, this website was launched, giving access to the archive in the summer of 2021. |
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Why we must preserve our heritage We are ever reminded of the loss of our heritage. The stations of the railway which once travelled our valley are now converted to private dwellings, the cuttings filled in, the track largely removed and the railbed mostly disappeared. The small mines which created fortune for a few and ruination for others are no more and the large quarries are silent, although there is still some quarrying of Dartmoor granite and blue elvan. Working farms have often become substantial homes for wealthy residents who have no connection to the land. Our young and even the middle-aged can have no experience of life as it used to be and we are eager to inform others of the history of where we live. History and culture explain why our housing and environment are what they are and helps us to understand our traditions and how they have come about. We are inextricably attached to what has gone before. Knowledge of the past helps create a sense of community and instils civic pride. We are pleased to have strong support from all the schools in the area to help preserve this knowledge. If we don’t, it will be lost forever. The Teign Valley villages have a strong tradition of historical research with several published local historians who have generously donated source material to the archive. A number of bronze age and mediaeval artefacts have been discovered by residents who, in the absence of anywhere local to display and preserve them, have donated items to museums and similar institutions further afield with the result that these are seldom if ever on display and therefore lost to the local community. The Trust has close connections with several other groups and associations as noted on our links page. |
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Current Projects We already possess a substantial number of historical records and artefacts which we are currently digitising so that they can be accessed from this website and easily and freely available to everyone interested in local history. We have assurances of further collections being made available when we are ready for them. We have engaged the services of an archivist to carry out the actual cataloguing and digitising and all other work by the Trust is voluntary. Our physical collection of historic items is currently stored in several sites. As these are mainly private homes, they are not widely available which limits the opportunities for research. Over time we intend to raise funds to build a museum, a History Centre, to house this collection, mount exhibitions and to provide wider educational activities. The Chairman of the Trust, Graham Thompson, has written two very successful books on our local history called 'Teign Valley Tales' and 'A Devon Village — Life in Victorian Christow'. |
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Our Trustees Graham Thompson, Chair
Jan Deane
Tony Cook
Tony Griffin
Kerry Hawkins
Nick Kirkland
Others involved with the Digital Archive Tristan Deane
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Our Formal Charitable Goals 1) To establish and maintain a museum for the benefit of the public so as to enable them to view historical documents and objects relating to the Teign Valley; 2) To encourage historical research and presentation; 3) To advance education by organizing exhibitions and other educational events and displays to examine aspects of local history; 4) To establish, collect and maintain an archive of documents and artefacts concerning the history of the Teign Valley in order to provide the general public with opportunities for research and to encourage education into local history; 5) To promote interest and active research into local history generally and particularly encouraging participation in such activity by the schools in the Teign Valley. |