DEVON HISTORY SOCIETY
ANNUAL REPORT
2013-4
President: Dr Bruce Coleman
Devon History Society
Annual Report 2013-4
Introduction by the Chairman
It has been a good year and a cruel year for the DHS; a year of internal consolidation but also a year in which we lost Chris Jago, the secretary of our society and the person who made the consolidation possible.
The consolidation has produced results: the new, fuller (more opinionated!) newsletter, the work with affiliated societies – who now number 60, the beginnings of research work, links with the universities, a peer reviewed journal, the updating of our financial and membership systems by our treasurer and membership secretaries. And it was Chris, with his diligent approach and the tables and flow charts that we used to like to tease him about, who did much of the groundwork. We miss him enormously and hope that the memorial lecture in his name in November will keep his memory alive. If we feel able to move on without Chris it's because we are able to move on due to Chris.
The society is now ready to engage in project and research work; we have the means of communication, the people, the capacity and the academic representation on the council and, above all, we now have the vision too.
The Council
Council Members for the year 2013/4 were:
- Philippe Planel, Chairman
- Paul Auchterlonie, Programme Secretary
- Jane Bliss, Editor, The Devon Historian
- Ann Bond, Treasurer
- Dr Claire Donavan, Publicity Officer
- Professor James Daybell
- Professor Henry French
- Dr Todd Gray
- Chris Jago (until April 2014), Secretary
- Judy Moss, Membership and Bookings Secretary
- Dr Julia Neville, Affiliated Societies link and (from April 2014) Acting Secretary
- Gerald Quinn
- Chris Wakefield, Editor, Devon History News
- Jan Wood
The consultation on the transfer of Devon Heritage Centre from the direct management of Devon County Council to the South West Heritage Trust, and the decision to do so, has been kept under review by the DHS Council. We wish the new Trust well in their challenging task. We have been conscious of the likely loss of some of the services currently based in Barnstaple and will monitor how any loss of access affects historians.
Ann Bond has continued to represent the Society on the Plymouth Heritage Consortium as it develops its plans for a new History Centre for the city. As well as housing the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office this will bring together on one central site the local studies library, the South West Image Bank and the South West Film and Television Archive together with the City Museum and Art Gallery. The Society lent its support to an application to the HLF for in excess of £12million pounds, which has been successful. This is an ambitious plan which still has a long way to go, and we will continue to support the plans and represent the views of the local history community as the scheme is developed over the coming years.
A new membership leaflet and fliers have been designed and widely circulated to promote the benefits of membership. More material has been included on the Devon History Society website, www.devonhistorysociety.org.uk, with fuller details of the DHS programme and other events of interest to historians, an improved section on The Devon Historian, and more local history society entries. The Council would like to thank again Ray Girvan, the webmaster, for his hard work on the Society’s behalf.
57 copies of the 40th Anniversary Publication, Aspects of Devon History, have been sold since the Annual General Meeting in October 2013. Members are urged to promote the sale of additional copies at local events – promotional leaflets can be supplied.
Devon History News was published in a new format under the new editor, Chris Wakefield, in February and August 2014. The new format, with a greater number of illustrations and contributions, has led to an increased number of pages, and has been generally well received.
Queries to the society are now predominantly raised by email. They are raised with different members of Council and may deal with almost any topic. Some are answered direct, often after considerable research; some, with a particular local flavour are passed on to local history societies; some are placed on the website in the hope of finding others who can help; and some referred to other organisations such as Devon Family History Society). We are grateful to all those who gave freely of their time in helping us answer the diverse questions raised.
Membership
Membership figures year on year are given in the table below:
| Category | AGM 2013 | AGM 2014 |
| Individual | 225 | 210 |
| Household | 19 | 22 |
| Life | 35 | 36 |
| Affiliated | 57 | 61 |
| Corporate | 23 | 20 |
| Honorary | 6 | 7 |
| Unclassified | [3] | |
| Total | 365 | 356 [359] |
The Individual membership dipped particularly in May this year, when those who were consistently in arrears with their payments and were not responding to Membership Secretary's letters, were removed from the list. There has been a small and steady increase with new members joining us.
Household membership (formerly known as Family membership) has held steady through the year, with a small upturn in the last couple of months.
We lost Malcolm Todd from the Life membership list; he died in July last year, his work celebrated in our February 2014 newsletter.
The number of local history societies affiliated to us has had its ups and downs: the downs mainly due to the society itself folding, whereas the work and effort done by our special Affiliated Societies Link person, Julia Neville, is paying dividends with a 9% rise in the number from its lowest point.
The drop in Corporates is accounted for by the closure of Dartington Campus, and the resignation of Ilfracombe Museum and South West Image Bank.
The Annual Programme
The Society continued to offer its members a mix of seminars, workshops, lectures, visits and conferences in 2013-2014.
The programme for the second half of 2013 began with the AGM and Conference which took place on October 11th, at the University of Exeter’s Streatham Campus on the theme of Mining in Devon where the speakers were Dr. Tom Greeves, Dr. Mick Atkinson and Ms. Sue Dymond. This was followed by the first Local History Skills Seminar hosted by Plymouth Central Library on Thursday, November 7th, at which Louisa Blight, Graham Naylor and Phil Planel introduced members to resources for the study of Devon history, and the year concluded with a seminar on Maps and Archives on Local History by John Torrance and Cathy Parks, held on November 13th in Branscombe Village Hall.
In 2014, the Society’s Spring Meeting was hosted by Topsham History Group on April 12th, where the panel of speakers (John Dunsford, Margaret Wilson and Dr. Michael Patrick) looked at Topsham in the Civil War, the development of Topsham, Maine, and the significance of tillets to the cloth trade. This was followed by a guided walk around the historical heart of Topsham and a visit to Topsham Museum. In May, the Society, building on the success of its first Local History Skills Seminar in Plymouth in 2013, held its second such seminar in Barnstaple, when local archivists and librarians lectured on the wealth of material available in the North Devon Record Office, Library and Athenaeum. May also saw the Society offering its members a seminar on garden history led by Dr. Clare Greener, the first in a series of seminars designed to explore specialist areas of historical research of value to local historians.
In June, the Society visited the Grade Two listed church of St. Peter and St. Paul at Teigngrace and heard about its connection to the Templer family from Judith Jolliffe; the same month also saw the third and final DHS Conference on Religion in Devon, admirably organised by Jane Bliss and Dr Todd Gray, when four excellent speakers (Professor Stephen Banfield, Dr Bruce Coleman, Dr Janet Few and Dr Pamela Richardson) talked about Nonconformism in Devon at the Mint Methodist Centre in Exeter. The first half of the year concluded with a lecture in Chagford by Dr Patricia Milton on The Literary Invention of Dartmoor, which explored how Dartmoor has been viewed by writers from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.
The Devon Historian
The Devon Historian continues to develop as a more authoritative voice in Devon history, and the adoption of anonymous peer reviewing, which commenced with the 2013 edition, is proving helpful in this regard. Positive feedback from contributors suggests that the incisive comments and recommendations have been well received, and are certainly of great benefit to the editorial process. The Society is most grateful to the referees, who give up their time to review articles. An article recently published in The Devon Historian, was selected as a winner in the British Association of History Publications Awards for 2014 (John Torrance, Branscombe 1280-1340: An East Devon Manor before the Black Death).
A contents list for articles published in the journal is available on the Society’s website, and from 2013 all contributors have been required to provide a brief abstract which can be accessed online. A detailed house style guide and submission instructions are also available. The Devon Historian has recently been added to the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH), and details of article titles from the journal will appear online on the database from October 2014. The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) is the most extensive guide available to published writing on British and Irish history, and is used extensively by researchers to locate books, articles in journals and articles within collective volumes. The committee is currently reviewing methods by which The Devon Historian, or individual articles within the journal, can be made available for purchase. The forthcoming edition of The Devon Historian (volume 83) will be published in October 2014, and the editor welcomes the submission of articles of up to 4,000 words on any aspect of Devon’s history to be considered for publication in future editions.
Strategy
The Council has continued to develop detailed action plans in the areas for development identified in the 2013 strategic review: Research, Publications, Programme, Communications and Publicity. Sections elsewhere in this report indicate the progress being made.
Research
As part of the Strategic Review Council identified the opportunity for the Society to become more active in the area of county-wide research. Phil Planel inaugurated this new role with the ‘Orchards Project’, which engaged members of the Society, and others, in analysing the tithe apportionments for all Devon parishes to build up a picture of the spread of orchards, and past orchards, in the 1840s. This data can now be used in conjunction with the Devon County Council earlier survey of orchards in the 1880s to produce a picture of change. Over 60 people participated in the study.
The Council has agreed that Devon History Society will continue its activities in countywide history in 2015 in two areas. First, in conjunction with Devon Gardens Trust,it will offer opportunities for those interested in the history of Devon’s gardens to meet, exchange information, and undertake some joint project work on priority areas of garden history interest. Secondly it will support an audit of the early (pre-1870) schools in Devon. The subject has not been explored on a countywide basis since the publication of ‘Devon Village Schools in the nineteenth century’ in 1968 by Dr Roger Sellman, one of the founder members of Devon History Society and much can now be added to that earlier work. Devon History Society will also provide support to a broader project on Food and Farming in Devon in the First World War, led by the University of Exeter.
© Devon History Society, 2014
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