South Brent Storytellers and Archive are a not-for-profit volunteer-led community group who rely on funding to maintain our collections and create new opportunities for the public to view them.
SUPPORT OUR CROWDFUNDER: Help us create a searchable, online Archive for South Brent and surrounding villages. We want to put South Brent Archive’s fabulous collections online and make them more accessible.
DONATIONS are very welcome, to enable us to keep our annual software licences up-to-date, for the on-going purchase of archival quality materials in which to store our collections safely, and to go towards our fund to create a searchable database of all our images on a purpose-built website.
BACS payments can be made to:
South Brent Storytellers and Archive, Lloyds Bank
Sort code: 30-98-69
Account No: 44397468
We donate a proportion of all donations to the Old School Community Centre’s Raise the Roof Fund.
Please use your surname and first initial, if not obvious, GIFT, and where you heard about us, as the reference so that we can acknowledge your donation, e.g. FBpage, Old School Community Centre website, etc.
Up and Coming Archive Events
Open Afternoon Dates
Saturdays (2-4pm): January 27th, February 24th, March 23rd, April 27th,
June 15th (Special event to share World War memories)
Events
MATINEE TALKS (2pm – 3:30pm)
Saturday 8th March 2025 – Repeat of: Greg Wall Growing Up in Brent
Saturday 5th April 2025 – Red Earth – How Local Farming was affected by D-Day with Steph Bradley of South Brent Archive & excerpts from the BBC Radio play Red Earth and local voices.
EVENING TALKS (7pm – 9pm)
Saturday 26th October 2024 – Local Stories about World War 1 & 2 with Tony Rea, author of South Devon in the Great War
Saturday 30th November 2024 – Louise Spencer – The Redworth Landgirls – A talk on the WW2 landgirls who worked on local farms
EXHIBITION
1st – 28th June 2024 – Corridor Gallery Exhibition: Brent During the War Years
SOUTH HAMS D-DAY HERITAGE TRAIL
South Brent Storytellers and Archive are participating in the South Hams D-Day Heritage Trail, a collaboration of local history groups, archives and museums all commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Click on the images below to see a map of the area, and an events calendar of what to visit. The Archive are grateful to Guy Pannell of South Hams District Council for supporting this project.
Volunteering with us
We are currently seeking more volunteers, so that we can open very week, so if you love local history and like talking to people, we’d love to hear from you!
We’d also like to hear from people who might like to get involved with the on-going work of helping us to catalogue existing and new collections, as well as someone who could help us to create an online database so that our collections can also be viewed from the comfort of home.
If you are interested, simply come along to one of our open sessions and let us know.
Recent Acquisitions, Thanks, and News
South Brent Archive would like to express our thanks to all those parishioners of South Brent and Rattery, as well as those from further afield and on our facebook group, who have communicated with us over the past year, telling us stories, recounting memories and/or, who have either donated, or lent images to be scanned and held digitally by us. As of the end of December 2023, we have 57 Collections. Particular thanks to Inez and Graham Jordan (who we were privileged to interview in March, before Graham’s sad demise), Sue Lethaby, Robert Rowland, Tony Coaker, Joy, Peter and Angela Smerdon, Alison Samuel, David Yabsley, George Beable, John Rawlinson, Joddy Chapman, Joy Hanson, Mandy Haley, Jamie Webber, Jan and Mike Goss, Lily Style, Jean Sabine and Patsy Tidball, Anthony Kingdom, Jon King, Richard Cleave, Jenny Coaker, Ruth Peard, Richard Grills, Jackie Pearce, the executors of the Gilly Hawes estate, Paul Edgington, Greg Wall, Robert March, Paul Heatley, and Jamie Scott. Highlights are old farming photos, an 18th Century advowson, and a full collection of files of local news items from the 1970s.
The Archive summer exhibition will be on display as usual along the corridor gallery throughout June. The 2024 theme will be a focus on The Great War and World War 2 as they affected local people, places and events. This is to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Operation Tiger and D Day, and forms part of a trail that can be followed at various archives and museums throughout the South Hams from Salcombe to Ivybridge this summer.
This year’s autumn talks will be on Local Farming – Oral Histories, Brent’s Many Mills (with Joddy Chapman) and The Impact of War – a mini-series of local military history talks by local authors.
The April talk by Peter Taylor on St Petroc’s Church raised £145 towards the Archive online catalogue project – thank you to everyone who came, and thank you to Peter for his talk.
The Archive team for 2024 are: Sue and Phil Dean, Jim Thompson, Jo Fowler, John Hawkins, Ben Chadwick, Steph Bradley, and Greg Wall.
We’d like to extend a special thank you to our collaborators in 2023: These include James Wren for this year’s event graphics, Richard Cleave of Moortek for wonderful IT support, Greg Wall and Peter Taylor for super talks, Abi Grey (who has now stepped down as archivist at the Devon Rural Archive to take up a position at Salcombe Museum), Anne Smyth, (retired Mother Superior of Syon Abbey) for making images available to us for our Farming exhibition and Annie Price of Exeter University Archive for permission to show copies of images from their special collections. We’d particularly like to appreciate independent researcher and local author Lily Style for tireless contributions that have made such a difference to the Archive’s work, from publicity, stupendous graphics, delightful articles and blogs, and a searchable tithe map tool, to in-depth research on the historic buildings between Totnes and Plymouth Road which culminate in Bowling House. We very much hope that this collaboration will continue in 2024.
To all the inhabitants of the dwellings which are believed to have once been part of a Barracks between Totnes Road & Plymouth Road, many thanks for the visits you allowed members of the Archive to make during 2023. We will be in touch with more information in due course.
You might like to follow our very popular Facebook page. We currently have over 1200 members with almost daily posts. https://www.facebook.com/groups/sbstorytellersandarchive
If you do not follow social media but want to keep up with our activities please email info@southbrentarchive.org.uk SUBSCRIBE ME to be added to our events mailing list.
Please note that we will only be accepting donations of new physical collections on Open Afternoons between 4-5pm. Contact us in advance to arrange this. info@southbrentarchive.org.uk
Finally, a huge thank you to all of those who have already donated to our Crowd Funder or attended one of our Fundraising events. We are now 1/3 of the way towards our target to create an online searchable catalogue and website. If you would like to donate too please follow the link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/south-brent-archive-create-an-online-catalogue?utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer
Donations
Whilst we are open to receiving new items for the Archive, in fact, we love receiving new items and collections, and spend many happy hours perusing them, we would ask that they have a connection to South Brent parish and its outlying villages and farms, including our side of Dartmoor, as we are very much a local archive and do not have the space to house items relating to further away places.
If you have items of wider Devon interest, the place to take your memorabilia is:
Devon Rural Archive http://www.devonruralarchive.com/
The Devon Heritage Centre, https://swheritage.org.uk/devon-archives/visit/devon-heritage-centre/ or, if they are photographs, to Totnes Image Bank.
Items of regional or national interest can be offered to the new archive and museum in Plymouth, The Box, https://www.theboxplymouth.com/contact-us
Please note that there is also an Archive in Modbury: contact: monicayunnie@btinternet.com
South Brent Archive Blog
In this month’s blog, we explore Brentmoor – its house, the Avon dam and the people associated with it. This could not have been written without the help of several local people; Greg Wall, Janet Bomback, Roy Hughes, Derek Lewis and Margaret Southcott, and John Cranch.
Updated Family History Guide, including all the local sources of local history info (October 2024)
BrentMoor House Information Sheet updated 22 April 2024
Revised Story of William Crossing, famous local Victorian (March 2024)
More South Brent Ghost Stories (June 2023)
Place Names: A snapshot of 1841 South Brent (May 2023)
William Crossing Article (April 2023)
South-Brent’s Fort (March 2023)
South Dartmoor’s Haunted Bridge (February 2023)
Arthur Manning: The Blind Pianist (January 2023)
Nelson’s Descendants in Brent – Lily Style (November 2022)
Gill and Gay: Pioneering Postcard-makers of Brent (June 2022)
When Brent had Three Halls. (April 2022)
Sources For Local and Family History Research Projects. (April 2022)
The History of the South Brent Nursing Association. (February 2022)
The story behind South Brent’s forgotten “new” bridge – Lily Style. (October 2021)
Useful Sources of Information For Local History. Part 2. (Aug 2021)
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