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‘Potted’ Village Histories
When I first started the South-Zeal web site, I looked around for subject matter and scanned an awful lot of local ‘tourist’ brochures. Eventually, from these, I put together a page, outlining the history of South Zeal from the time of the Norman Conquest (as it is known). Now that the site has been re-organised, so that the emphasis is on the whole Cosdon Beacon area, I realised that I had to do something on the other three villages.
I was very fortunate with Belstone, having the excellent ‘Book of Belstone’ by Marion and Chris Walpole to crib from. They had done all the hard work and all I had to do was to sift through the book and précis this down to one page.
Again with Sticklepath, I was lucky enough to have one of the very first booklet purchases that I made, when I moved here, eight years ago - ‘The Story of Sticklepath’, a facsimile version of the 1955 booklet produced by the Sticklepath Women’s Institute, reprinted with minor revisions 1993. I know it was intended to produce a brand new version of this but I have never needed to buy another copy, as I love the old adverts in this one, when people had 3 figure telephone numbers!
My problems started when I wanted to produce a one page history on South Tawton village. My starting point was a publication ‘South Tawton Parish Council - The First 50 Years’, produced in 1995 by Patrick Shaw for the South Tawton & District History Group. While this does, in fact, provide very useful information with regard to the Parish, there is nothing, in detail about the village outside of its remit of 1885 - 1944.
I also had some notes that I had made from some, half remembered, web site regarding the history of the Oxenham family. Again, these notes were useful from the point of view of the Parish. I found myself pouring through a copy of the Domesday Book that I had spoiled myself with a couple of Xmas’s ago, Also, this lead to finally getting round to a detailed read of ‘A Historical Atlas of the South West of England’ by Exeter University, that equally I had bought for myself and found to be too big and heavy (not to say academic) to be bedtime reading.
The result of all this reading is that I have produced a one page overall historical outline of our area of Dartmoor, up to the Normans, as a background to each village history and a one page history of South Tawton Parish not Village. Whilst I enjoy history, I would be the first to agree that I am not a historian, not even an amateur one. I am not trying to compete with any local History Group, in fact, I would be very happy for them to point out errors or to volunteer to produce better.
I do think an understanding of how we got here is both interesting and helpful to most people and would like to make this available in simple form, to help visitors to this site understand us a bit better. I will continue to try to get a village history for South Tawton. If there is anyone out there who can help - help!
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