B. Sc., M. Sc., Ph. D.
Local Historian of Bovey Tracey.
Honorary Associate Research Fellow University of Exeter
I hope you enjoy reading my work. On this site you will find presentations on topics, my published papers, and a list of work in progress. If you have a question do contact me.
RECENTLY ADDED-
Trace Your Family Tree- drop in sessions 10.00 – 11.00 first Tuesday of every month from 3rd September 2024 to 1 April 2025 at Bovey Tracey Library. Run by a team from Bovey Tracey Heritage Trust. Would you like to know how to get started? Have you come to a block? We may be able to help. We can search ancestors from the whole of the country, not just Bovey Tracey. If you cannot make these times drop me an e mail with your query.
The Old Manse Mary Street – thanks to Woolcombe Beer Watts Solicitors for donating the deeds of this property. We now know it was built as early as 1725. Julia Puddicombe of Church Stile allowed it to be enlarged to include a nonconformist chapel at the time of considerable religious change in the Victorian era.
Devon House of Mercy- under Places. I am giving a talk on this at the Bovey Tracey Heritage Trust AGM on 26 November 2024. It is a very intersting story building on what has already been published in The Bovey Book, as people have contacted me about their families’ expreiences of being ‘inmates’. Thanks to information from a descendant Rose Lilwall’s story has been added. Like some other ‘inmates’ Rose’s child was cared for by her extended family, and she went on to marry and have another child. This supports the picture of the positive help which the Devon House of Mercy gave.
Civil War- under Topics. Bovey Tracey in the English civil war is described from sources written at the time and later descriptions. Some of the local memories are based on fact but others are just legends. I will be giving a talk on this at the Dartmoor National Park Authority local history day in June 2025.
Thomas Henry Lyon mine owner’s son and internationally famous architect who built houses at Haytor and churches in Cambridge- I gave a talk on this to Ilsington History Group on 16 March 2024. He was the architect of the Italian Garden at Great Ambrook, recently shown on BBC Gardeners’ World.
History Walk– I will be leading a walk through the town for the South Devon Branch of the Devonshire Association on 18 September 2025. We will learn about medieval Bovey Tracey, the Civil War, and John Divett who developed the Bovey Tracey Pottery works.
NATURAL HISTORY
A list of the wild flowers of some local footpaths season by season. I contributed records to the New Year Plant Hunt for the Botanical Society of the British Isles. You can see my list of 34 plants in flower in Bovey Tracey on www. nyph.bsbi.org
Illustrations: Cross at Challabrook Farm to Commemorate the Civil War; Seals on a Local Deed; Signature of John Southcott when Lord of the Manor; The Trough by the Parish Church.
Frances Billinge, updated 22 August 2024