The ODLHS survived the damage inflicted by the Covid lockdown but is still struggling to find committee members, especially a treasurer.

 However, it recently held an extremely well attended meeting to hear four speakers, each on their particular theme from local history research. 

The speakers each spoke about their own village and together showed that interest in local history is flourishing in our area. Dr Alan Parkinson spoke about three families who made contributions to the life of North Tawton.The Hall family were leaders in that community for over 200 years. Rev Richard Hall built the Charity School from his own funds. The Rev George Hall built a new rectory and again from his own funds, paid for renovations to the church, The Rev Robert Hall was the rector there from 1850 to 1916, an extraordinary long incumbency. The Budd family were doctors in North Tawton for many years; Wigham Budd researched typhoid, found that clean water was the best preventative and this had a huge beneficial effect across the Westcountry. Another entrepreneurial family was the Gregories; from horse and cart deliveries to today’s huge haulage company with over 1,000 employees. Mike Luxton, a retired local police inspector, spoke of his researches in Exbourne, where he had found on an old Ordnance Survey map a record of a firing range. From this starting point, he had traced that a William Ward of that village family had won the Sovereign’s Prize at Bisley, twice, and that Bisley itself sprang from the firing range originally at Exbourne. It had been established for training purposes in the days of the local defence volunteers in the mid 19th century. Mike Wreford, so well-known as an archivist in Okehampton, spoke about the origins of the airfield at Folly Gate. It was established there in 1925 as the RAF Station 1 near Hatherleigh was too far away for its use by the army based in the Dartmoor camp. The Folly Gate site was known as RAF Station 2. (The RAF had only been created from the Royal Flying Corps, in 1918). Sir Alan Cobham brought his amazing Flying Circus to Okehampton in 1932 and, by holding a display on a Sunday, aroused the wrath of all the local clergy and civil authorities to such a degree that it was discussed in the House of Commons. Although the airfield was closed in 1940 to be moved elsewhere, he showed a rare photo of Okehampton, taken from the air by a German reconnaissance pilot. Chris Walpole has lived in Belstone since 1963 but only began to explore its history much more recently. He spoke about the King George V coronation stone and showed a photo of how it originally looked, with a fine lantern on top, a metal and glass box. It proved far too tempting as a target for the local lads and, once lost, has never been replaced. It has been recently updated with a record of King Charles III coronation chiselled into the stone. He also briefly spoke of Cecil Hepworth who lived in the village. 

He was a keen early film photographer and took what was probably the world’s first ‘tracking’ shot, setting his camera (and presumably himself) on the front of a train passing through Okehampton station in 1898.  All four speakers showed how fascinating local history can be and all were very much appreciated and warmly applauded.