News

Pictures of Then and Now. During the early 19th century the Savery family, who had owned Shilstone since 1614, started to make some big changes to the site. They demolished the existing medieval house, built a new courtyard mansion in its place, and improved the farm...

What do Shilstone House and Blenheim Palace have in common? They have both been highly commended by the Historic Houses Restoration Award for 2020. After a delay of more than six months while judges were unable to assess entries because of Covid-19 restrictions, the...

Rural life 100 years ago. Some of our volunteers are currently researching rural life in Devon during the 1920s, and are looking particularly at the changes that took place on local farms in the decade after the first world war. To this end we will be using items from...

Sandwell Manor, Harberton. Benjamin Donn’s 1765 survey of Devon, produced at a scale of an inch to a mile, was the first large-scale map of any British county. Alongside towns, villages and farms, Donn marked the location of 656 “gentry seats” and thus provides us...

Pictures of North Devon donated to the Archive. Today we received a charming set of North Devon images from our friends at Towneley Hall Museum in Burnley. All 60 images were taken in the early 1880s, many by W. C. Murphy, and capture towns and villages along the...

Visiting the DRA during the Covid-19 Pandemic Our Library will reopen, by appointment only, on Monday 12th April 2021.  To minimise the risks posed to our community by the spread of the virus, we have made some changes to the ways in which we operate so that we can...