Nobody knew what they were:
the rise and fall of Exeter’s public heritage libraries
Exeter working papers in book history; 38
2025
Contents
1. The Iron Age 1850-1902
2. The Golden Age 1902-1942
3. The Bronze Age 1942-1974
4. The Silver Age 1974-2012
5. The Dark Age 2012-2024
6. The New Age? 2025-
Appendices
A. Westcountry Studies Library's stock cards
B. The Devon bibliography
Preface
Why am I writing this now? Should I have done it sooner? Should I have done it at all? Is it all too late and in the grand scheme of things, with the existential crises that weigh upon us daily, does it really matter, a trivial issue only of interest to a small circle of academics?
I strongly feel that the loss of public access to the treasure house community memory held in Devon’s public heritage libraries is something that could affect us all now and also generations in the future. The fact that I dedicated thirty years of my life to recover these memories and add to them week by week, and that recent memories seem beyond recall in this age of austerity, indifference and ignorance impels me to tell something of the story of the growth of the collections over the centuries and the importance of continuity in keeping memory alive.
The key messages are in the final two sections and appendices, and it should be stressed that I do not point the finger of blame at any of the present staff. The culpability rests with government policies, Devon Library Authority and the ignorance of some of the management team around 2012. The few remaining staff today are faced with an impossible task and I know that I shall not live to see any significant change; it took decades for Exeter City Library to recover fully after 1942, but at least I can tell what I know and can remember, twenty years after my retirement. I speak as a Friend of Devon’s Libraries as I move away from work on matters of Devon bibliography and turn to recapturing other memories, with the words of Dylan Thomas on the death of his father echoing in my mind:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Ian Maxted, Winter solstice 2024
1. The Iron Age 1850-1902
The seeds of the heritage collections in Exeter’s public libraries were sown in the middle of the 19th century by the inspiration of two London buildings, the Houses of Parliament and the Crystal Palace.
In 1850 the Public Library Act authorised the setting up of rate supported libraries in England and Wales and in the same year Sir Stafford Northcott in an address to the Exeter Literary Society urged that the Society be connected with the establishment of a museum, an art gallery, a school of art and a “really good library”. The city was quick to show an interest, a meeting being called in 1851. The interest however was not sufficient for a successful vote to establish a Free Library, a poll of the ratepayers showing only one in seven being in favour, and the germ of the public library system in Exeter was to grow out of the concern for the improvement of art and technical education engendered by the Great Exhibition of 1851. In December 1861 the idea of a museum was suggested at the annual meeting at the School of Art and a committee of public-spirited gentlemen was formed in January 1862 under the direction once more of Sir Stafford Northcote. The death of Prince Albert in that year provided an added stimulus, as a museum was seen as a fitting tribute to the Prince Consort.
It was only at about the time that the foundation stone was laid that a public library was belatedly seen as forming a part of the Albert Memorial and then the vision was modest. At a Building Committee meeting in June 1868 the suggestion was made that “if the Committee proposed to open the Free Library immediately it would be advisable to supply a cheap table, a few chairs, and to take some London newspapers and other local newspapers”. A Free Library Sub-Committee was formed and resolved that it was desirable to adopt fully the Public Libraries and Museums Act. After some contention, Exeter City Council held a meeting in the Guildhall to adopt the Act on 6 May 1869. The speeches at the meeting, as reported in several Exeter newspapers, have been placed online at:
https://bookhistory.blogspot.com/2007/02/exeter-free-library-meeting-1869.html
The Mayor, H. S. Ellis, informed the gathering that Town Clerks of the twenty-six towns in the kingdom where the Act had already been adopted were consulted and concluded:
Without such a resource the progressive improvement of the people in knowledge would be checked. The committee further remarks that, as the people have power and are gaining more every day, it is, therefore, highly desirable to add knowledge to that power if we wish them to use it for their own benefit and the welfare of the community at large. The Free Libraries and Museums obtained under the Act are in the fullest sense the property of the public; all have, therefore, an equal title to free admission and free use.
The adoption was proposed by Alderman W. Buckingham, Mayor in 1857 and treasurer of the Relief Society in 1859, who said: A penny in the £ is a very small item, but the sum which might be saved by the diffusion of knowledge might be a very large item. […] In my opinion the facilities for the acquisition of knowledge, and the spread of information, open to all, to be acquired by all alike, is an advantage you cannot too highly appreciate. (hear, hear.) Knowledge is an advantage which forms part of your very selves — it remains with you at all times, it is a constant companion, whether in trouble or success, in distress or happiness, — it stands you in good stead whether in solitude or in society — whether you wish to help yourselves or benefit your neighbours it will render you assistance, and at all times is one of the greatest boons that man can enjoy.
The motion was seconded by Henry George Norrington, an artificial manure and agricultural implement merchant with premises in Bonhay Road who lived at 10 Queen’s Terrace in 1878. He pointed out that: “there is no good library in Exeter for common reference. All the existing libraries belong to classes. There are of course libraries connected with the Institution, the Literary Society, the Young Men's Christian Association, and the Working Men's Society and the Public Select Library, but all these belong simply to particular classes of people — they do not belong to the people at large”.
They were warmly supported by Sir John Bowring (1792-1872), an extraordinarily versatile linguist, familiar with some 200 languages who translated poetry from many European and Asian languages. He was a friend of Jeremy Bentham, whose works he edited, and was editor of Bentham’s Westminster Review. He was a member of Parliament (for Kilmarnock 1835-37 and Bolton 1841-49) and went on various missions to Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, serving as consul at Guangzhou. In 1854 he was knighted. As governor of Hong Kong he precipitated a war with China in 1856. He was also instrumental in introducing the florin as a first step towards a decimal currency. He declared: “Knowledge is power and it must be acknowledged that in this country ignorance is also power, and behind ignorance there is a mass of poverty, ignorance and crime. How are the ignorant to be elevated but by the possession of knowledge? Books, after all, are the true representatives of civilization; they are what good men of all days have left behind them. I once heard an expression from Robert Hall which touched me much: I never go into a library without remembering how many of the memorable dead are represented there. It is the gathering up of all ages, the concoction of all knowledge: there out of the past you may study the past and provide for the future. Books are the links which connect us with the past.”
The newspaper proprietor Charles Wescombe, High Sheriff, felt that it was premature, being “forced on the Town Council by the offer of copies of patents by the Government. In order to receive them an outlay of some £600 is required, and that outlay would be saved to the Council if they had got the money from this source.” Nevertheless he would support it but, he proved to be a short-lived ally. Proprietor of the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette and several other newspapers, he was a wheeler-dealer, and died of a heart attack a few days after the meeting. His affairs proved to be highly irregular and the resulting scandal is dealt with by W. G. Hoskins in Two thousand years in Exeter (1960) and by R. S. Lambert in The Cobbett of the West (1939).
Others did not agree. Captain G. H. Courtenay of the 1st Exeter and South Devon Volunteer Rifle Corps who lived in St David’s Hill announced: “I oppose the motion. [...] There are a number of libraries in the city accessible to every person that feels disposed to visit them”, and a Mr Pyne claimed that it was “a robbing of the respectable industrious classes”. Nevertheless after a show of hands the Town Clerk was able to “declare the motion carried by a large majority of about four to one”, with “applause and a few hisses.”
On 9 December 1869 the transfer of the Albert Memorial buildings to the City Council was approved by the subscribers to the Albert Memorial. The building opened in 21 April 1870 with the Free Library in three rooms on the first floor. Over the next sixty years the Public Library was to remain in these cramped premises. At the start the librarian was a Mr Perkins, who seemed to have shared his duties with that of public analyst. The opening hours were generous, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., but the book stock was meagre, the first printed catalogue of the lending library listing little more than 1,000 volumes. Expenditure was limited to the product of a penny rate until 1919, but the lion’s share of this went to the Museum. The situation was eased in April 1871 when the Public Select Library, a subscription library of around 7,500 volumes, transferred all their books to the library, bringing the size of the Public Library’s stock to some 9,000 volumes.
In 1871 a tour of libraries was made to ascertain the latest ideas in the field of library science. The newly developed indicator board system was adopted for access to the stock which meant that the bulk of the stock was on closed access except for the students of the Colleges of Art and Science.
Despite the lack of funds there was a steady growth; in 1878 512 books were added, but only 12 of these were actually purchased, the rest being donated. There was a high moral tone among those who directed the service; in 1880 W.S.M. d’Urban, curator of the Museum, disapproved of the use of the public library to promote light reading. There were also complaints about the level of expenditure; in 1881 Alderman Cotton said that he would like to see it doubled.
More space was acquired when the Museum and College of Art expanded into a new extension and this made room for a remarkable series of donations and bequests. In 1889 Kent Kingdon bequeathed an endowment fund, the proceeds from which were to be shared between the Library and the Museum for the purchase of books and works of art; the first annual sum enabled 81 books to be purchased. The Radford Collection of scientific books was acquired in 1890. In 1894 a collection of about 500 volumes on shorthand was bequeathed by Edward Pocknell of Exeter, a well-known journalist and shorthand writer. Some shorthand periodicals were transferred from Canterbury Public Library's shorthand collection in March 1986. This is one of the largest such collections in the country and was used by Robin Alston in compiling his Bibliography of the English language.
The library of Edward B. Penny was acquired in 1895 and in 1897 4,000 volumes of manuscripts and printed books were bequeathed by Mrs Emmeline Fisher.
In 1894 a printed catalogue of the reference section was published; it had already overtaken the lending section in size; in 1909 it amounted to some 20,000 volumes, about double the size of the lending library.
The main local collection acquired during this period is the Hutchinson Collection, received in 1897, about twenty manuscript volumes, profusely illustrated, including a history of Sidmouth and series of sketchbooks and diaries, the work of Peter Orlando Hutchinson of Sidmouth (1810-97), a noted local antiquary.
2. The Golden Age 1902-1942
In 1902 the Library Committee advertised for an experienced librarian and Harry Tapley-Soper (1876-1951) was appointed. He was an active professional librarian, prominent both in the activities of the Library Association and in local history and antiquarian studies. One of his first changes was to introduce open access in 1903, although selection time was limited to 15 minutes. As a result issue figures rose by 8,887 to 36,994 in 1903/4.
The Dewey decimal classification, still used by public libraries in Devon today, replaced fixed location. Two levels of thematic categories have recently been superimposed in Exeter Central Library, making sequences even more difficult to follow, but Tapley-Soper made an earlier local amendment, adding “00” to the front of the class mark for local studies items. Thus literature, classes 800-899, became 008 subdivided as required: local poetry 008.1, local drama 008.2, local fiction 008.3 etc. This brought local publications to a prominent position at the head of the sequence and reflected Tapley-Soper’s great interest in local history.
Other evidence of the management of the collections is still there to be discovered. The library invested in a large perforating stamp to mark ownership on both books and illustrations, and did not hesitate to encroach on the printed, drawn or painted areas of illustrations.
The City Library had its own bindery, which was probably also responsible for constructing the serried ranks of sturdy wooden boxes, handsomely covered in maroon with details of the contents blocked on in gold, for cuttings on places, subjects or family names. The cuttings were carefully mounted in columns on folded sheets of heavy foolscap paper, gathered in sections, as if they were destined to be bound up when the boxes became full.
Exeter City Library joined the Library Association and in 1910 the Library Association conference was held in Exeter. Tapley-Soper stressed the educational value of the library service and this was reflected in the book stock. In 1910 of a total of 42,000 volumes only about 11,000 were in the lending section and of these only 2,000 were fiction.
Among collections acquired for the general reference library between the wars was a collection of Napoleana, donated in 1924 by Heber Mardon (1840-1925) a Bristol printer who had retired to Teignmouth. It included 500 illustrations, many of them caricatures, 300 medals, assorted statuettes, a death mask and a lock of the great man’s hair. A listing is available online. There remains a good collection of books on Napoleon and his times in the Central Library stack and the statuettes for many years adorned the search rooms of the Devon Record Office in Castle Street.
The early children's book collection was acquired over a period of time, mainly between 1900 and 1940. It consists of some 2,000 volumes and those up to 1849 have been listed by Marjorie Moon: The Devon collection of children's books: a catalogue of the early children's books 1692-1849 (Devon Library Services, 1994). There is a short-title listing online of the entire collection from 1692 to about 1940, including annuals, picture books and a few games. The local collections will be considered in more detail at the end of this section.
Commercial lending libraries like Boots and Mudie’s benefited from the disinclination of the Public Library to purchase works of popular literature. As late as 1927 the Express and echo could report in its issue of 15 October that “the average citizen goes to one or other of the private enterprise libraries to be found in the city and pays his guinea a year or 2d a volume.” The writer estimated that such libraries were issuing about 1,000 books a day, as opposed to about 500 by the public library. Indeed the City Librarian at the time felt that “it is no part of a public library’s duty to compete with commercial libraries that provide the latest novels for a low subscription rate” Citizens “largely used them for obtaining current fiction, reserving the use of the City Library for more serious works.”
The stock of the Library continued to grow, funded to a considerable degree by the Kent Kingdon bequest, and the inadequacy of the Royal Albert Memorial building was ever more keenly felt. After ten years of lobbying, the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie offered £15,000 toward the building of a new library in 1909. This was one of the last large donations by the Trust for the construction of a town library. A lengthy saga began, with conflict over the proposed site in Queen Street. The press was divided. The Devon and Exeter gazette opined on 10 October 1914 “There is a latent feeling that it is hardly in accord with the rich historic past of the city, and its present status, to accept gifts of money from American millionaires” and the writer felt horrified at the prospect of a Carnegie Memorial Library facing an Albert Memorial Museum.
The Carnegie Trustees had accepted the delay brought about by the Great War, and in 1918 increased the grant to £17,000 by transferring £2,000 which had been set aside for the urban district of Heavitree, since incorporated into Exeter. In 1917 a new site adjacent to Rougemont Gardens had been decided on. In November 1922 the Trustees threatened that the grant would lapse if plans were not initiated by the end of 1925 and the grant was increased to £19,000. In October 1924 the plan for the new library was approved; the architect was Sidney Kyffin Greenslade (1867–1955), born in Exeter, who had designed the National Library of Wales. One aim at that time was to provide work during the construction for the unemployed but the Trustees felt that the plans were too ambitious for a city the size of Exeter. Tapley-Soper argued the city's regional role, and the Trustees countered with a requirement that provision for children should be improved. Tapley-Soper objected to some details of the plans, but eventually the final plans were approved by the Trustees in March 1927, the foundation ceremony took place on 17 January 1928 and the completed building was opened on 11 October 1930 by Lord Elgin, chairman of the Trust, more than twenty years after the grant was first given. The new building was steel framed but had a more traditional brick and Portland stone exterior with a monumental entrance on to Castle Street. The lending library was on the ground floor and the reference library was reached by a grand staircase to the first floor. Each floor had galleries to increase storage and there was a fire-proof room for manuscripts. It contained a book stock of about 65,000 volumes and the building had a capacity of about 80,000 volumes. The Trustees withheld the final ten per cent for some time as they were dissatisfied with the levels of expenditure on staff and books, which was not helped by cuts resulting from the great economic depression.
In the meantime the rural areas of Devon had been able to benefit from a public library service when the Devon County Library was inaugurated by the County Council in 1924 after a grant of £2,900 by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust. It was a great discrepancy in coverage that the County Library Service set out to replace. In 1921 less than half the population of Devon and only two percent of the surface area received a free public library service. The County Library set out to rectify this by setting up a network of branch libraries and village centres, normally staffed by volunteers. By 1925 112 centres had already been set up, by 1938 this grew to 472. The book stock grew proportionately, from a modest 12,888 in 1925 to 170,895 in 1938. Nor did the County Library share the preciousness of Tapley-Soper about fiction. Fiction accounted typically for some two thirds of stock and 90% of issues in the 1930s.
The development of libraries serving higher education before World War 2 was one of slow progress, sometimes accompanied by bitter exchanges. In the earliest years of the Albert Memorial some textbooks had been purchased for students of the Colleges of Art and Science. In the 1880s Cambridge University extension lectures were held and in 1894 the Exeter Technical and University Extension College was established. In 1901/2 full courses for London University external degrees were introduced and in 1908 the institution assumed the title of the Royal Albert Memorial University College and a new building was erected in Gandy Street in 1910-11. Prior to 1904 there had been no special library arrangements for students apart from the occasional purchase of textbooks. Between 1904 and 1920 small sums were voted from College funds on an irregular basis, the books normally being housed in the reference section of the public library to the mid 1920s although seminar libraries grew in size and number. By 1929 there were sixteen such collections with a total book stock which was twice the size of the collection in the reference library.
In 1922 the College was officially designated the University College of the South West of England and its administrative control was separated from the City Council. There were now regular grants for book purchase and Tapley-Soper remained College Librarian as well as being the City Librarian. The demands of students increased steadily and in the 1920s the College began to make some contribution towards the public library's expenses. In 1920/1 50% of the reference library use was by students and by 1923/4 this had risen to 74%. In 1931 Tapley-Soper produced a report on "The financial and other relations existing between the University College, Exeter and the Exeter City Library". He lamented that the grant was still at the level of 1925 when it was set at £429. It was felt that £800 would be more realistic. In addition the seminar libraries with 12,176 volumes as against the 6,402 in the City Library, were not available for general reference. The debate became acrimonious. Principal Murray wrote in a memorandum to Tapley-Soper's report "It is not policy but makeshift to share books or building with any other institution unless it were an institution identical in type and book-buying programme." He then displayed remarkable ignorance as to what constitutes the provision of a library service by stating that Tapley-Soper's report "suggests convincingly that a girl clerk able to type and a messenger boy supervised by a librarian, more or less honorary, could do the work, and both have some time to spare."
In 1933 the College library separated and moved to three rooms in the Gandy Street premises. A full-time librarian, Miss K. Perrin was appointed in 1934. She collected together the books in the departments, producing a stock of some 25,000 volumes and soon began to press for a proper college library. A £10,000 grant was made by the University Grants Committee which permitted building work to start on the Streatham Estate to the north of the city centre in 1938. The Roborough Library, named after Sir Henry Lopes, President of the University College, who had just been created Lord Roborough, was opened by Stanley Baldwin, Earl of Bewdley on 8 May 1940.
The City Library’s local studies collections grew considerably during the time that Tapley-Soper was City Librarian. The largest collection to be added in the early years was that formed by the Plymouth antiquary Joshua Brooking Rowe (1837-1908) and bequeathed by him to Exeter City Library in 1908. It consisted of 10,000 volumes of books and pamphlets, as well as extensive notes and cuttings, bookplates, and brass rubbings. It also includes some 40 volumes, including extensive church notes, from the collections of James Davidson. The books and pamphlets have been incorporated into the main collections and separate listings of the brass rubbings and 3,000 bookplates were prepared in the 1990s. The manuscripts on the history and bibliography of Devon, compiled by James Davidson of Axminster, had been bequeathed to Brooking Rowe.
The more modest collection of the antiquary Robert Dymond was also bequeathed in 1908. The 14 volumes of his manuscript notes, with an index volume were presented by his widow.
The collection of the bibliographer of Sir Walter Raleigh, T. N. Brushfield of Budleigh Salterton (1828-1910) was acquired after his death. The books on Sir Walter Raleigh and other topics were integrated into the main stock while the cuttings were placed in the Raleigh family files. After 2005 some 17th century volumes from the collection were removed to the Central Library cage and should be reunited with the rest of the Brushfield collection.
The Exeter Pictorial Record Society was founded in 1911 to record and preserve a pictorial record of the city as it underwent modernisation. In 1919 it deposited 1,000 mounted illustrations, 10 volumes of very informative schedules and many negatives with the City Library. The collections were dispersed after the War but were reassembled, listed and digitised after the conclusion of the “Etched on Devon’s memory” project in 2004.
An extensive collection of glass negatives by John Stabb (1865–1917) of Torquay, an ecclesiologist and antiquary reached the library after his death. They are of local and non-local scenes, largely church architecture and were partly sorted and prints made by a Manpower Services Commission project in 1977.
Harry Hems, the Exeter architect and sculptor (1842-1916) was a great self-publicist and gathered many thousands of cuttings which were mounted in large and heavy volumes which reached the Library after his death and were eventually put onto microfiche. There is also a large number of architectural details from his collection in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum.
Literary manuscripts were also acquired. Exeter City Library had received a number of R. D. Blackmore’s manuscripts from the Trustees of the British Museum and to these were added manuscripts of works by Mary Willcocks (1910), John Trevenna (1912), Eden Phillpotts (1912) and John Galsworthy (1916), usually as a result of a request by Tapley-Soper.
By the 1920s the City Library had acquired, both by gift and purchase a local studies collection that was widely appreciated. Speaking to the Historical Association in 1923 Professor W. J. Harte of the University College of the South West said: “we are happy in possessing a library common to the University College and the City, to which friends from all parts of the county have made valuable contributions. The library has acquired, both by gift and purchase, a considerable number of original documents bearing on the locality, including original histories written by bygone antiquaries, and some original parish registers and churchwardens’ accounts, which for unknown reasons have found their way into the market, together with a good collection of transcripts of parish registers made by local genealogists. There is also a small collection of wills and several thousand original deeds. Scrap books also for each parish in the county have been kept by Mr Tapley-Soper for a number of years and proved of great value to those engaged in research work. The library also affords a safe temporary deposit for documents linked to those who are anxious to work on them but who cannot visit the places where the archives are housed. Attention has also been given to Pictorial Records under the guidance of the librarian and of the curator of the Museum …”.
Until 1905 the rich collections of city archives had suffered generations of neglect. In 1861 when they were moved to a new room in the Guildhall, Stuart Moore, who was to calendar the records between 1863 and 1870, said that, except for the charters, most of the records had not been “examined or arranged since the time of [John] Hooker”. When H. Lloyd-Parry took up his position as Town Clerk in 1905 he was alarmed to find that the records were inadequately housed in a small room at the back of the medieval Guildhall. He conducted a long campaign to improve the situation. The records were described for the Historical Manuscripts Commission in 1916. Tapley-Soper advocated a bigger role for the larger public libraries as regional repositories for records and the library was designated as an official repository for manorial records. By 1939 it had amassed 100,000 deeds and documents. It was therefore to Lloyd-Parry's great relief that the city's archives had been moved to a fireproof muniment room in the new library buildings in 1930.
The boxes containing “scrap books”, as Professor Harte had termed them in 1923, had grown in number to 500 by 1941, as the list compiled for evacuation on the next page shows.
This table also shows that the Devon and Cornwall Record Society’s extensive library of manuscript and typescript transcriptions of parish registers and other documents, including Boyd’s marriage index was housed in the City Library. Tapley-Soper had played an important role in setting the Society up in 1905 and acted as editor of many of its publications. The City Library also provided facilities for the Devonshire Association which had compiled folders of information on parishes in a standard format drawn up by the Parochial History Section, established in 1930. Between 1931 and 1935 five histories were published: 1. Okehampton (1931), 2. Holsworthy (1934), 3-4 Kentisbeare and Blackborough (1934) and Dartmouth (volume 1, 1935). Publication then lapsed until after World War 2.
Coverage |
Exeter City Library Cuttings files |
Devon & Cornwall Record Society |
Devon parishes |
203 boxes |
10 boxes |
Cornwall parishes |
10 boxes |
|
Other parishes |
21 boxes |
|
Family history |
176 boxes |
28 boxes |
Devon subjects |
24 boxes |
|
Cornwall subjects |
4 boxes |
Devonshire Association |
Miscellaneous |
19 boxes |
24 parcels |
Beatrix Cresswell (1862-1940) was a noted and prolific local historian and from 1926 she deposited a series of notes and typescripts on Devon history, especially ecclesiastical history.
Photographs of Topsham and other historical materials were received in 1933 from the estate of Hugh Wilson Holman of Topsham (1867-1931). They included a small collection of Devon brass rubbings which have joined the more extensive Brooking Rowe collection.
An unusual collection made by Pike Ward (1857-1937), a Teignmouth shipowner and fish merchant who traded with Iceland was received after his death. It included some books on Iceland and the north Atlantic and ten photograph albums covering the period 1893-1907.
In about 1939 glass negatives of archaeological sites made by Major F. C. Tyler (1874-1939) with emphasis on ley-lines were passed to the library but a more significant collection was that made by A.W.Searley (1860-1942), much-travelled historian and photographer who, as well as leaving a large number of lantern slides and glass negatives of local and non-local scenes, had compiled volumes on many places and subjects which collected together periodical articles illustrated by his own photographs.
But the most significant acquisition in this period was the massive index of all matters Devonian containing more than 1,000,000 cards compiled between 1915 and 1940 by R. Burnet Morris, the Recorder in Bibliography of the Devonshire Association which was received in 1940 after he had gone blind in its compilation — a warning to all bibliographers. Starting as a bibliography, it had rather gone off the rails and become an analytical index to periodical articles and Devon references in calendars of State Papers and other national records and had a complex and unexplained system of filing the cards. On 18 November 1940 it was reported to the Royal Albert Memorial Library Committee that this index had been “deposited” by the Devonshire Association and on 27 April 1942 it was reported that this had become an “outright gift” on condition that it be kept at Exeter City Library.
However the index was not at that time in Exeter City Library. In the wider world the phoney war had lasted from September 1939 to April 1940, the Battle of Dunkirk had taken place in May and June 1940, the Battle of Britain from July to September 1940., the Blitzkrieg had hit London from September 1940 to May 1941. The City Library suffered restrictions from black-outs and a number of staff were called up to serve in the armed forces. Book boxes were provided for schools with evacuee children. Exeter was spared any significant damage from air raids, with only a score of minor incidents from August 1940 to the end of 1941 but Plymouth was devastated by massive raids in March and April 1941, losing about 120,000 books in three of its major libraries.
On 13 May 1941 it was reported to the Library Committee that “about eight tons of manuscripts and books had been vacated to places of safety and that others will be evacuated as early as suitable repositories can be secured”. The Books Sub-committee later reported that 32 tons had been evacuated to five repositories and that the disposal of surplus books had been carried out in connection with “the national competition for the recovery of waste paper”.
Lists of items evacuated show that, while the largest part of the items evacuated were from the Westcountry collections, much reference material was also included, for example the Heber Mardon collection on Napoleon, the Pocknell collection on shorthand, private press books, other finely illustrated volumes including Curtis’ Botanical magazine, British Museum catalogues, publications of the Record Commission and other important reference works.
Tapley-Soper had been City Librarian for almost forty years and was well respected nationally as a librarian. His undoubted achievement was in building up the reference collections and in particular the local history and archive service. The provision of general lending services and particularly children's library services was neglected and the lack was keenly felt locally and criticised in the press.
He had been a leading light in the field of local history, involved in the establishment of the Devon and Cornwall Record Society in 1905, soon after his arrival, and he became the editor of the Society’s publications. He also prepared annual lists of local publications for the Devonian yearbook. He lived in Wixels, a house in Topsham on the banks of the Exe estuary and the history of Topsham was his particular interest. The massive Burnet Morris was an important source for his studies, and in April 1942 he had the box of cards for Topsham close to hand in his office.
3. The Bronze Age 1942-1974
On the night of 3-4 May 1942 during Exeter's most destructive air raid the Public Library in Castle Street was hit by incendiary bombs and gutted. The fire reached the outer door of the muniment room and destroyed it, but, although the lock on the inner door was fused, the massive teak door withstood the blaze and the collection of manuscripts inside was unharmed. On 13 July the Committee learned that some manuscripts and ancient deeds being prepared for evacuation were lost, as was every printed book in the building, a total of 93,000 volumes. In Tapley-Soper’s office, the Topsham box of the Burnet Morris index also fell victim to the flames.
An emergency lending service using 4,950 books that had been received from 201 donors in all parts of the country and 4,000 items on loan at the time of the raids was soon established on a limited scale in one of the side rooms in the gutted building and a small reference collection was opened in part of the adjacent Rougemont House, which had been made available by the Museum Committee, and that accommodation had to serve for the remainder of the War and beyond. Donations of books flooded in from all parts of the country, by 7 December 1942 24,000 printed books, prints, photographs and negatives, but many gaps could never be filled.
Tapley-Soper, who had seen forty years work in building up the collections destroyed in a single night, had his contract of employment regularly extended during the war years and finally retired in March 1946 after 44 years service to Exeter. He was designated Emeritus City Librarian and was replaced by N. S. E. Pugsley who was faced with the enormous task of rebuilding the service with the limited resources then available.
The new City Librarian saw his main task as getting the "best possible value from the agreed war-damage claim, four fifths of which was for reference library stock". There had been negotiations for compensation during the war. On 25 January 1943 it was reported that a war damage claim of £35,830 was agreed, and on 28 June 1943 that a claim of £40,443 had been agreed by the Board of Trade. The table below shows that the book fund had been well maintained throughout the war.
Financial year |
1938-9 |
1939-40 |
1940-1 |
1941-2 |
1942-3 |
1943-4 |
1944-5 |
1945-6 |
Books & subscriptions |
£2,439 |
£2,605 |
£2,713 |
£2,877 |
£2,858 |
£3,065 |
£3,238 |
£3,548 |
Periodicals & newspapers |
£732 |
£717 |
£658 |
£645 |
£1,010 |
£797 |
£720 |
£721 |
The books had been evacuated to repositories at Bicton House, Sydenham House, a storehouse in Holsworthy and Cullompton vicarage. On 26 January 1944 it was reported that books had already been retuned from one repository because of damp and on 26 June the vicar of Cullompton was thanked for the use of the vicarage.
The surviving shell of the City Library was covered with temporary roofing and Mr Yeo, attendant cleaner released from the armed services by 10 December 1945, erected one mile of 2x1 inch wooden racking to provide a book store in the gutted shell of the library building along with six (later negotiated to twelve) rooms in Rougemont House.
The bulk of the evacuated books were returned in September 1945 and on 10 December 1945 thanks were offered to Lord Clinton of Bicton House, Miss Despencer-Robertson of Sydenham House Lewdown and the Vicar of Cullompton. On 9 July 1946 Professor W. J. Harte of the University College of the South West was thanked for his “valuable assistance in replacing the evacuated books and manuscripts”. He had used the Westcountry collections intensively for more than thirty years so his accumulated knowledge had been invaluable.
Figures show an average of 10,000 volumes being purchased each year into the mid-1950s and war damage funding providing a similar level of book fund to that provided through the rates until 1955. By 1955 the stock had reached 166,000 volumes, more than double the working capacity of the old building.
This rapid intake of stock required cataloguing from scratch as both the book stock and the public catalogues had been destroyed in 1942, so efforts were concentrated on the general reference and lending stock. The bulk of the local studies collection as well as the manuscript stock cards had survived the blitz, having been evacuated, so the cards were rearranged into author order to serve as a finding-aid of sorts.
An additional collection of Devon books and pamphlets from the library of Mr Cann Hughes was reported on 24 February 1947 and it was now possible to integrate the Creswell bequest, received in 1940. In his report for 1946/7 N. S. E. Pugsley reported that attention was being directed to the “Devon and Cornwall Collection”. A preliminary survey and sorting was under way and consideration was being given to a classification scheme for a special public catalogue. He hoped to “regain, if possible on a broader basis, the former reputation of the library as a centre for local research”.
The City Library’s bindery had lost both its binders to enemy action during the war and once replacements were recruited and trained in 1946 there were more important matters to attend to than neatly pasting newspaper cuttings into folders. Cutting was resumed but the loose cuttings were placed in brown paper envelopes which soon became over-full and unorganised.
For more intensive use of the collections, help was at hand in the person of Geoffrey Paley (1912-1986). On 27 February 1933 the Library Committee minutes had noted that it was “Resolved that Geoffrey John Paley of 24 Old Town Street Dawlish be articled as a pupil to the City Library for a period of three years as from the 1st February 1933”. He rose through the ranks and from 1939 represented the City Librarian on occasions when Tapley-Soper could not himself attend events such as funerals and governors’ meetings. During the War he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in the Middle East and Europe. Returning to Exeter after the War, he was from 1947 until local government reorganisation in 1974 responsible for the Westcountry Collection.
A gentle, unassuming man, he had an immense knowledge of the collections, an example of the “bookman of the old school” so much admired by callow youths entering the profession of librarianship in the 1960s. His contribution to Devon’s history is best summed up in the preface to Devon bibliography 1984, the last work he compiled, by John Pike (1921-2004), Torbay’s Borough Librarian, himself a compiler of bibliographies of Torquay, Paignton and Brixham in the early 1970s: “We first met regularly soon after World War 2 when we were both struggling with our professional examinations, and when I became interested in Devon's history about this time it was to him I turned for advice and help. Geoffrey's knowledge of the resources of the County's history were encyclopaedic — I have said many times to inquirers “talk to Geoffrey, he knows more about Devon than anyone else”. When they did, they were dealt with courteously and utterly competently — and they too found out the range of his knowledge. After serving for many years with former Exeter City Library, he became West Country Studies Librarian in the enlarged Devon Library [and Information] Service. […] He was, of course, a founder member of the Devon History Society [established as the Standing Conference for Devon History in 1970] and was a member of its council for many years.” Ironically, it was ready access to this wealth of knowledge that resulted in no local studies cataloguing being undertaken for more than thirty years.
In the meantime the use of the lending service was also growing. The busiest pre-War year had been 1938 when 199,411 volumes had been issued, 31,978 of them to children. This figure had already been surpassed in 1946 with 203,416 issues. By 1958 this had grown to 297,856 loans, 49,638 of them to children. In 1955 the City Librarian submitted a report to the City Architect on the requirements for a new library. After further reports the City Council finally adopted a report from the Library Committee proposing the construction of a new premises to the south-west of the existing building which could be completed without interrupting the public service. The existing building could them be refurbished to serve as a record office and a book store. There were those who were losing patience at the delays and the City Librarian N. S. E. Pugsley always took pains to point out in his reports that he was operating in temporary premises. And Professor W. G. Hoskins in his Two thousand years in Exeter, did not mince his words. He wrote in 1960: "Today the city library, burnt out nearly twenty years ago, is still a shambles. The failure to rebuild it is the greatest disgrace in the post-war history of the city. It is clear that books are not considered to be important in modern Exeter. How vastly different from our Victorian forebears when they founded the Free Library in 1869!" He saw this as the greatest symptom of a cultural disease that was afflicting the city: "Somewhere between 1860 and now Exeter ceased to be a cultured city." Time was indeed running out if the city were to benefit from war damage claims, as work on refurbishing the pre-War building had to be completed by September 1968, the latest date for settlement. The City Architect's plans were approved in October 1959, construction began in August 1962, the building was completed in in May 1965 and officially opened by Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent on 22 October 1965 some ten years after Plymouth had opened its reconstructed premises. It provided the modern glass-fronted building still in use today. The Westcountry Collection found a cramped home in a small room off the reference department.
This building was the headquarters of a modest network of other facilities serving the outlying areas. A travelling library had been introduced in 1960 serving suburbs such as St Thomas, Countess Wear, Whipton and Burnthouse Lane, and also visiting schools. Branch libraries served Topsham and Pinhoe from the 1960s.
The County Library buildings survived the war largely unscathed. The library service had acquired prestigious new premises on the western outskirts of Exeter in 1939, in the early 19th century classical style country seat of Barley House which it disfigured in 1969 by a severely modern bookstack and office block. Here it ran a lending and reference library service distinct from the City Library and appreciated by those who wished to avoid the parking problems of central Exeter. Its chief function however was to serve as a headquarters to the extensive network of service points which stretched across the county. The village centres were progressively closed and replaced by a growing network of mobile library routes.
Exeter City Library ceased to being run by an independent authority in 1974, becoming part of Devon Library and Information Services, the new designation of Devon County Library. After local government reorganisation in 1974 Devon absorbed the previously independent library services in Plymouth, Torbay, Bideford and Newton Abbot, as well as Exeter and ran one of the largest public library systems in the country with some 80 branch libraries.
4. The Silver Age 1974-2012
The Central Library complex had continued to serve Exeter's needs but its capacity became progressively stretched to its limits. In 1974 when all Devon's library services were united as a result of local government reorganisation, the basement of Exeter Central Library assumed the role of a book store for the whole county and on 22 October 1975 part of the first floor of the refurbished pre-War building was opened to the public as a greatly extended local studies collection, the Westcountry Studies Library (WSL), formed from the amalgamation of the stock built up since the 1870s by the City Library and housed in a small room off the reference library and the collection formerly held for the county at at its headquarters in Barley House. Its new location next to the Devon Record Office made the building an essential port of call for all those researching the region's past.
The first steps to computerise Devon and Exeter’s library catalogues were taken in the 1970s, the card catalogues continuing in use for several years alongside microfiche printouts from the database. Only in the 1990s were the public able to interrogate the catalogues directly on-line.
But despite remarkable achievements on many fronts, overall the public library service in Devon was under increased pressure as the millennium reached its end, a position not assisted by the local government reorganisation of 1998 when Plymouth and Torbay became independent authorities, thus losing many of the economies of scale which were crucial as funding was cut year on year. The book fund, during the 1980s among the highest per head of population of any library authority in the country, declined until in 1997 Devon stood in 25th position. In 1991 the county spent £10.24 per head of population on its libraries, by 1998 this had declined to £9.40 and this in a period of steady inflation. Devon had always been modest in its library staffing numbers compared with other authorities so these cuts had to fall disproportionately on the book fund. Even so, over a five year period in the 1990s 36 full-time equivalent staff were lost from a total of 402. In 1991 Devon spent £2.25 per head of population on books; by 1998 this had fallen to £1.09. In the same period average book prices had risen from £13.10 to about £16.00 so that in real terms the expenditure on resources had much more than halved over the eight years. However much lip-service was being paid to the value of the public library by local government and there was certainly public support in Devon for this most accessible of public services. When libraries were under threat in 1995 the trade union UNISON collected 20,000 signatures for a petition on one rainy day and further protests were made when closure of Exeter branches was threatened as an option during a further round of cuts in 1997 (E&E 13 Dec 1997).
In the autumn of 1999 the Royal Albert Memorial Museum hosted an exhibition with the title From script to print to hypertext, curated by the County Local Studies Librarian, which brought together ten libraries, museums and archives in the city to celebrate Devon's written heritage. The fortunes of the participating institutions were to vary over the following two decades, overshadowed by the nationwide financial crisis and the resulting decade of austerity, and terminated by the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown.
The Devon Record Office had long been bursting at the seams. For many years it had a remote store in Marsh Barton Trading Estate next door to the incinerator — those delivering documents had to be given careful directions. In 2005 the Devon Record Office moved from the Castle Street premises it shared with WSL into a specially-constructed building at Great Moor House on Sowton Industrial Estate. This building had air conditioned storage facilities sufficient to accommodate the records held both in Castle Street and Marsh Barton. The county library service headquarters also moved there from Barley House.
Geoffrey Paley retired in 1977 and Devon Library and Information Services (the full name of the merged service) were anxious not to lose the wealth of knowledge of Exeter’s collections that he carried in his head, so several months overlap with his successor were put in place.
In January 1977 Geoffrey Paley’s successor arrived in WSL after nine years service in Guildhall Library in the City of London with the designation of County Local Studies and Special Collections Librarian (CLSL). The Westcountry Studies Library, located in the centre of Exeter, was Devon's main local studies collection, formed little more than a year previously from a merger of the Exeter City Library and Devon County Council's local studies collection and was a considerable research collection with 70,000 monographs, tens of thousands of maps, prints and photographs and extensive periodical and newspaper collections and runs of cuttings files.
Much required to be put in order. When, between 1970 and 1973, Allan Brockett at the University Library started to compile The Devon union list of some 8,250 titles in six major collections in Exeter, Plymouth and Torquay, he found that the extensive Exeter collections “in Barley House (Devon County H.Q.) and Castle Street [Exeter City Library] had never been fully catalogued and all that could be provided were handwritten or abbreviated typed cards from stock registers or classified files. Xerox copies of these were made and combined into one major file”. Details of publisher, place of publication and pagination were so haphazard that it was decided to omit them from the Devon Union list”.
The situation had not improved when WSL opened in 1975 and, when W. G. Hoskins asked to see the library catalogue at the opening event, he was dissatisfied, stormed out and was only seen in WSL on the rare occasions when the Devon and Exeter Institution was closed. The publication of The Devon union list in 1977 with its subject indexes greatly improved access to the book stock.
A staff of three in WSL was insufficient to make inroads into thirty years of neglecting the catalogue, but it was a time when the Manpower Services Commission was funding work creation projects. In Exeter a project with three staff was set up in 1977 and 1978 to initiate the cataloguing of the book and pamphlet collections. A new sequence of “master cards” was compiled to provide tracings for cards in the typed public author, subject and place catalogues and for each copy of the title in various shelf locations.
A second project with up to twelve staff running from 1977 to 1978 indexed the Exeter Flying Post, a local newspaper, from 1763 to 1885.
A third project that same year with three staff started listing and conserving the illustrations collection, including glass plate negatives. This project was greatly assisted by the Devon Library Service publication in 1977 of Devon topographical prints 1660-1870: a catalogue and guide by J. V. Somers Cocks. This had much more detailed cataloguing than The Devon union list but, frustratingly, did not provide locations where prints could be seen. At one point in 1977 CLSL was “managing” more than twenty staff.
Once these projects came to an end, the problem was maintaining momentum. Fortunately two staff were recruited from the newspaper indexing project and worked in WSL for more than thirty years. Cataloguing continued but the problem was getting the cards typed. By July 1987 what was termed “the backlogue” amounted to 8,300 titles, the size of The Devon union list.
From 1980 entries were also supplied for the Devon bibliography to the Devon and Exeter Institution where Geoffrey Paley, now happily retired, organised the material, and sent it for final typing in the Department of Economic History at the University of Exeter. It was published annually by the Devon History Society.
In 1982 a regional booklist was produced fortnightly, at first as a photocopied typescript, and it circulated under a changing series of titles including in 1984 LoSt LibiDO (LOcal STudies LIBraries In Devon: Oracle), settling in 1985 on the equally inscrutable title Annales occidentales, which it retained until 2008. Once word processors were acquired it was circulated monthly for book selection for eighty service points across the county and was cumulated into a union catalogue of titles held by the county's main local studies collections. Cataloguing standards and subject headings were not compatible with the main county catalogue so from 1987 a separate catalogue using d-Base III+ software was designed by CLSL, initially in order to provide a catalogue for the new local studies centre in Barnstaple. It also tackled the “backlogue” of 8,000+ titles which it completed the following year so it was able to issue three years of the annual Devon bibliography covering 1985 to 1987, taking over from the Devon History Society under the editorship of Geoffrey Paley who had died in 1986. From 1997 a version of this d-Base database was mounted on the Internet.
Besides raising the standards of cataloguing, other issues had to be tackled. One of these was the conservation and care of the collections. One evening assistant with time on her hands had inflicted considerable damage on the collection of early maps by helpfully repairing a considerable number of them with sellotape. Early printed items had been despatched for binding in inappropriate bright yellow covers with titles blocked in red “to cheer the shelves up” and without specifying sewn binding, which avoided the guillotining of the spine, as opposed to so-called “perfect binding” and, above all the dreaded “cleat sewing”, the pride of Plymouth bindery, which cut diagonal slots into the guillotined spine through which thread was wound in a vain attempt to hold the structure of the book together. A code of practice for binding and conservation had to be drawn up, but that did not solve all problems.
The MSC project with three staff to list and conserve the illustrations collection used the publication Devon topographical prints 1660-1870: a catalogue and guide to bring some 3,000 engravings and lithographs together and identify them. Acid-free card mounts with a transparent hinged melinex flap were designed, archive boxes were secured, and the print collection was transformed. However it was soon found that an indelible pencil had been used on some prints and aniline dye had spread when they were sprayed, and over time the mounts were seen to be discolouring. Tests at the British Library showed that a cheaper alternative to melinex had been supplied, they were becoming acidic and the entire collection had to be replaced with melinex folders. These were also used for early ephemera.
The third MSC project with up to twelve staff running from 1977 to 1978 which indexed the Exeter flying post from 1763 to 1885 was much more successful.
It produced a card index with some 100,000 cards to Westcountry references in the Exeter Flying Post for the period 1763-1885 in the following sections:
1. Subjects in alphabetical order, subdivided by place.
2. Place subdivided by subject, cross-references to the subject section.
3. Personal names (1763-1835 only).
4. Properties, ships, mines, plays at the Theatre (covering shorter periods from 1763)
However, it was working with a fragile and rare resource that required conservation and the avoidance of over-use. In the days before digitisation, microfilm was the solution and it was a time when the Newsplan project was initiated nationwide to speed up the microfilming of local newspapers. CLSL was on the Newsplan South West Implementation Committee and its chair from 2002 to 2005, attending national meetings in London and Colindale, where the British Library Newspaper Library was then housed. The South West was the first region to produce a project report in 1986 and, using the data gathered by Lorna Smith’s Devon newspapers: a finding list (revised edition 1975) and the regional Newsplan project officer Rosemary Wells, CLSL produced the Devon section of the Bibliography of British Newspapers, published by the British Library in 1991.
Later the Local Studies and the Community project provided local studies resource packs for schools and branch libraries throughout Devon, including in 1987-88 a two-year project with a staff of up to twenty-three, involving the microfilming of source materials for conservation. The core of the parish resource packs was provided by the pre-War parish cutting files which were added to from the envelopes of loose cuttings, pasted or photocopied onto archival paper as well as parish pages from a series of directories and county histories and a selection of illustrations and early maps.
The storage and security of the collections, which contained many rare or even unique items, was also a great concern. When an open access collection had been put together in haste for the opening in 1975 a number of early items, including Civil War tracts, were placed on the public shelves and these were soon removed to the stack.
In 1979 the County Reference Librarian, Owen Baker, was shown Specimens of British minerals selected from the cabinet of Philip Rashleigh (London: Bulmer, 1797) at the home of a mineralogist friend in Gunnislake, a book he recognised seeing in WSL. This and other books from WSL were traced back to Jerry Harden, a Tavistock book dealer. Armed with manuscript stock cards, CLSL and Geoffrey Paley went to a solicitor’s office in Tavistock and were able to compare the writing on the stock cards with inscriptions on the volumes and so reclaim them. James Haines of Plymouth had supplied the unsuspecting book dealer and was sentenced to prison at the Exeter Crown Court.
The result was the installation of a security system, the insertion of security triggers, stamping with invisible ultra-violet ink and a stock taking of all items, including items not yet accessioned, which involved two staff seconded from other departments for several months.
Behind the scenes, much of the book stock was still stored on the postwar temporary wooden racking, now very rickety and leaning alarmingly. Fortunately the large-scale Ordnance Survey plans were regularly delivered rolled up in cardboard tubes which were just the right length to be lashed to the top of the racking on either side of the gangways. This Heath-Robinson solution partly stabilised the structure until they were eventually replaced by metal shelving.
Attempts were made to acquire duplicate reserve copies of as many items on Devon as possible, with the aim of placing them in a store remote from the main Westcountry Collection in the Central Library, safe from future disasters. Apart from war, libraries across the country and Europe had fallen victim to fire, storms and floods over the years. At first the headquarters at Barley House was considered, when this was sold the Record Office store at Marsh Barton was thought of, but this too was vacated when Great Moor House was acquired by the County Council. No steps were to be taken until cataloguing was completed.
Work was also undertaken on special collections of non-local material, including in 1985 Boney: ou Napoléon vu par les anglais, a bilingual exhibition on the English view of Napoleon, including caricatures from the Heber Mardon Collection, which appeared in Caen, Normandy as part of Devon's twinning programme and later circulated in the Westcountry with an English version of the printed catalogue.
Annotated title pages of more than 1,000 pre-1801 printed items, including unique ephemera, both in the Westcountry Studies Library and some in Devon Record Office, were reported to the English Short Title Catalogue project at the British Library.
From 1980 to 1995 the annual figures of enquiries received in WSL by post, phone, or personal visit grew from 10,000 to 35,000. The department normally had a staff of three full-time employees, plus part-time relief staff. Work experience staff and volunteers were occasionally used to list special collections.
In 1987 restructuring of the library service took CLSL away from the public into a more administrative post at library headquarters in Barley House. This made possible co-ordination of local studies library provision throughout Devon including policy formulation, participating in the Information Services Team, convening meetings of the Local Studies Team, with representatives From Exeter, Plymouth, Torquay, Barnstaple and Exmouth, production of publicity and user guides, talks, staff training and displays.
It also made for closer cooperation with the Information Services department whose community information projects based in South Molton, Honiton and elsewhere built up extensive databases which produced many local publications. In addition, local authorities were contacted for minutes, budgets and other financial information and planning documents. Tourist information centres provided guidebooks for distribution to branches and WSL and central government publications of local significance were extracted from the standing order with HMSO to add to WSL’s collections. Based in County Hall, the Local Government Library produced the Local press monitor from 1982 to 2000 (from 1996 Local media monitor), a daily news cutting service circulated internally. Unfortunately it proved impossible to integrate it with WSL’s own cutting service.
From 1997 a version of the local studies d-Base database was mounted on the internet and over the next decade 5,000 other web pages were added, edited and largely written as part of CLSL's role. This web site was further extended during 2002-3 by the NOF-digitise project “Etched on Devon’s Memory” which digitised 3,500 topographical prints and developed a content management system provided by System Simulation onto which the entire local studies database was successfully migrated.
From the 1980s to 2005 much attention was given to education, research and lifelong learning with talks to university, college and school groups and occasional broadcasts as well as attending conferences and advising organisations on setting up local resource centres. The local studies service was represented on the committees of local, regional and national bodies, such as the Library Association Local Studies Group, the Centre for South Western Historical Studies at the University of Exeter, the Devon and Cornwall Record Society and the Devon History Society. From April 1998, after the reorganisation of local government split off Plymouth and Torbay as unitary authorities, the service formed part of the Lifelong Learning Division of the County's Education Arts and Libraries Directorate and sought to work cross-sectorally to improve networked access to the county's heritage collections. As previously mentioned, in 1999 CLSL curated for Exeter Museums and nine other collections in Exeter a millennium exhibition with the title "From script to print to hypertext: two millennia of Devon's written heritage". This cross-sectoral and cross-domain project was runner-up in the Library Entrepreneur of the Year Award and the accompanying catalogue was commended for the Alan Ball Award. CLSL also initiated the discussions which led to the formation of the TSW Film and Television Archive in 1993. In 1998 CLSL was on the working group of the Baring-Gould Heritage Project to publish on microfilm Sabine Baring-Gould's manuscript collections of folksongs, scattered in several collections in Devon and beyond. Work on cultural diversity included participation in the BBC Islam Season in 2001, and the “Dewey Decibel” project which formed part of the Diversity Festival in 2003. At a regional level CLSL was on the advisory group for the NOF-Digitise Sense of the South West consortium in 2002.
CLSL also worked with more national activities in the field of local studies librarianship. He was a member of the Library Association (later CILIP) special interest groups for rare books and local studies from 1968 to 2005 and became a national committee member of the CILIP Local Studies Group in 1982, serving as chair from 2000 to 2005. Work at a local and regional level led him onto the National Newsplan Panel from 2000 to 2005. His work with CILIP Local Studies Group found him as CILIP observer on the Standing Conference on Museums and Archives over the same period and also as the representative for public libraries on the British and Irish Committee on Map Information and Cataloguing Systems. This last role included much discussion with Ordnance Survey on the archiving of the national digital map database in a form accessible to local studies libraries across the country, an aim that was not fully achieved. He also advised on a project run by Loughborough University in 1999-2000 for the British Library to investigate the legal deposit of local publications and served on the working group revising the Library Association's Guidelines for local studies provision in public libraries, which was published in 2002. He also advised CILIP on legislation affecting electoral registers in 2002, and in 2002 was also on the advisory group for the NOF-Digitise historical directories digitisation project based at Leicester University — many of WSL’s Devon directories were digitised by this project. He was presented with the Dorothy McCulla Memorial Award for contribution to local studies librarianship in 1997.
CLSL retired in 2005. He had pointed out the approaching demographic crisis; the two other long-serving staff members were soon due to retire and, as in 1977, some overlap should be put in place so that longer-term continuity could be maintained. Since 1902 only three generations of librarians had managed Exeter’s local studies collections over more than a century: Harry Tapley-Soper from 1902 to 1946, Geoffrey Paley from 1947 to 1977, having started employment in 1933, and Ian Maxted and his team from 1977 to 2005. In the event, because of budgetary constraints, his county post was not immediately replaced but two replacement post-holders were recruited to serve the needs of WSL.
When in 2005 the Devon Record Office moved from the Castle Street premises to Great Moor House WSL was able to take over part of the space it had previously occupied. WSL also had oversight of the Record Office Service Point with microfiches of genealogical resources, which remained in the Castle Street premises.
While the regional, national and even international presence of Devon Libraries’ local studies service was lost, with cataloguing of the main book stock largely complete, more public engagement was possible.
A main focus of WSL was now on digitisation and the tackling of the illustrations collections, and the public was encouraged to identify images encountered as work on these collections continued. The Westcountry Studies Library newsletter was published quarterly from 2008 to 2011.
To conclude this section here is a chronological listing of the main collections acquired during the “Silver Age”. Some have been partly absorbed into the main sequences, others have been separately listed, others came with handlists.
1977. Hamlyn Parsons Collection. Box of material on Dartmoor. The main collection of books is at Okehampton Library.
1978. Exeter Civic Society. Scrapbook, 1961-1975.
1979. Maurice Drake Collection. Material from the estate of Maurice Drake on stained glass and his novels. Handlist produced.
1980. A. W. Everett Collection (and Jones Collection). Photographs of historic buildings and archaeological sites, mainly in Devon taken c1920-1970 by A. W. Everett of Exeter (1889-1979). The main sequence arranged by place subdivided by subject, the negatives only partially sorted. It also includes albums of notes by Pitman Jones on churches and other historic buildings in the southern counties.
1982. J. R. W. Coxhead Collection. Filing cabinet with books, manuscripts and information files mainly on East Devon, folklore and the Coxhead family.
1982. Godfrey Collection. Material on Dawlish gathered by Mrs. Elsa Godfrey, Dawlish artist, book illustrator and historian. Her library was acquired by DLS in about 1980 and dispersed to various service points. No listings
1983-1990. South West Water Collections. Cuttings c.1974-81, 1985-90. Minutes acquired 1983, cuttings and photos c.1985.
1983. Lois Deacon Collection. 37 scrapbooks on Devon and other general topics.
1984. Thompson Collection. Acquired: 1984 8 photograph albums Photographs of Dartmoor crosses. By G. Rudd Thompson?
1984. Goad Insurance Plans Collection. Purchased in 1984. Maps and aperture cards of large scale plans of the centre of Exeter and Plymouth updated by paste-ons, 1888-1962. Literature: Rowley, G. British fire insurance plans: the Goad productions c1885-c1970, Archives, v.17 p.67-78.
1984 and later. C. G. Scott Collection. History of photography in Devon. Small collection of cabinet photographs and list of Devon photographers.
1984-1990. Arnold Brown Collection. Auction catalogues of Westcountry art sales collected by Arnold Brown. Listing available.
1985. G. W. Copeland Collection. Acquired about 1985. 138 brass rubbings in 6 boxes Transferred from Royal Albert Memorial Museum where they had been deposited with the consent of G. W. Copeland's widow c.1968. Listings: Hope, V. Catalogue of rubbings (G.W.Copeland) c1970 in box 1 of collection.
1985. Devon Folk Life Register. Cabinet with files on a wide range of topics of daily life. Arranged by a special classification scheme with duplicate sheets arranged by parish. Compiled by a Manpower Services Commission project c1978-9. A guide to the register is with the collection.
1985. K. M. Treloar Collection. Notebooks, postcards, illustrations and guides mainly on churches, some material on clergy (not necessarily local) and Treloar family. Non-local material has been transferred to libraries elsewhere in the country with the donor's agreement.
1985. Robert Burnard Collection. 39 photographs transferred from Royal Albert Memorial Museum. Large display photographs of Dartmoor.
1985. Devon County Council Amenities and Countryside Collection. Black and white photographs taken for planning purposes c1960-74. Aerial photographs were removed and incorporated in the main collections. No listings. The folders are arranged in broad subject groupings.
1986. W. G. Hoskins Collection. Working papers of W. G. Hoskins relating to Devon, non-Devon material was passed to Leicester University. The material is largely unsorted and some is embargoed by the donor. Brief interim listing prepared.
1986. G. R. Johnson Collection. Six boxes of glass negatives by G.R.Johnson. No listing.
1988. Exeter Visual Survey. About 10,000 35mm contact prints and negatives recording a year in the life of Exeter 1986-87. Colour photographs were retained by Exeter City Council.
1988. Newton Abbot Humanities Resources. Negatives from Manpower Services Commission Project to gather resource material on life in South Devon for schools. Oral history material not held.
1989. Devon Dialect Society. Books on Devon dialect deposited when the Society was dissolved.
1989. Local Studies and the Community. Folders, negatives, microfiches. Working papers of the Community Programme which produced photocopied parish files for branch libraries and schools and thematic packs on various topics for sale to schools. Includes material excluded from final packs, sources consulted etc. Master negatives and fiches No listings.
1990. Exeter City Council Press Cuttings Collection. Cuttings files for period 1969-73? No listings.
1990. Frank and Sydney Taylor Collection. CDs of digitised images from 3,000 photographic negatives of Dartmoor held by Dartmoor National Park. Listing in progress at DNP, most of collection digitised.
1991. Stoate Microfilm Collection. Purchased in 1991. Microfilms of tax assessments and manorial surveys etc acquired by T.L.Stoate and largely used in his published transcripts.
1994. Vanstone Collection. 500 photographs of Westcountry buildings by F. W. E. Vanstone. Manuscript listing, database partly completed.
1995 and earlier. Devon County Council Document Reproduction Unit Collection. 50,000 negatives taken between about 1975 and 1995 with contact prints of c5,000 photographs. Taken or commissioned by the Document Reproduction Unit for various County Council Departments. Arranged by negative number. Working listings in negative number order. No indexes. Computerised listing commenced based on numerical printout produced by Property Department Library.
1996. Anthony Langham Collection. 850 volumes, periodical runs, box files relating to Lundy. Most items on local studies database. Acquired after death of Anthony Langham.
1996. Hall Collection. 750 photographs of Devon. No listings.
1996. Batten and Bennett Collection. Purchased in 1996. About 150 single-sheet maps of Devon 1575-1850. Flat sheets merged with main collection of early maps. Folded sheets and maps in books separately held. Records on local studies database.
1997. Hardwick Collection. Acquired from Somerset Studies Library 300 negatives of Devon scenes. No listing.
1998. P. V. Pitman Collection. One box of etchings of Exeter by Primrose Pitman (died 1998).
2001. Joyce Youings Collection. Books and pamphlets on Devon history. No listings, some items incorporated in main stock.
2002. David Fisher Collection. Football programmes and other material relating to Exeter City Football Club and sport in the South West collected by football supporter Dave Fisher who died in 2002.
2003-2004. David Brewer Collection. 16 folders donated by Kath Brewer. Notes and photocopies relating to Dartmoor formed by Dave Brewer, the writer on Dartmoor boundary stones and trackways. Brief listing based on labels on folders:
1: Boundary marks
2: Boundary marks
3: Boundaries, tin mining
4: Boundaries, postal services, military training
5: Water supply
6: Prisoners of war, railways
7: Mining history,
8: Mining & quarrying
9: Maps, including military
10: Foggintor and Chagford, postcards, photos, family history
11: Dartmoor Magazine articles 1
12: Boundary articles H-Z,
13: Lee Moor, Princetown Church and Prison, Tor Royal
14: Tavistock-Ashburton pack-horse trail, Kendalls Plymouth & Dartmoor Railroad
15: Powder mills, the Avon, Meavy, Plym, Walkham, Tavy, Okement, Taw, bridges
16: Unpublished articles.
2003. M. C. Lowe Collection. 11 folders and card file of notes on Devon turnpikes compiled by M. C. Lowe. No listings.
2010. Victoria County History Collection. Acquired about 2010, transferred to DRO. 19 boxes of working notes for the unpublished volumes of the Devon section of the Victoria County History.
2010. Express and Echo Collection. Acquired from the newspaper about 2010, 10,000 photographs covering the period 1960-1996 indexed onto main catalogue by December 2018.
5. The Dark Age 2011-2024
A restructuring of services led to the creation of the Devon Heritage Service in November 2011 with the aim of integrating the collections of the Record Office and Westcountry Studies Library, and from autumn 2012 WSL, which had been housed in the heart of Exeter for more than a century, moved out to the Sowton Industrial Estate into Great Moor House which was renamed the Devon Heritage Centre. On 1 November 2014 Devon Heritage Services was transferred from the County Council to the management of the South West Heritage Trust (an independent charity, which also runs Somerset Archives and Local Studies), and was rebranded as the Devon Archives and Local Studies Service.
Exeter Reference Library, which, like the Devon Record Office, participated in the From script to print to hypertext exhibition in 1999 is no more, having fallen victim to the austerity measures inflicted on local government. Comparable figures are hard to find, but in 2011 the library service, which had already faced cuts since the economic crash was obliged to cut its budget by 30% from £10,000,000 in 2011 to £7,200,000 in 2014. This it did in part by abolishing all specialist posts in a dramatic series of events during 2011. Staff were forbidden to talk on pain of disciplinary action, but a brave whistle-blower, Louisa, eloquently chronicled the proceedings in a blog Devona: speaking up for Devon's libraries (devonaprotectslibraries.blogspot.com). The end result was that there was no funding for specialist (normally professionally qualified) staff in the reference, music and drama, children's and local studies departments. The reaction given in emails to staff was that yes, knowledge and expertise would be lost and that was regrettable "but if you always do what you always did you get what you always got". During one meeting regarding the restructuring a Directorate manager seemed genuinely to believe that the material held in the large and exceedingly specialist Westcountry Studies Library was “in a small enough quantity to be able to be split up and moved out to the branches”. He was taken aback when one member of the Westcountry staff pointed out that much of the material was also rare and valuable! Louisa continues: “The level of expertise on hand is quite extraordinary as the staff have a deep knowledge of the stock, local history and where else one can go for help. … In terms of the Westcountry Studies library, they are set to lose two of their staff. That's two brains stuffed full of local history knowledge that are just gone. In each case the librarians in question have years of experience and amassed a vast knowledge right across the local history spectrum”.
In July 2012 it was announced that Exeter's Central Library would close for a month later that year because Devon County Council had found just over £4 million to finance a major refurbishment of the lending library from the sale of Exeter Airport. The library would have a temporary home in the premises occupied by WSL, whose stock would have to be removed at short notice. Work started early in 2013 and the refurbished Central Library opened in May 2014, complete with a new foyer, café, larger children's section and "thousands of new books".
But the fanfare accompanying this reopening did not drown out the protests at the next round of cuts. Less than two months after the new Exeter Central Library opened the library users in Braunton united in July 2014 to strip the library shelves of all books to fight against their library being one of 28 scheduled to close out of the 50 service points run by Devon Library Services. Another £1.5 million or 20% of the £5.5 million budget was to be cut by 2016. Another way had to be found.
Libraries Unlimited South West was launched in April 2016, an independent staff and community owned charity, working as a company limited by guarantee. It was set up with a mission "to bring ideas, imagination, information and knowledge to people’s lives and communities". It would be able to work more freely and imaginatively with other bodies to achieve these aims. In 2016 Devon County Council gave them a grant of £5,940,000 and the following year £6,203,000. In 2018 Libraries Unlimited took over Torbay Libraries and in that year the combined grant was £7,384,000 with £7,232,000 in 2019. (Libraries Unlimited. 2021).
In 2021 the public library service in Devon ran 50 libraries and four mobile routes, so no branches had closed since 2014 although the mobile library service has since ceased. The unitary authorities in Plymouth and Torbay had eleven and four service points respectively. And the arm's length solution has brought its benefits. Libraries Unlimited have been able to work with bodies such as Exeter City Council, the University of Exeter, the British Library and the Arts Council to deliver imaginative initiatives. In Exeter there is a business and intellectual property centre, and in Exeter and Barnstaple FabLabs offer digital fabrication facilities. There are author events, talks, exhibitions, book groups, friends groups and a much greater involvement of volunteers. For children there are bounce and rhyme sessions, story hours, and the summer reading challenge. Libraries across the county remain community hubs, often with a café close to hand.
Among initiatives in the book heritage field are the Adopt a Book scheme, started in association with the British Library, to conserve rare and precious items, and the Sickness in the Archives initiative using the expertise of the University of Exeter to highlight medical books in Exeter Library's heritage collections. In the north of Devon too the R. Pearse Chope Collection in Bideford and the local studies collections in Barnstaple have been promoted.
Even during Covid-19 bookish activities continued in libraries, as in bookshops and publishers, although much of this moved online. Libraries, record offices and museums were closed to the public for months, but e-Books could still be loaned, Zoom was used for a series of conversations with authors, story hours, and bounce and rhyme sessions. Crediton Library even ran a series of talks on behalf of local history groups in the surrounding parishes. Five "little free libraries" sprang up in telephone boxes and similar locations across Exeter where books could be exchanged. The story of literature in lockdown has still to be written, but the Devon Heritage Centre is compiling a Coronavirus Community Archive, as are a number of other organisations across the county.
But this galaxy of activities has come at a cost. The heritage activities mentioned above are very much down to personal enthusiasm and there is no specialist librarian to maintain and promote the heritage collections in Exeter or indeed in public libraries anywhere outside Plymouth. Such collections do not appear to form part of the agreement with Libraries Unlimited.
At the “white glove experience” staff admit that there are no specialist staff in Exeter public libraries that can interpret the importance of the items selected for display. Nobody knew what they were. They do appreciate the importance of the collections, knowing for example that gloves of any colour are not advised for the handling of early printed items as the fabric lessens the sensitivity of fingers and and concerned about the storage conditions. I feel very sorry for the staff finding themselves in such a situation.
I had hoped to “adopt a book” in memory of my wife who died in 2024. She had been a medical librarian and I hoped to conserve and digitise an extremely rare anatomical flap-book dating from 1670: An exact survey of the microcosmus by Johann Remmelin, illustrated with engravings where flaps could be lifted to reveal internal organs. When this was suggested at a “white glove experience” I was told that the book could not be adopted as there were concerns that it could decrease the value of the book, which formed part of the County Council’s assets. I was also told that nothing more would be added to the existing heritage collections and some 19th century children’s books that I had recently donated to the early children’s book collection would be returned.
There are a number of alarm bells ringing here. What do cash-strapped councils do with their “assets”? What had they done to the 1930 library building, now Library Lofts, a “premium student accommodation in Exeter”, available from £182.00 to £235.00 a week in 2024? Will Exeter City Council, owners of these assets on behalf of the community from 1870 to 1974, be consulted?
And there is another larger black hole at the centre of this galaxy of activity.
The Westcountry Studies Library, the last of the participants in the From script to print to hypertext exhibition, has fared worst of all. Restructuring in 2011 had removed all designated local studies posts, although remaining staff continued until the collections were moved from Castle Street to Great Moor House in 2012 when the Devon Record Office was rebranded the Devon Heritage Centre. No specialist library staff was moved across and the book-fund was reduced to £1,000 – in 2,000 it had received a figure of around £10,000 to include a programme of newspaper microfilming and periodical subscriptions. Staff were cut from four posts in Exeter to a few hours a week allocated to a member of staff transferred from WSL to take up a post as an archive assistant. Even this was lost when the individual concerned retired.
The content management system adopted for the “Etched on Devon’s Memory” project had been extended to the remainder of the local studies collections and the content was transferred in 2015 from Devon County Council to the South West Heritage Trust. Unfortunately the transfer and amalgamation of data with Somerset did not go well, and the presentation of individual pages is bibliographically illiterate and the listings of results of searches uninformative. The contents are not listed on any national union listings, apart from the pre-1801 items reported to the British Library during the 1980s, and these are still located to Exeter Central Library. It is impossible for the researcher to download customised listings from the SWHT catalogue.
Of the more than sixty neighbourhood plans that have been published by communities across Devon over the past decade, the South West Heritage Trust and Devon Record Office listed none in 2023. Devon Libraries (Libraries Unlimited) listed only the Buckfastleigh and Buckfast draft neighbourhood plan 2015-2025, published by Buckfastleigh Town Council, held in the reference section of Buckfastleigh Library. The University of Exeter Library catalogue listed only Exmouth neighbourhood plan: referendum documents, 2018-2031, available at the Devon and Exeter Institution and this copy is the only one listed by the national JISC union catalogue. Outside Exeter The Wayback Machine, an American based web archive, only lists http://paigntonneighbourhoodplan.org.uk/, captured 158 times from 2012 to 2016. And it does appear that the West Country Studies Library (now WCSL) is missing most of the publications of Devon’s local government bodies, as the table below indicates.
The figures show the number of records for items categorised as books for each of the first five quinquennia of the present century. It is a crude measure, but the falling off after 2009 is undeniable (the real drop comes in 2011/12), showing that overall intake dropped by about 70%. For local government publications intake dropped by about 85%.
Publisher (keyword search) |
2000-2004 |
2005-2009 |
2010-2014 |
2015-2019 |
2020-2024 |
Devon County Council |
283 |
215 |
45 |
29 |
1 |
Exeter City Council |
68 |
35 |
9 |
8 |
0 |
East Devon District Council |
38 |
33 |
11 |
6 |
0 |
Mid Devon District Council |
12 |
5 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
Teignbridge District Council |
14 |
33 |
10 |
0 |
0 |
All books and pamphlets |
6821 |
4746 |
1886 |
1480 |
300 |
Closer inspection shows that about 75 of the 300 books listed for 2020-2024 were in fact periodical issues, and the majority of the County Council publications for the last decade were bus timetables brought in by a member of the public. About 212 volumes were only acquired through a £2,500 grant from Kent Kingdon’s Bequest between 2020 and 2022. There are no links to digital versions of publications of which hard copies have not been acquired. The Devon bibliography was revived independently in 2015 to fill the black hole left in the collections of WSL by the more than 90% cut in overall resources. I was informed that SWHT would not be able to maintain it, and the bibliography notes many items of community literature that have been passed in to the Devon Heritage Centre over the last decade but not been catalogued.
Indeed so far had WCSL sunk below the horizon over the past decade that it did not figure at all in the successful UNESCO bid to become a City of Literature in 2019. The only publicly accessible collection of local studies resources for residents, researchers and visitors in the heart of Exeter is half a dozen shelves of books for loan in Exeter Library, backed up by whatever can be located through the on-line catalogue, much of it in branches scattered across the county. Can any other regional capital of culture do worse than that? In Exeter even some charity shops can do better. Is Devon County Council fulfilling its statutory function "to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service for all persons, whether they live, work or study in the area”?
The stock cards and master cards had been moved in their card cabinets from Exeter Central Library to the Devon Heritage Centre in 2012 but at some stage the card cabinet was disposed of and the cards were packed in boxes and remained inaccessible to researchers in the Devon Heritage Centre. I was shown these boxes when starting a project initiated in 2019 to complete the retrospective listing of library acquisitions supported by Kent Kingdon’s Bequest back to 1890 by going through the stock cards. The project had therefore to be deferred, but the news of the provision of improved storage for the Westcountry Studies Collections, and the announcement at a launch event by the South West Heritage Trust of a collections review on 30 June 2023, gave hope that the stock cards would become accessible for researchers once more as they would be required to undertake the proposed collections review. SWHT wrote on 24 May 2024:
“A major project was undertaken in 2022-23 to rehouse the West Country Studies Library [sic] at the Devon Heritage Centre. The project has ensured that the contents of this remarkable library are appropriately stored and made more fully accessible to researchers. The South West Heritage Trust is very conscious of the great significance of the West Country Studies Library and its outstanding value to researchers. Under the supervision of the Trust’s Local Studies Librarian, who works across the Trust’s sites, an extensive stock take of the library’s contents is [...] being undertaken so that the library’s contents can be made even more accessible. We are very proud to be the library’s custodians. Safeguarding its contents, and increasing public awareness of them, remains at the core of the Trust’s mission.”
The Westcountry Studies Library (WSL) was indeed relaunched as the West Country Studies Library (WCSL) on 30 June 2023. “The story so far” was presented by Janet Tall, at that time the Head of Archives, Learning and Development, which was largely concerned with the dramatic improvements made in storage and conservation of the rich collections, which cover the whole of the Westcountry from Land's End to Bristol and the Channel Islands. The "next steps" were then outlined by the Local Studies Librarian, based in Taunton, there being no local studies library staff based anywhere in Devon outside Plymouth. This includes a collections review which hopefully will make the rich resources more accessible to the world at large. It was then possible to view treasures from the collection which were on display, tour the stacks to see how the collections were housed, and glimpse the conservation and digitisation resources.
Afterwards I expressed delight to the librarian from Taunton that now at last the stock cards would become once more accessible to researchers. She told me that they had, perhaps around 200,000 of them, been disposed of, saying “They were taking up a lot of space and nobody knew what they were.” I will deal more fully with the stock cards in the appendix.
I was asked by the Kent Kingdon Trustees to seek clarification on this apparent act of cultural vandalism and received this reply:
“During the project to rehouse the library in 2022/3 a number of boxes of typed library index cards, all dating from the postwar period (c. 1960s and 1970s), were identified and examined. The cards in question contained no information that could not be derived from other resources, chiefly the online library catalogue and the stock itself. It was therefore decided to dispose of the cards. This decision was taken by members of the West Country Studies Library Project Group, which oversaw the relocation of the library. The Project Group comprised archivists and a qualified librarian, all working in the Archives and Local Studies Team at the Devon Heritage Centre. No earlier index cards were identified during the relocation project. Because of personnel changes, we cannot offer any insights into decisions made concerning stock indexes before the creation of the South West Heritage Trust in 2014, but we can assure you that the Trust has not knowingly disposed of any unique, irreplaceable material relating to the library.”
I tested this statement by asking to see uncatalogued lantern slides and their accompanying stock cards. A drawer of lantern slides was produced but the manuscript pre-War stock cards could not be found.
In 2023 items from WSL with Devon Libraries stamps and accession numbers began to appear on the open market with no indication that they had been withdrawn from the library, apart from a lightly pencilled mark “Ex-Lib” inserted by the embarrassed bookseller who had picked up several boxes of pamphlets, many of them damaged by damp, at the tail-end of a Honiton auction sale. Now it will be impossible to prove they have not been illegally removed as SWHT is unable to produce any of the almost 200,000 manuscript and typescript stock cards produced over more than a century in the course of accessioning and cataloguing the books. There is much information on the provenance, bookseller, donor, often the price paid and other details that never reached the digital record.
While we may never solve the question of the circumstances under which the stock cards were disposed of, the disposal of items in this way cannot be denied to show a slipshod attitude to the custodianship of books from the County’s local heritage collection. Local studies libraries: Library Association guidelines for local studies provision in public libraries (2nd edition, 2002) states (page 39):
When disposal is decided upon, it is suggested that the guidelines for disposal drawn up by the Library Association Rare Books Group be carefully followed. For example, it should be checked that the library has the authority to sell the items in question, and also that the copies are genuinely duplicate and not association copies, copies with significant annotations, or variant editions. The library should clarify its reasons for the disposal and also what it intends to do with any income. It should be recognised that considerable expense is involved in preparing material for disposal and documenting what has been disposed of. Because of the special nature of local studies collections, the decision to dispose of items should never be taken lightly.
Even Libraries Unlimited with their unqualified staff mark the light fiction and other works they offer for sale using a withdrawn stamp. I gave the Devon Heritage Centre a “Withdrawn from Westcountry Studies Library” stamp as a Christmas present in 2024.
6. The New Age? 2025-
But hopefully this long story of the book in Exeter and Devon could have a happy ending after all. After a shaky start because of Covid-19 the UNESCO Exeter City of Literature programme is under way with a wide range of initiatives, which are better described on their ever changing website than in a printed volume. The project emerged from lockdown in June 2021 with the immensely successful Exeter Book Market held in a huge barn of a place in the grounds of Powderham Castle where crowds of visitors of all ages visited the stands of local independent booksellers, publishers and others active in the world of the book, including archive staff for the important collections of the Courtenay family. The enthusiasm shown demonstrates that for Exonians and Devonians the book is certainly not dead. (Exeter City of Literature. 2021).
Let us hope that this enthusiasm will drive an initiative to bring back a substantial part of Exeter's historic literary collections to the heart of the city in an Exeter Literary Heritage Centre, not only with a library presence but also with a bookshop, exhibition hall, meeting room for talks and conferences, tourist information centre and space for local and family history societies, perhaps even a café. What a role for the gutted remains of the Royal Clarence Hotel – or any of the growing number of empty shop premises in the city centre.
It must be possible to do better and there are examples in Devon. In Barnstaple, one fifth the size of Exeter, the North Devon Athenaeum, an independent free library charity funded by endowments from local philanthropist W. F. Rock, works with the North Devon Record Office and Devon Library Service through Libraries Unlimited. Together they provide an active and well-informed service in the heart of the community. In 2024 they achieved the mammoth task of transporting, sorting, distributing and starting to list and catalogue the extensive collections of Bideford historian Peter Christie who died early in 2024.
Further afield there are also models, for example the Hull History Centre where the city and university work together to provide local studies lending and reference collections and an archive service in a modern building in the centre of the city, with space for exhibitions, meetings and group study.
In Devon the South West Heritage Trust has obtained funding for projects to conserve, list or transcribe archival collections. They were recently awarded a grant from The National Archives’ “Archives Revealed” programme to catalogue the Cary archive relating to Torquay and have received another to conserve, digitise and catalogue the Isca Collection of photographs assembled by the late Peter Thomas. Perhaps a similar funded project, employing qualified library staff, could be sought to retrieve as much as possible of the missing archival record. There are archived copies of the web catalogues on the Wayback Machine which which can be retrieved to show what was known to be in the Westcountry Studies Library in 2002, so it will be possible to ascertain what may have gone astray during the move. Although accession numbers of individual copies have not normally been recorded on the 2002 computer listings, the presence of more than one copy can sometimes be ascertained and these reserve copies could form the basis of an Exeter Heritage Centre in the heart of the City, working together with groups such as the Devonshire Association, the Devon History Society, the Devon Archaeological Society, the Devon Family History Society, the Devon and Cornwall Record Society, the Devon Wildlife Trust, museums, archives, educational, tourist and other potential stakeholders.
As Bodley's Librarian Richard Ovenden writes in Burning the books: a history of knowledge under attack: "libraries and archives help root societies in their cultural and historical identities through preserving the written record of those societies […] helping communities to appreciate their sense of place and common memory". In fact local studies libraries are doing for their patch what the British Library is doing for the whole nation – and without the benefit of legal deposit.
There is also a new dimension to local heritage literature that has emerged, and has been enhanced during covid, the therapeutic effects of reading and writing. The City of Literature is running training courses in bibliotherapy, which can help in the recovery from a wide range of mental conditions. Here the use of the local heritage collection can help individuals connect with their local community and help the alienated to integrate better.
And there is also a temporal dimension. Throughout this account I have been speaking not of local history collections but of local studies collections. Archives look to the records of the past; libraries also look to the present, to the concerns of the community we find ourselves in and the natural environment. Back in 1869 Sir John Bowring said in Exeter Guildhall: “Knowledge is power and it must be acknowledged that in this country ignorance is also power, and behind ignorance there is a mass of poverty, ignorance and crime. How are the ignorant to be elevated but by the possession of knowledge? Books, after all, are the true representatives of civilization; they are what good men of all days have left behind them. [...] It is the gathering up of all ages, the concoction of all knowledge: there out of the past you may study the past and provide for the future.” I would twist an old saw to say “Look after the present and the past will look after itself”. Many thousands of people across Devon, some alone but more often linked in charities, businesses, organisations, research bodies, local and national government are working to understand and improve our community. Is what they are doing worth while? If they think it is, why do they not send copies of their publications to the local studies collection to be part of the community memory?
Part of the answer is, because there is nobody in post to curate the collections. The idea expressed in the 1930s still remains “that a girl clerk able to type and a messenger boy supervised by a librarian, more or less honorary, could do the work, and both have some time to spare." Librarians do not even have to stamp books now. But books do not magically appear; even in this digital age data about the collections takes time, effort and knowledge to prepare. Items have to be sought out, acquired, properly documented and cared for. All this cannot be done by a hard-pressed librarian who comes down from Somerset one day a week.
And so I take my bow, to the sound of one hand clapping. There was a spoiler in my preface when I expressed pessimism that anything will happen in my lifetime. But on reflection I think that what I achieved for Devon between 1977 and 2005 was still worth while; therefore I have rather tediously listed the achievements of myself and the two giants on whose shoulders I have stood, which together span more than a century. I hope that it acts as a guide to these remarkable heritage collections and itself adds something to the community memory.
Appendix A
The Westcountry Studies Library's stock card files
The revelation in August 2023 of the major theft of ancient gems from the collections of the British Museum provided details of the difficulties faced in proving the provenance of the hundreds of stolen objects because of the gaps in documentation of the Museum’s collections since 1812. It was only the photographic memory, integrity and persistence of of the Danish gem dealer Dr Ittai Gradel that enabled so many of them to be returned. The British Museum committed itself to completing the documentation of its collections.
In Exeter, Devon’s local equivalent of the British Library, the Westcountry Studies Library (WSL), has had a similar chequered history in documenting its collections. On at least two occasions since 1975 there have been significant thefts from heritage collections in Exeter, one from the early children’s book collection when it was at Barley House and the other from the Westcountry Studies Library in 1979 which has already been described. Books from the first theft were tracked down to a bookseller in Honiton and the second to a bookseller in Tavistock. On both occasions ownership was proved by matching the handwriting of the accession number on the volumes with that on the stock cards. In both cases significant numbers of valuable items were recovered. The stock cards are significant for the following reasons:
They contain much information that has not yet been included in the digital record. Early computer systems had limited storage capacity and completing the long-neglected cataloguing of the books was prioritised. The bibliographer Robin Alston in the British Library realised the value of the information held in early, frequently manuscript, listings when initiating projects such as the Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue.
They have been used by researchers interested in the provenance of individual copies, books with annotations or inserts, sketches of vanished buildings or information about lantern slides.
They had been used in court cases when the handwriting on the stock cards matched that on stolen books. The lack of documentation in the British Museum is currently posing problems in the recently publicised theft of antiquities where the importance of full documentation of the collections has been repeatedly stressed. Conversely, records for withdrawn books could provide reassurance for booksellers unsure whether items offered might be stolen goods.
They shed light on how the collections were built up, an important theme in RAMM's award-winning displays. The Museum maintains meticulous and detailed records of its collections, built up over the same period as Exeter City Library and the Westcountry Studies Library. The Collections Manager says they take up a lot of room but are vital for their exhibition and educational work.
Westcountry Studies Library stock card sequencesThe total number of stock cards apparently destroyed around 2022 could be as high as 200,000 and were built up largely by three generations of librarians over more than a century (Harry Tapley-Soper 1902-1946, Geoffrey Paley 1946-1977 and Ian Maxted 1977-2005).
1. Books, pamphlets and some ephemera
Tentative stock card sequences based on examination of open access stock in DHC November 2024.
1a. Exeter City Library
There are normally in manuscript on pre-printed cards with information on provenance.
1890-1907. Sequence possibly started following Kent Kingdon Bequest: perhaps 10,000
1907-1945. Sequence possibly restarted following Brooking Rowe Bequest, reference items preceded by R perhaps 160,000 items covering both local and general reference stock (reaching 100,000 around 1930, 50,000 around 1920).
1946-1974. Sequence using date letters A-T (1946-1961) followed by numerical sequence, perhaps starting with 100,000 and extending to at least 250,000.
1b. Devon County Library
These are mostly typed on yellow cards and cataloguing is much briefer. Duplicate volumes were passed to Barnstaple in the 1980s to augment the local collection there but whether the stock cards followed them is unclear.
1924-1974. Sequence running to approximately 1,000,000, stamped on both reference and lending volumes (reaching 100,000 around 1932, 250,000 around 1952, 500,000 around 1960, later numbers often prefixed with A (for accession?) in 1960s and 1970s 550,000-996692+).
1c. Westcountry Studies Library
1974-2011. Sequence based on inverted date with running numbers for copies: 770101/01-99, after millennium 20010101/01-99. Copy numbers could be carried over to a later date if greater than 99. In 1978 extra months were invented during a stock check: 781301/01. For newly accessioned stock, cards were normally pink (not that that matters now that they are apparently lost).
1d. Devon Record Office
2023+. During stock work many items from the DRO library were integrated on the open shelves. The sequences have not been investigated, and it appears that some duplicates were sent for auction.
1e. South West Heritage Trust
2023+ During stock work adhesive labels with a stock number were inserted bearing a year followed by a running number. It has not been ascertained whether this sequence is common to items in Devon and Somerset or whether it applies only to books or also includes pamphlet, ephemera, illustrations, maps and archives.
2. Illustrations.
Searches conducted on the online catalogue of South West Heritage Trust 11 June 2024 provide some information as P&D (Print & Drawing) and SC (Somers Cocks numbers were used as control numbers for the period before ISBN and BNB numbers.
All illustrations. Total records for Westcountry Studies Library illustrations: 142,994 hits. Misleading as it appears to bring up all books with illustrations. Many are stored in high resolution on 300 CDs and 89 DVDs with images on the catalogue.
2a. Prints, drawings and photographs.
EPRS. Exeter Pictorial Record Society
Sequence not traced, it presumably reflects the numbering in the EPRS ledgers and also covers glass negatives.
P&D sequence
The P&D sequence was not limited to local items and included a range of collections. The on-line catalogue offers a few clues for the pre-War P&D sequence as these were used as a control number.
Records on catalogue: 17,518 hits (30% of sequence accounted for).
Photographs by Searley: 538 hits.
Photographs by Stabb: 1,850 hits.
P&D 1-377 The P&D sequence seems to have been started in 1924 on receipt of the Heber Mardon Collection on Napoleon and received the numbers 1-377
P&D 4,000-7,500 is within the range for the Fisher bequest, which includes the Thomas Shapter collection, so probably assigned during the later 1920s.
P&D 9,900-9,924. Additional Heber Mardon items.
P&D 10,000-10,400 seems to have been used largely for Cornwall prints and drawings.
P&D 30,330-30,350 was in use in 1937 when a collection of drawings by Robert Hurrell Froude was acquired by the Kent Kingdon Bequest.
P&D 32,000-34,250 was largely used for portraits
P&D 49,570. Last number in sequence traced, probably used 1941/2.
P&D 50,001-50,030 Sequence resurrected in the early 1980s for later Heber Mardon items.
P&D 50,031-59,371 (in June 2023). 58,998-59,305 noted in online catalogue. 2b. Lantern slides.
Produced mainly in the 1930s, these also include many non-local subjects. Details of photographer and date were normally given, information that does not always appear on the lantern slide itself. The pre-War LS sequence extends to at least LS5917.
Records on catalogue: 1,042 (18% of sequence accounted for).
Lantern slides by Searley: 275 hits.
Lantern slides by Stabb: 340 hits.
2c. Topographical prints.
SC sequence: 4,583 records for topographical prints (some also have P&D numbers and they were used for the Etched on Devon’s memory project, the on-line catalogue of which has been lost).
These were largely devised during a Manpower Services Commission project in the late 1970s to identify, print and conserve the extensive local glass negative collections. Record numbers were based on the dimensions of the glass plate, which was given a size letter and assigned a running number.
2e. Express and Echo photographs (1950-2000).
E&E sequence: 13,241 records listed by a volunteer to November 2024, no images.
As cataloguing progressed the following sequences resulted:
3a. Master cards.
These give full cataloguing details with the location of the main working copy of the item. On the verso are tracings for author, place, subject and name entries in the typed public catalogues and details of individual copies with accession numbers, locations and sometimes provenance information. Arrangement was by location of the working copy of each item. Often the only record of provenance is on the white master card, as stock cards produced after 1976 were very brief author, title and date records. The typed cards in the public catalogue have been discarded, as have the periodic printouts from the d-Base databases to 2005 following the introduction of the on-line catalogue.
3b. Withdrawn copies.
The policy in the 1970s was that no item should ever be discarded from the local studies collections and, following a major theft, security triggers were placed in most books and pamphlets with the accession number and location noted on the trigger. Over time local items were withdrawn from branches and passed to WSL, and extensive duplication arose. At first records were kept of duplicates transferred, sold or discarded but this was discontinued as items withdrawn from branches proliferated.
3c. Items not acquired.
This included items ordered but never received or items listed but not acquired. Following computerisation such items were not normally deleted from the catalogue as they were normally of some local significance, for example recording changed or unchanged reprints or editions it was decided not to acquire, and they completed the bibliographical record.
3d. Books believed lost in the Blitz.
This sequence was occasionally consulted to confirm whether these had since been found but physical items bearing the same stock record numbers were rarely located, so these were probably actual losses, of copies if not of titles.
It may be possible to reconstitute the stock records in part by noting stock numbers and other information for individual copies on the System Simulation database during the stock assessment and this might be supplemented by information from the Exeter City Archives records, for example committee minutes and reports and lists such as ECA/1/11/4/9 (Lists of books and documents evacuated from the City Library 1941-1944). This cannot however replace the loss of the original cards.
Appendix B
The Devon bibliography
With the poverty of coverage by the Westcountry Studies Library during the “Dark Age” the Devon bibliography becomes an important key to record Devon’s community memory. The master files are currently held on a series of Excel spreadsheets, in simple tab delimited text files with basic HTML coding built in, to generate web pages which can also be exported as PDF files. The format used is compatible with the internationally accepted Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard although it does not use MARC tags or Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) which are not suitable for local studies catalogues.
Field/column |
Contents |
Creator |
Brockett, Allan A. |
Nonfiling |
The |
Title |
Devon union list (D. U. L.) : a collection of written material relating to the county of Devon / |
Subtitle |
[rarely used, mainly for part or volume titles] |
Responsibility |
Allan A. Brockett |
Edition |
[1st edition – this is not normally noted] |
Publ. place |
Exeter : |
Publisher |
Exeter University Library, |
Publ. date |
1977. — |
Format |
iii,570 pages ; 22cm. — [+ Scale for maps or atlases] |
Controlno |
ISBN 0902746065. — [and/or DUL, SC, P&D etc.] |
Links |
<a href=”URL”>website</a>, accessed [date]. — |
Series |
[This item is not in a series]. — |
Item notes |
Gives locations of Devon books in six major libraries in the county. — |
Library |
WSL: 016/DEV/DEV ; DEI ; EXU ; BAR ; PLY. — |
Region |
Devon. |
Place |
[not applicable here, covers all Devon]. |
Subject |
Bibliographies. |
Name |
[of person, organisation etc, not applicable here]. |
Aspect |
[how the subject is treated, not applicable here]. |
Date span |
1500-1975. — |
The Westcountry subject string
This is a subject phrase with a consistent grammatical structure which can provide a precise and detailed subject description of documents in a wide range of formats. It derives from three main sources:
- 1. PREserved Context Index System (PRECIS), developed by Derek Austin around 1968 as a procedure for deriving the subject index entries for British National Bibliography (BNB).
- 2. Faceted classification, a process developed by Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan for his Colon Classification in 1933, arriving at five fundamental categories: Personality, Matter, Energy, Space and Time.
- 3. Rudyard Kipling’s six honest serving men:
I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.This produces a series of linked fields or columns:
Kipling |
Field/col. |
Details |
Where? |
Region. |
Westcountry, Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire (mainly Bristol), Channel Islands. |
Where exactly? |
Place. |
Community (town, parish) or major geographical feature. |
What? |
Subject. |
Concrete in plural form rather than abstract: Prefer Mines to Mining. |
Who? Which? |
Name. |
Personal name. Family name. Building name. Organisation name etc. |
How? |
Aspect.
|
One or more of: part, property, action, agent, relationship, viewpoint, format in that order. |
When? |
Datespan. |
Of content of document, not always of publication. |
As example of subject strings:
Region. Place. Subject. Name. Aspect. Datespan.
Devon. Exeter. Churches. Saint Petrock. Restoration. 1875.
Devon. Sidmouth. Guidebooks. 1830. [No name or aspect]
Devon. Torquay. Writers. Christie, Agatha. Works: Fiction.
Gazetteer (under development)
Groups records within larger districts, normally centred on market towns with their catchment parishes, snaking across Devon through:
- 1. East Devon (including Blackdown Hills and Jurassic Coast).
- 2. Exeter.
- 3. Teignbridge.
- 4. Torbay, South Hams.
- 5. Plymouth.
- 6. West Devon (including Dartmoor).
- 7. Mid Devon.
- 8. North Devon (including Exmoor).
- 9. Torridge.
Thesaurus (under development)
- Groups subjects under themes under nine main sections:
- 0. Resources, format.
- 1. Population.
- 2. Society.
- 3. Public services.
- 4. Industries.
- 5. Economy.
- 6. Communications.
- 7. Arts and leisure.
- 8. Environment.
- This means that terminology can be more flexible and reflect changes over time. Thus apothecaries and pharmacists can be grouped within health services, as can lunatic asylums and mental hospitals. The American terms used by Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are avoided, thus railways not railroads, cinema not movies.
