Branscombe Project © 2009-2012

- A few surprises have emerged -  one of which is the presence of an Auxiliary Unit. Sounds harmless enough, but in fact these units, with duties similar to the French Resistance, were going to form a last ditch defence if or when the Germans landed. Sue Dymond has got their names from an official source and, with Ralph Cox’s help, is researching what was involved in terms of practice and training. We’d welcome any information on this unit locally.

    Ivy Wohlgemuth has sent us a marvellous memoir of her time as an evacuee in the village.

Michael Clarke, Nobby Clarke’s son, has given us boxes of slides and photograph albums going back to the 1930s.

Amanda has been working with the Branscombe primary school. The children have been listening to some of the wartime stories and creating their own pictures of what life might have been like.

Memories/memorabilia gratefully received.

· Three Trunks in a Branscombe Attic

In the summer of 2010 the Project were told about a fine collection of photo albums and then, amazingly, about three trunks of letters etc in a Branscombe attic. Barbara Farquharson and John Torrance were given permission to catalogue and scan the collection. It includes:

- a small casket of letters mainly from Samuel Tansley to Louisa Tansley neé Brooks, dating to the 1830s telling the moving story of a small lower middle class London family.

- a huge collection of letters and memorabilia belonging to Amelia Tansley and her daughter Maud providing a fantastic overview of a Victorian family.

- amongst these letters are many from Amelia’s son, Arthur Tansley, who became a famous ecologist and an early advocate of Freudian psychoanalysis.

- there’s material about the shy poet Charlotte Mew.

- All these people came to be connected in one way of another with the Chick family of Branscombe, and there are lots more letters and photos of them too.

Barbara gave a talk about these finds on 28 February 2011 in the village hall, and the Branscombe part of the story will form part of the Easter exhibition on Three Branscombe Houses.

· The Easter exhibition on Three Branscombe Houses

- Wadham College Oxford are sending materials for an exhibition on Dorothy Wadham, founder of Wadham College and resident of Edge Barton in Branscombe.

- The Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter are bringing, as part of their outreach programme, artefacts excavated by Tom Lethbridge at Hole House, Branscombe.

- Major Hibbert, who lived at Hole House, has given the project an album of photos and negatives of the village taken in the 1970s. Joan Doern is busy scanning them and some of these will be on display during the exhibition.

· Medieval Branscombe

    John Torrance has been working on medieval documents and written an account of 14th century Branscombe up to the time of the Black Death. Not only has he recreated a manorial landscape but he’s been able to collate medieval personal names with many extant place-names in the village.

     · Cliff plats

Barbara and Sue are intending to produce another Project booklet, this time on the Branscombe cliff plats. These tiny fields were carved out of the landslides along the coast and because of the sheltered environment produced some of the earliest potatoes in the country. They were in use from the 1700s through to the middle of the twentieth century.
Much work has already been done, but Alan Gosling (son of Cliffy) has given us new material, and Tom White has shown us some early rent books.

We’ve now started talking to people who still own chalets on the old plats. Jane Godbeer has lent us photographs, old log-books, and an early memoir by H. Carter. Lizzie Manley has given us a cuttings album of the village and photos of the past as well. Suzy Lloyd has emailed photographs from the 1970s.

We’d be grateful to hear of anyone with memories or photos of the plats.

· A Storeroom for Exhibition Boards

Thanks to the Village Hall Committee the Project now has a permanent dedicated storeroom for its archives in the Village Hall, as well as felt boarding on the walls of the Hall itself for ongoing exhibitions. Grateful thanks to all who have made this possible and most particularly to John Bass and Ralph Cox who installed racks for the exhibition boards.

   · Genealogy

    From time to time we get a few questions on Branscombe families in the past. We know people find our online census and parish registers useful and it is good to get feedback on this. Geoff has recently emailed us to say thanks for the help he got in researching the Branscombe Bartletts. He is kindly allowing us to display his family tree. He also asked when the Photographic Archive page might have some content. Good question Geoff!

PROJECT NEWS - 2010

We thought that you might be interested to hear about ongoing projects and about different items that have come our way! We’d be very happy if you want to send us your own memories or memorabilia.

· WW2 Exhibition

We’re working towards an exhibition that will go up in the Village Hall in the autumn of 2011. It’s about the experience of World War II from a village point-of-view. The response to requests for photos and documents has already been fantastic.

- A short documentary film – ‘Every Little Helps’ - has been given to the Project by Margaret Rogers. It arrived as an 8 mm film in an old tin box. It’s now been digitised and Chris Gradwell has created a superb musical background.

In October Amanda Statham organised, with a lot of help from people in the village, a coffee morning and film and photo show. A large number of people came – people with memories of the village, and people from further afield. It was a moving experience to see the war years come alive as locals collected paper for the war effort, made camouflage nets, paraded through the village and danced in the square. We were able to put names to faces on the film and on photos of the Munitions factory.

News and Events

WINTER TALKS 2012


FEB 27:           Phil Planel:
In the footsteps of Orlando Hutchinson

MARCH 26:     Andrew Burton:
Cow Pats, Untouchables, and Installation Art in India

APRIL 30:        Barbara Farquharson, Elsie Mayo, John Torrance:
                           drama-doc:
                             Literary Visitors to Branscombe