About Us

The Shebbear History Project aims to gather information, store it safely and make it available to the wider community, stories, photographs of the buildings, people of Shebbear and their lives. Information to compliment books already published. Of particular interest would be to obtain old photographs of inside shops, houses etc. showing what they once looked like.

Trace all possible history of first construction and owners, residents and uses. How did the building look originally, show various changes.

For example, Shebbear College, Shebbear community school, Village Hall, Church room, Lake Chapel, Rowden Chapel, St Michaels Church, Devil’s Stone Inn, Libbear, Ladford, Worden, Aish, Dipper.

Religion

Religion has a very important place in forming any society, Shebbear has been influenced by religion more than many communities. Perhaps not always obvious to the casual visitor. The Project intends to unpick some of the very interesting history of religion in Shebbear and its influence on much of the world.

The Constables, Police houses and arrests/cases through the years.

Stories of what people did, try to build a picture of what life was like in Shebbear before. What laws were in place, the likely punishments. The politics of the day, what wars were being fought, who ran the country etc. How did apprenticeships work in the 19c? Who were the slaves recorded in the Doomsday Book? Could we make a case for a blue plaque? Perhaps we could seek special status for the Devil’s Stone as there is currently no protection for it.
Commerce

Quarries – Exact location of quarries and what they extracted.

Create maps to easily identify lost buildings, changed names, new roads etc.

So, what would be the purpose of this and what can be done with the information?
It would be a project that all people living in Shebbear interested in the history could contribute. New information could be shared with the North Devon Record’s Office, we could create lever arch files of each building/subject with maps, plans, occupants etc. to be stored in a safe place within the village where any local can freely access them out of interest or their own family or house research.

We hope that people will cooperate by providing documents and images from their own properties and if we were able to get some publicity, we might encourage people who have moved away to contribute.

It would then be possible to consider producing a book/let, our ultimate aim is to obtain a central storage area to make all hard archives available for public access. A history trail with QR codes linked to specific pages on this website for people to follow, is a long term aim too.

Ideally, the various aspects of this project would encourage younger generations to get involved and show interest in what went on before them.