A COMBINED audience of 85-plus people from as far away as the United States to as close as "up the road", joined Crediton Library virtually to enjoy a free day of local history talks on Wednesday, July 1.

Following on from the recent success of the Crediton Literary Festival, the library hosted a programme of events online, using the Zoom platform to allow PowerPoint presentations and lectures to be sent live directly to people’s laptops and mobile devices.

Kicking off the day at 10am was John Heal, from the Crediton Area History and Museum Society, with "Lost Crediton". John showed many photographs of buildings in Crediton that have been lost, demolished or significantly changed over the years. This was an extremely popular talk and provided a fascinating insight into the town in years past.

Following John at 11.30am, food historian Dr Paul Cleave, from the University of Exeter, gave a talk on rationing in the Second World War, and the innovative recipes that household cooks employed to make the best of the food that they could get.

There were a number of parallels drawn with our current situation and cooking habits, although the line was drawn at a recipe for "mock banana" which involved parsnips and banana essence!

Tony Gale, organiser of the Crediton and District U3A History Group, spoke at 1pm on the subject of the Crediton Great Park, using documents and maps to show where the deer park used to lie, and the extent of its spread across the town.

This was followed by an open discussion with interested attendees from Mark Norman, Library Assistant at Crediton Library, on the ways that local history resources in the library can be developed based on lessons we are learning now.

Finally, at 2.30pm, Brian Carpenter from the Devon Archives and Local Studies Service at Great Moor House drew together the subjects of the day, highlighting interesting and useful documents in the Archives which would support further research.

He was also able to answer questions about what the service at the Devon Heritage Centre might look like when it re-opens.

The day was extremely useful and valuable, not only by providing some fascinating insight into our local history in the town, but also by starting to explore more ways that the various history groups in the area can all come together to do more to further interest and research in the subject.

Sessions from the Crediton Local History Day can be viewed on the Crediton Library YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0AU5F-0jQzJq_lPd6NZ45w .

To keep up-to-date with what is happening at Crediton Library, follow on Facebook at: facebook.com/CreditonLibrary/ or visit the website: https://www.devonlibraries.org.uk/web/arena/creditonlibrary .

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