Ancient Maps of Exeter Revealed

 Ancient maps of Exeter that have been unseen for centuries have been found...

Click on the above image to read more.

Members Area

Visitors to the site may notice a 'members' tab at the top of the screen.

Please note this area is under construction at present (Ferbruary 2021) and is not accessible.

In due course members of the DCRS will be supplied with a password to gain access to this area. 

DCRS Book Sale

Some of the 150 books being shipped this week by our Hon. Secretary, Elly Babbedge, to our members as part of the DCRS book sale.  

The Exeter Cloth Dispatch Book, 1763-5

 The deadline for joining the Society and receiving a copy of the Exeter Cloth Dispatch Book has now been extended to 1 December 2020.

Please see the earlier post here for full details.

BBC Radio Devon

Dr Todd Gray is currently broadcasting 15 minute pieces on aspects of Devon history every weekday on BBC Radio Devon at 13.10.  These will run through June, and possibly July, and while all of our societies have stopped meeting for lectures these are meant to help alleviate the sense of isolation some of us are feeling.

Devon & Cornwall Record Society Facebook Page

The Devon & Cornwall Record Society is sponsoring a series of daily blogs by our leading heritage specialists (historians, archivists, archaeologists, librarians, writers and curators) in Devon and Cornwall on how life in quarantine has made them re-evaluate history.  These are running through June and July and can be found on the society’s Facebook page (click on the DCRS logo to the left of your screen).  

The society exists to publish original documentary material and this year’s volume is a facsimile reproduction of Devon’s only woollen cloth collection - from the 1760s.  It comes free with this year’s membership (at £16.50) or on publication later this year (at £30.00).  Details will be posted on this website in due course.

Oddy Famly Documents

Please click here to view a provisional list of some three hundred Devon documents given by the Oddy family to the Devon & Cornwall Record Society for deposit within its collection.  

These papers will be available at the Devon Heritage Centre, hopefully, later this year.  The society’s council had intended to hold event this summer to showcase the documents but the current situation has postponed these plans.  While we are in this current crisis it is possible for DCRS members to request jpegs of these documents and these will be sent via e-mail.  

To order a jpeg please email todd@toddgray.co.uk

These papers date from the late 1500s to the late 1700s.  They originated with the business of the Devon County courts at Rougemont Castle in Exeter and the majority are constables’ presentments providing lists of freeholders and copyholders for jury duty.  The society’s president has written about Devon juries.[i] Dr Stephen Roberts explains that:

`In early modern England and Wales, the assizes and quarter sessions courts managed local government as well as the justice system. There were two kinds of juries. The grand jury, comprising more socially elevated minor gentry and yeomanry, considered whether a defendant had a case to answer, and also ‘presented’, or brought to the attention of the courts, any matters that the courts might address, ranging from moral turpitude to defective highways and drains. The second kind of jury was the trial or petty jury, whose job was to find defendants guilty or not guilty.

                An act of 1696 sought to reform a jury system that had long been reliant on ancient custom. Forty years earlier, Devon assizes and quarter sessions relied on the services of handfuls of men to serve on juries. While this ensured that the courts could guarantee that juries could be empanelled and justice administered, the practice of using ‘professional jurors’ was plainly open to abuse and to an intolerable financial burden on jurors compelled to abandon their normal work when trials were extended or postponed. The 1696 act stipulated that parish constables should bring in lists to quarter sessions, every Michaelmas, of male freeholders and copyholders between the ages of 21 and 70. The clerk of the peace was to create a book of all the parish returns, which would henceforth form the basis of jury recruitment. Yorkshire, like Devon, was a huge county, and so dependent had Yorkshire assizes become on their tiny number of jurors, it was decreed that no-one in Yorkshire from then on was to serve on a jury more than once every four years. No such stipulation applied to Devon, but a similar tale could have been told here. What had been a convenient way of ensuring reliable county government in 1649 had become corruption and unfairness by 1696.’   

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[i] J. S. Cockburn & Thomas A. Green (ed.), Twelve Good Men and True: The Criminal Trial Jury in England, 1200-1800 (Princeton, 1988), 182-213.

Dr Todd Gray
27 March 2020

DCRS AGM & Conference

The trustees have postponed the DCRS AGM and Conference on Exeter Maps to 3 October 2020, if the current situation allows.

Dr Todd Gray

27 March 2020

William Birchynshaw's Map of Exeter

Our new map volume is published!

It will be delivered to all our subscribers this week.

We will have a shipment of another several hundred by next week and these will be available for sale.

Anyone interested in purchasing a copy please email us: 

admin@devonandcornwallrecordsociety.co.uk

Todd Gray - Desert Island Documents

The seventh in our series of Desert Island Documents, which took place on 7 November 2019 at Exeter Guildhall, with Todd Gray being interviewed by Mark Stoyle can be seen here:

Drake, Letters from the Country, Letters from the City

This year's volume on the Drake correspondence was launched at the Maltster's Arms, Woodbury on 30 October 2019.

Dee Tracey, Todd Gray, Alan Lumb, Mike Tracey, Charity Scott-Stokes, John Crellin

A Lord Lieutenant in Wartime Podcast

Dr Richard Batten, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, talks with Dr Tom Thorpe of the Western Front Association, about a collection of papers relating to the wartime experience of Hugh Fortescue, the Fourth Earl Fortescue, who was Lord Lieutenant for Devon during the Great War, that he has recently edited.

To listen to the podcast click on the cover image below.

These papers are collected in a volume produced by the Devon and Cornwall Record Society (http://www.devonandcornwallrecordsociety.co.uk/) and published by Boydell Press.

Drake, Letters from the Country, Letters from the City

This year’s volume on the Drake correspondence will be launched at the Malster’s Arms, Woodbury, at 2.30pm on 30 October 2019.

Members who wish to attend should email our Hon. Secretary at: elly.babbedge@hotmail.co.uk

Members of the Society for 2019 will be able to collect their copy at the event while those unable to attend will have their copy posted in early November or can make other arrangements through Elly.

Subscribers to our volume on the Birchynshaw map of Exeter of 1743 will want to know that it will be shipped in mid December.  Orders for the book at the reduced price can be sent until 1 December 2019.

Todd Gray Interview With Devon Live

Todd Gray being interviewed by Devon Live about the William Birchynshaw Map of Exeter

Videos courtesy of Matt Carter, Devon Live

A Lord Lieutenant in Wartime

A Lord Lieutenant in Wartime was launched at Devon County Hall on 10 January with the society’s guests David Fursdon, Lord Lieutenant of Devon, and Lady Arran, great grand-daughter of the 4th Earl Fortescue.

We were welcomed by John Hart, leader of Devon County Council, and a copy of the volume was presented to Lady Arran by Dr Richard Batten, editor of the volume.

Our chair, Professor Andrew Thorpe, presided over the event.

DCRS members were sent their copies shortly after the launch.

Professor Andrew Thorpe, David Fursdon, Dr Richard Batten, Lady Arran, Councillor John Hart

Change of address

Please note that we have moved our official address - formerly the Devon & Exeter Institution - to the Devon Heritage Centre, where our records are housed. All correspondence should be sent to:
Devon and Cornwall Record Society, Devon Heritage Centre, Great Moor House, Bittern Road, Exeter, EX2 7NL