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Tavistock history

From 1983 to 1987 I was Librarian-in-charge of the public library in Tavistock, Devon. During those years I didn't actually live in the town - it was too expensive for a humble librarian - but promotion to a job in Plymouth in 1987 meant that I could afford to move into the town. I continued to live there from 1987 until 1999 when I moved into Plymouth.

During my years of working and living in Tavistock I learnt a great deal about its history. It was the birthplace of Sir Francis Drake who is commemorated in the town by a Victorian statue in the middle of a roundabout. Ironically, the statue is better known from the copy which stands on Plymouth Hoe.

For the best part of 400 years, most of the town was in the hands of the Russell family. During the nineteenth century the Dukes of Bedford were able to exploit the very rich copper deposits found on their land in the Tamar Valley. At one time, in mid-century, the Devon Great Consols mine was the most productive in the world. Late production stopped and the waste was used to produce arsenic to fight the cotton bole weevil in the United States. It was said that the was enough arsenic in the area to poison the entire population of the world.

During the nineteenth century, the Russell family spent some of its money on rebuilding the centre of the town using the local greenish Hurdwick stone. For a long period the vicar was the Rev. E. A. Bray. You can read more of the fascinating story of Rev. Bray, his wife the novelist Anna Eliza Bray, and her servant Mary Maria Colling here.

Although Tavistock didn't get anything like a modern public library until this century, there was a library in the town from the days of the Benedictine Abbey. It is thought that a very early printing press (said to be only the fourth in England) existed in the Abbey, and the first book to be printed there there was Boethius' De consolatione.

In 1799 a group of local gentry decided to found a public library in the town. In 1841 a new librarian was appointed - William Merrifield. When I arrived in Tavistock in 1983 I was delighted to discover that "my" library had some relics of William in the form of some early stereoscopic photographs of the area, including the then new Tavistock and South Devon Railway. You can see the photos and read more about William here.