OKEHAMPTON has been chosen as the new home for the Devon and Cornwall Police museum. The £100,000 project will eventually see a fascinating and historical collection of police memorabilia open to the public. The Heritage and Learning Resource, its official title, will be based in a number of rooms at the town police station in Exeter Road, alongside the existing police operational team. It will contain more than 17,000 artefacts — some dating back to the early 19th century — including police uniforms, truncheons, helmets, whistles, log books, stocks, photographs as well as a fully stocked library and archive facility. Plans are in progress to open the museum to the public some time in 2008. Curator Angela Sutton-Vane said: 'My vision is of a very exciting community space with an exhibition, "shop of crime," bookshop, café and very much accessible to the public. 'I'm keen that nothing of this great collection is left to be just stored away and forgotten. 'It is a great chance for the community to become involved with the police force and see more "behind the scenes". 'The image of this superb collection just sitting in a warehouse was not good and we needed to turn it into one the constabulary would be proud of, not just for members of the force but also so that it could be opened for the public. 'It not only reflects the heritage of Devon and Cornwall Police but it is important the museum can be used as a focus of the police working with, and within, the community itself.' 'We still cannot open up the museum to the public yet because we have a lot of building work to do, including the displaying of items and sorting out public and disabled access, parking and other health and safety criteria.' Angela has the huge task of cataloguing and preserving the thousands of items as well as more than 6,000 police records. They have already been sorted out but there are still a further 6,000 to be properly archived. She is appealing for volunteers. The museum collection was built up when Devon and Cornwall Police merged in 1967, by police historian PC Brian Estill. He amassed the thousands of items and kept them stored at police headquarters in Middlemoor, Exeter, although they were not open to the public. But under police reorganisation the storage space was lost and the collection was transferred to a warehouse in nearby Marsh Barton in the late 1970s. It was left accumulating dust until November last year when Angela Sutton-Vane had the huge task of resurrecting and sorting the valuable collection into a more cohesive display. These are exciting times for the museum as they have also attracted a £50,000 grant to take a 'mobile museum' out into the community through the work of its education officer Kirsty Woods, a qualified teacher. Thanks to a £50,000 Heritage Lottery grant, which will be topped up by the police authority, Kirsty will have a van to take museum items to schools all over Devon and Cornwall to conduct educational workshops on policing history and citizenship. Kirsty also promises that apart from being educational it will also be great fun for the children. The mobile museum is due to be up and running by Easter. l Volunteers are wanted to help Angela sort out the huge task of cataloguing the thousands of items, manning the education office and dealing with hundreds of enquiries. If you would like to help the museum contact Angela on 01837 658414.
