Heritage festival features the poorest

The hidden corners of Tavistock’s history are having the light of discovery shone on them for a special festival which features the underprivileged.

Tavistock is known for its abbey remains and obvious grand architecture and the wealthy noble fathers of the town which paid for it. However, the annual Tavistock Heritage Open Days reveals the untold stories of unheralded people who built such buildings and provided other services through their sweat and skills.

The open days features guided walks and talks with one talk by historian Dr Sue Andrew lifting the lid on a poor family headed by unmarried mother of eight sons Elizabeth Payne, born in Dunterton in 1762.

She brings to life the story of the family across three generations: “Our history is so often told in terms of the great and good, tales of powerful people who left diaries and letters, lived in grand houses with fine portraits and who were recorded for posterity in marble tombs – people whose words we can still read, whose faces we can still see and whose monuments decorate our churches.

“But there is another story to be told, a hidden story of those at the other end of the social scale, the poor and dispossessed, who could not read or write, whose words and faces are now lost to us and whose burial places are unmarked.

“As the focus of Tavistock Heritage Open Days this year is ‘Everyday Lives’, it is time to give voice to those people whose lives were often a struggle from birth to death but whose steady toil on the land enabled a rapidly growing population across the country to be clothed and fed.”

In her talk ‘A Pair of Shoes for a Poor Child’, Sue tells of Elizabeth’s youngest son, Robert, born in Lamerton in 1807, who worked throughout his life as an agricultural labourer; and his youngest son, James, born in Bradstone in 1853, and employed as an agricultural labourer and miner before leaving the land in 1875 to join the police force in Torquay and Exeter.

Elizabeth, who never married, is named in the Overseers of the Poor records as ‘Elizabeth Payne in distress’ and as being given a blanket then a pair of shoes for her child. She lived in Lamerton Poor House, dying in 1847 at the then great age of 85, to be buried in the churchyard.

Using Bradstone, Brentor, Dunterton and Lamerton parish records, Sue will tell a story of extreme hardship, tragedy but also triumph of human spirit against the odds.

She said: “The story reflects the history of the time in its telling of huge social changes and of the difficulties of life on the land. In the harshest of circumstances, where a blanket or a new pair of shoes provided by the Overseers of the Poor could make all the difference, it is a story of endurance, revealing how education opened new doors for families with new opportunities.”

The free talk is at 6.30pm, on Tuesday September 15. Please book through: https://www.heritageintavistock.org/tavistock-heritage-open-days and https://wegottickets.com/f/24216