Last year the Valiant Soldier was awarded a grant from Your Heritage lottery funding of £33,300 to set up a Museum for Buckfastleigh and an Archives where locals and visitors can come and undertake research into family or town history. It is a very exciting project for us and we have been wanting to do this for some time. The new museum and archives will be on the first floor of the Information Centre adjacent to the Valiant Soldier Heritage Centre.
The grant from Your Heritage is very important to us. It means we can start to collect, conserve and archive different aspects of our town’s heritage – the wool and leather industries, the railway, agriculture, domestic life and the war years.However, before we can house the many artefacts that we are being offered we have to prepare the rooms.
The work is being gone by our volunteers who are putting many hours into the decorating, carpetting and building of cabinets.Its is not all straightforward! We discovered that we have had Death Watch beetle in the room we are using for the archives – and damp. Fortunately, they are no longer active but the floorbowards will have to be replaces first.
The funding has also paid for a new heating system for the museum as a whole; 10th anniversary celebrations last year (the Valiant Soldier has been open as a tourist attraction for 10 years); and training for the 26 volunteers on handling and caring for artefacts, and the production of materials for visitors and school children.
For two weeks in the summer, a small theatre company, whose Director lives locally, will be putting on presentations in each of the rooms of the Valiant Soldier – bringing to life characters who ran the former pub, or who visited it in years gone by. These tours of the Valiant Soldier, with presentations, will be later in the day, after the normal closing time. Keep an eye on our web site for dates and times. These presentations are also being funded by Your Heritage.
Other funding bodies include Ugbrooke Environmental Ltd (which paid for the decorating of the Valiant Soldier); Teignbridge District Council’s ‘Make a Difference’ grant; Devon Record Office and Teignbridge District Council’s Councillor’s Community Fund.
The new museum and archives should be ready by mid-season. Keep your fingers crossed!