Lost History

The appearence of the latest Silverton History Society calender has led to some discussion of how much of the history of the village nas been lost. As I remarked in an earlier post the village lock up burnt down somewhere at either the end of the nineteenth, or the beginning of the twentieth centuries. The lock up was situated in Workhouse Court and the old workhouse can be seen in the phoyotograph of The Lamb and the High Street on the calender which was taken about 1880. So far, no one has been able to find a report of the fire that destroyed it. Likewise, there is no account that I know of concerning the disasterous fire which destroyed The Shambles and parts of The Square in the mid nineteenth century, Unlike the fires that destroyed large parts of Stoke Canon which were well recorded, Siloverton's conflagrations seem not to have attracted the same attention.

Another of Silverton's catalouge of lost history are the houses that once stood on the small track mear the farm once owned by the late Gordon Symonds which is now known as Windmill lane. We know that there were a number of houses there because they appear on old tithe maps and it is believed that they were probably also destroyed by fire but beyond that almost nothing is known about them or who lived there. Some believe that this settlement might even have been the original site of the first settlement that became Silverton but who knows ?. Another examle is the location of the Temperance Tavern that allegedly stood in King Street when it was Back Lane, and indeed, at least one other Tavern which supposedly stood in the same street, I am sure that others could give other examples.

All this illustrates the imprtance of the work now being done by local historians in recording the more recent history of our village and the need to preserve any material relating to the past. Even in our overdocumented society it is surprising how much slips through the net. More importantly, the real need is to preserve peoples personal and family histories so that old diary in the drawer might well turn out to be of importance to future historians in what it records about day to day life in the village.