What are the "Time Travellers"?

The Inaugural meeting of the "Time Travellers" took place on Friday 4th October 2024 at Sampford Courtenay Village Hall with Veronica Matthews demonstrating just what you can find out about the house you live in by searching just some of the records that we hold, thanks to the research done by Stephanie Pouya whilst writing "The Book of Sampford Courtenay with Honeychurch".

While claiming not to be "historians" - but just people with an interest in the Place we live, the People that have lived there before us, and the Purpose they lived here and what they did within our parish - a few of us would like to investigate further - would you?

Some ideas of what we could do next?

  • Would you like to join up to research your own property or other historical properties in the parish?

     

  • Would you like help to research your own history on your own at home?
  • Would you join in a trip to see our "Fire Engine" at Okehampton Museum - or help discover & map all the quarries in the parish?

    Have you got other ideas? - Let us know!

     

Devon Family History

Devon Family History Society can help people trace families in Devon and help people living in Devon trace their families wherever they may be. Full details can be found at https://www.devonfhs.org.uk/ There are meetings online and in person, we have a research centre in Exeter and a wealth of resources and knowledge at your disposal.

 

The website to use to look for birth, marriage and death records were

https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl

A free site. 

Less easy to negotiate and also free is https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/login.asp but in some cases, this gives extra information that is not on the other site. This is also the site you will need if you want to order copies of the certificates.

 

Many other records are available on subscription websites. DFH  recommend Find My Past, https://www.findmypast.co.uk/ over its main rival Ancestry https://www.ancestry.co.uk/ as Find My Past has many Devon records that Ancestry does not. Both Find My Past and Ancestry are available at the Devon Family History Society Research Centre, at South West Heritage Centre in Exeter and Barnstaple and in many libraries. Devon Family History Society also has many records in the Members’ Area of its website that are not available elsewhere.

Have you got any "Witches" marks in your house?

 Laurie Smith has written on so-called daisy wheels from the perspective of a Geometer. Below is a link to an article he wrote on daisy wheels linking them to the Three Hares in Corfe Mullen church, Dorset, although the device is also found in the church at Sampford Courtenay: https://historicbuildinggeometry.uk/article/three-hares-corfe-mullen/

Find out more about your own property?

For those wanting a guide to researching the history of their houses, there's useful info here: https://www.buildinghistory.org/