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News from the Ball Clay Heritage Society September/October 2007 This edition of our news page includes:
A series of three walks down the Templer Way from Haytor to Newton Abbot, on the route of the Haytor Granite Tramway and Stover Canal, will be conducted during September and October. These will give a valuable insight into the historic means of transporting the Haytor granites and Bovey Basin ball clays to the port of Teignmouth. A talk on the Properties and Uses of Lignite, a mineral associated with the South Devon Ball clay deposits, will be given by John Fiske in November. The Granite Tramway and start of the Templer Way walk. On Sunday, 9th of September 2007, 17 Members and guests took part in the first of a series of walks tracing the route of the granite tramway, the Templer Way and the Stover canal all of which have historical connections the south Devon ball clay industry in the past. The walk was led by our own member, Reg Procter in overcast and pleasantly cool conditions and covered a distance of just over 5 miles in 3 hours. The walk commenced to the north of Haytor Rocks to take in the two disused granite quarries on Haytor and then picked up the old Granite Tramway which in parts is remarkably well preserved and it was easy to see some notable features such as points and marshalling sidings. The tramway and Templer Way follow each other through the Yarner Wood Nature Reserve and the walk terminated at the Edgemoor Hotel at 13-30 hours with John Pike thanking Reg and Geoff Hughes (who organized it) for an excellent and most interesting morning which was enjoyed by all who took part. It was also announced that the next 2 walks in the series have had to be put back by one week each to the 30th of September and 14th of November respectively due to unforeseen circumstances. Photographic images of the walk are on record.
See below for a brief report on Roger Harding's talk on the Stover Canal at the Society's AGM on 22nd March. On Thursday 23rd November 2006 22 members attended a very enjoyable and interesting talk by Martin Stentiforda on 'Ceramics'. Martin has had a long career in the clay industry and has worked with many ceramics companies on their ceramic body formulations. He was formerly Technical Director of WBB Devon Clays, and is now a consultant to clay production companies around the world. Members learnt about the long history of ceramic production and the important role of ball clays. Martin pointed out that the demand for Devon ball clays was very strong, especially from Europen tile producers and from sanitaryware producers in many parts of the world. Although the UK ceramics industry was declining with dramatic rapidity, he opined that international demand would secure the future of the local industry for many years to come. Society members paid a very interesting visit to Kelly Mine near Lustleigh on Sunday 8th October 2006. Members were given a conducted tour of the former micaceous haematite works and were able to see 'shiny ore' being processed through the machinery that had been restored to working order by the members of the Kelly Mine Preservation Society. Many similarities with the processes used in the production of ball and china clays were observed. The Society's 2007 AGM and the Stover Canal The Society's 2007 AGM was held on Wednesday 22 March at 7.00pm in Kingsteignton Community Hall, Rydon Road, Kingsteignton. See below for the text of the Chairman's report to the AGM. At the AGM Roger Harding, the Chairman of the Stover Canal Society, gave a well-received talk on the history of the Canal and recent developments concerning the restoration of the Canal. The Stover Canal was constructed in 1790 by James Templer II of Stover for the ball clay industry. For almost 150 years the Canal played an extremely important role in the transportation of ball clays from the pits and mines near Kingsteignton to the port of Teignmouth. It was probably one of the most commercially successful canals built in Britain. The Canal had ceased to be used by 1937 as a result of lorries being introduced to transport the clays to the port. For further information about the history of the Canal and its restoration, see the Stover Canal Society website General
Committee Society
Meetings Chairman's
Annual Report to the Society AGM, 22nd March 2007 Welcome to the 8th AGM of the ball Clay Heritage Society. I would like to update you with what the Society has been doing over the last twelve months. The membership of the General Committee has remained unchanged during the year, and it has met once since the last AGM. As I will mention later, individual committee members have been involved with quite a lot of activity during the year, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the committee members, and particularly Bryn our secretary, Geoff our events secretary, Bill our Dorset Group leader and John our treasurer for the time and energy they have put into the Society during the year. I am very pleased that all the committee members are willing to stand for re-election. At our last AGM we had a very interesting talk by Mike Perriam on the Dartmoor tin industry, of which there is still much evidence on parts of the Moor. In June members of the Society visited our garden at Heathercombe and were fortified with cream teas, which the ladies helped to provide. In October Geoff organised an excellent visit to the Kelly Mine near Lustleigh where, thanks to the restoration work that has been put in over the years by members of the Kelly Mine Preservation Society, we were able to see how the ’shiny ore’ was processed. Finally, in November, Martin Stentiford gave us a very informative and entertaining talk on the application of ball clays in ceramics. Unfortunately, Geoff is not here to update you on the talks and outings planned for this year. However, amongst the ideas considered by the committee and which Geoff has been pursuing are a joint visit with the China Clay History Society to the WBB Minerals Cornwood & Shaugh china clay works (tentatively scheduled for a Saturday in September), a boat trip on the River Teign, a walk down the Haytor Granite Tramway, a talk by Gary Stringer of WBB Minerals on the company’s interesting biodiversity work in the Bovey Basin and a talk on the history of the Stover Estate by the bursar of Stover School. We hope to be able to send details of fixtures to members shortly. The loan of exhibits and one of the Society’s display cases to Teignmouth Museum continued in 2006 for a fourth year, and we have agreed to lend them for a further year during 2007. It has recently been announced that the Museum has succeeded in winning a £400,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund for the extension of the Museum. The Museum’s trust, called Teign Heritage, has to raise the remaining £300,000 required, and it is hoped that this will be done to enable building work to start in 2008. As in previous years we lent some material for a small ball clay display at the Chudleigh Knighton Fair in August. With Steve Carreck’s help, we are currently in the process of setting up a new ball clay display in the Bovey Tracey Heritage centre, which will complement the displays that the Centre is mounting this year on Bovey Pottery and Candy’s. I believe that some or all of our display may remain on a longer-term basis. This museum would be the most appropriate place at which to display the reconstructed Haytor Granite Tramway wagon that some of our members made in 2000 and which is currently stored at Abbrook, but unfortunately the museum does not have the facilities for this. We have agreed to mount a display using our portable screens at the ‘celebrations’ of the ‘Great Fire of Chudleigh’ on 27 May. The proposal to mount temporary exhibits at Newton Abbot Library and at WBB Minerals HQ in Cheshire have yet to be followed up. Our larger artefacts, including the Granite Tramway wagon, are still stored at Abbrook works. We plan this year to do some restoration work on the ‘crab’ and cyder press at Abbrook Farm. In October I gave a talk on the history of the ball clay industry to the Dawlish Local History Group, and I am due to give another talk to the Devon Family History Society in April. Just one oral history recording was made during the past years and that was by Tony Vincent and myself with Grahame Dawes. As a trustee of the WBB Minerals Pension Scheme I am aware of how many of the old clay workers are passing away, and it would be tremendous if one or more volunteers would use our mini disc recorder to record their stories before it is too late. Alan and Sally Barclay have continued their researches into the Watts family and the families with which they inter-married, and I think this will give us a clearer picture of how the Watts’ became involved in the production of ball clays in the 18th century. Sally has now restored the leather bindings of most of our ledgers and other archive material. Tony Vincent has continued to gradually work through our collection of photographs, scanning and cataloguing them using our Catalist software. In February he attended a useful training day in Dawlish run by Catalist. During the year Tony has been working on our Stover Canal photographs and Eric Johnson’s collection of photographs of ECC’s Devon and Dorset operations, and is currently working on North Devon and Dorset underground photographs. This is an enormous but important job, and we would welcome volunteers to help with it. Early in 2006 a book by Rod Garner on the Torrington and Marland Light Railway was published with a number of photographs from our collection. We are currently helping Mike Messenger, the author of the book ‘North Devon Clay’, to produce a revised edition of his book with fresh material that has come to light since the first edition was published in 1982. The clayheritage.org website is up and running and is the place to look for the latest information about the Society, as well as a mass of information about the ball clay industry. Tony is steadily adding material to the site, including recently the Pike, Fayle 1950’s brochure about the Dorset clays, which has helped to give a better balance between information about the Devon and Dorset clays on the website. The Picture Gallery is still relatively undeveloped, but Tony expects to work on that this year. We have been made aware that the visibility of our website on Google and other search engines needs to be improved, partly by establishing more links with other web sites – which we are addressing – but it is nevertheless starting to generate e-mails from those who have found us, addressed to mail@clayheritage.org. As a Pension Scheme Trustee, I have been trying to get WBB Minerals to send an annual pensions newsletter to the company’s pensioners and deferred members, and I believe that at last the person responsible has produced a format and mock up. I am hoping that the Society will be able to ‘piggy back’ a simple, single-sheet newsletter of our own to remind these people of our existence, what we do and our interest in receiving historic ball clay materials. As I am sure that you are all aware, this is a period of considerable change in the Newton Abbot area. The process of producing a so-called Local Development Framework is well under way, with Kingsteignton being the District Council’s preferred option for major development. In addition to further diluting the historic link between the inhabitants of the village and the local ball clay industry, this development, if approved, is likely to have a significant impact on some of the very few remaining historic structures of the South Devon ball clay industry, namely the Stover Canal and Clay Cellars. As we will hear from Roger Harding later, it seems very likely that the Stover Canal Trust will take the long-promised 99-year lease of the Stover Canal within a matter of days, and this will set the ball rolling for the planning of the restoration of the Canal. (This time last year I said that the granting of the lease was “imminent”, but I did warn you not to hold your breath!). There are proposals for a new cycle track through the Bovey Basin, probably alongside the Canal. The County Council; is seeking funding for the development Newton Abbot library which has implications – possibly negative - for the establishment of a new Town museum that could house the Society’s artefacts and archive. The role of the Society in seeking to advance the cause of the local ball clay industry’s heritage is especially important at this time. I represent the Society on several bodies including the Stover Canal Trust, Teignbridge Museums Group and now the Newton Abbot Community Plan, and in each of these I endeavour to ensure that the interests of the local ball clay heritage are given high priority. I know that Roger is doing the same in respect of the Stover Canal. I have to say though that few people really value the local heritage where it is in conflict with commercial or major development interests, and we will have to lobby hard to protect and enhance what is left of the local heritage. I think that the restoration of the Stover Canal and the hoped-for acquisition and restoration of the Teignbridge Clay cellars will lift the visibility of the South Devon ball clay industry’s heritage. There is a lot of work to be done by the Society not least in involving the next generation in our activities. John Pike Chairman 22 March 2007
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