The Branscombe Project

Branscombe, A Tale of Three Pubs

By John Torrance & Barbara Farquharson

Long histories and vivid memories of The Masons Arms, The Fountain Head, and The Three Horseshoes.

£7.50 plus p&p

 An Idyllic Childhood In Troubled Times

 by Geoff Squire

illustrated by Maisie Rowe

Geoff’s father was the village school master in Branscombe and, during the war, was fully occupied with looking after not only the village school children but fifty bewildered evacuees.  Geoff, aged five when the war broke out, and a little later his brother Kingsley, had the freedom to roam the countryside. At first they stayed close to the school house, then, as they grew older, explored further and further afield. Geoff has a remarkable ability to remember not just where they went and what they did, but what it felt like. He also remembers the vague anxiety that hung over the adults, and his own acute anxiety when, clutching a few pennies and farthings, he was sent to fetch bread from Mr Collier at the Old Bakery.

In writing these pieces Geoff acknowledged the way his feeling for the landscape fed his passion for geography and laid the foundation for his later career as lecturer at Reading University.

£5.50 plus p&p

The Burnt House at Weston

Winners & Losers in an Eighteenth Century Devon Landscape

By Barbara Farquaharson & John Torrance

At the back of a large farmyard in an out of the way part of an out of the way parish are the remains of a once grand house. It was built in the 1770s and was destroyed by fire – almost certainly by arson – about fifty years later.

John Torrance, political historian, and Barbara Farquharson, archaeologist and anthropologist, trace the story of John Stuckey, the man who built the house, and his forbears. Stuckey was a determined entrepreneur. He found ways to undermine the old manorial system and took control of large swathes of the parish; he exploited all available geological resources; profiteered from the revolutionary wars abroad, and invested in the new service industries. There was no one to stand up to him except the evangelical parson, Rev. Puddicombe. The ‘losers’ were the working families who, as conditions worsened, finally staged a mini riot.

The book draws on some remarkable documents but also attempts to fill some of the grey in between areas by following in the footsteps, or on horse-back, of people as they moved around the landscape.

£10.00 plus p&p

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