TAVISTOCK historians fear hundreds of years of records may be lost for future generations unless they can find the documents a new home.

Volunteers from the town’s local history society are working on an archive project which involves digitalising hundreds of thousands of records dating from the 19th century, although it is thought some may go back as far as the 1600s.

The project, which started in 2010, has been worked on in the Tavistock Town Council-owned former Molly Owen Centre on the Westbridge industrial estate.

Now society members have been asked by their town council landlords â?? who let them use the building rent-free, that they should move from the centre by the end of March or pay the normal rental charge.

Society chair Ann Cole acknowledged the council’s generosity in allowing them to use the centre for nothing, but said they were ’desperate’ to find a new home for the archive to ensure they were available for the public in the future.

Miss Cole said: ’We aren’t really sure why the town council need the building. We haven’t got a lot of money to pay rent, so we have asked the council how much rent they would be charging. So far, we have heard nothing.

’If we don’t find somewhere for the archive, then we shall send it to the Record Office, but we are worried that it will mean it will it will drop out of sight.

’Our aim is to get the archive online for members of the public to look at and use for research, but it’s something that is not going to be finished tomorrow â?? it is going to take a long time. The archive not only covers Tavistock, but many other places and because a lot of people from this area moved abroad to work in the past, we believe it will have a world-wide interest.’

Miss Cole said the society was ’in urgent need of premises’ of approximately 30 square metres to house its archive project. She said work was in progress to index and digitally copy the archive and around 100,000 images have been indexed and copied and will be made available on the internet.

Miss Cole said some of the documents were old and fragile and their next home needed to be ’suitably dry and temperate’ to help protect them.

She said the project, while it had younger volunteers, had seen two of them with a combined age of 149 years spending three hours crawling around the floor in a constricted space looking at maps and estate plans that had come to light for the first time in 70 years.

She added: ’We have to work in very close proximity to each other, as most of the space we currently have is taken up by a 100-plus boxes of elderly and fascinating documents, teetering on the brink of falling and crushing the volunteers. 

’Unfortunately, because of the accommodation that we have been working in we have so far been unable to open the archive to the public. Work has also been hampered in the last two years by covid and sadly because of the coronavirus outbreak we had to discontinue meeting in person to work on the project, but work continued with the volunteers working on the indexes from home.

’We were hoping for space to be made available for the archive in the refurbished Guildhall Centre, but we have been told that there is no room for us.

’At the moment we have been generously provided with temporary accommodation by the town council, but this finishes at the end of March. We are determined that all of our efforts will not go to waste and that we will not lose this extremely valuable heritage project.’

The society is working on the Ward & Chowen Archive, named after the land agents and estate agents who donated the vast quantity documents to the society.

Miss Cole said: ’The documents are not just about properties and land holdings, but also about many local families living and working in and around Tavistock, South West Devon and further afield. If people have ancestors from around here, they may well find fascinating facts about their everyday lives amongst the papers.’

She said they had have digitised ’many, many thousands of images’ and had made an index of them with the intention of making them available to the public and on the internet.

A spokesperson for Tavistock Town Council said: ’As a gesture of goodwill the council allowed use of premises, on what was agreed to be a temporary (12 months) basis to the history society commencing in May 2019 to enable it to find a suitable longer term venue to complete the project.

’The arrangement has since been extended, at the request of the society, on various occasions â??each time without charge. In view of the changed nature of the timeline for completion, and to now regularise the position, an offer of accommodation on a normal rental basis has been made to the Society.’

Anyone who can help with a premises should contact the society via tavistockhistory.co.uk