Knightshayes' Rembrandt

BBC - Britain's Lost Masterpieces

In 2018, a portrait at Knightshayes thought to be by Rembrandt was the subject of the BBC programme Britain's Lost Masterpieces. Despite some impressive research and analysis, it was ultimately determined by the world’s leading Rembrandt expert, Ernst van de Weteringto, to be a copy.

A History of the World

Bobbinet lace machine, no. 136

Tiverton Museum has three entries in the BBC's A History of the World series from 2010:

• Bobbinet lace machine, no. 136
• Devon 'Ship' Waggon - spindle sided
• Wool staple mark

Making Munitions and Gas Nets For The Front

BBC - World War One At Home

BBC Sounds hosts an audio presentation from 2014 titled Making Munitions and Gas Nets For The Front which was part of the BBC's World War One at Home series.

The Heathcoat fabric factory in Tiverton recorded its war day by day. The company’s log books are a unique record of a local business at war and are a record of this local business making lace for Americans and for war widows, while making munitions and gas nets for the forces at the Front during World War One. American orders swelled during wartime.

Handwritten entries in two leather bound books record the lives and deaths at Heathcoats. In 1914, the factory was the town’s largest employer. It was also an exporter and had expanded its lace making business across the Atlantic and into Europe.

The company’s cashier recorded the loss of the continental markets, the profits of war work, the efforts to exempt lace-makers from military service and the debates over the work women could and couldn’t do.

The diaries also detail the people of the factory. They include the Heathcoat Amory family (the owners), the employees who went to war, the women who were first to work the machines, and the cashier who was to record the detailed story of a local factory at war.

Heathcoats Fabrics continue to make military fabrics today.

Tiverton Athenaeum

34 Fore Street before demolition in the 60s
Courtesy of Historic England

This building served as a public hall, reading rooms, club, meeting place, school and even theatre. Further views of the property are available:

• Front
• Front (Upper)
• Front (Lower)
• Market Gates
• Market Passage
• Interior Detail
• Ceiling Detail
• Interior Room
• Staircase
  

You can see from the current Streetview below that Clinton Cards is now where Currys is pictured, and remind yourself what this elegant row of buildings was replaced with!

Patchquick

If you search online for Tiverton, you will invariably stumble across the name "Patchquick". This was a company based at Blundell's Road in Tiverton from the early 1900s until liquidation in 1963. Collectable items regularly appear in auctions.

The firm manufactured puncture repair kits, primarily for bicycles and motorcycles. The company was originally a partnership in the name of Woodgates Brothers, but later incorporated into Patchquick's Patent Limited. The Woodgates Brothers are listed in the 1895 Tiverton & District Directory as manufacturers of metal and furniture polish, and in the 1914 Kelly's Directory as India Rubber Merchants.

As you can see from the below letterhead, they had the amazingly early telephone number of 3! I wonder who had 1 and 2?

Patchquicks Letterhead - 1920s

An extract from the 1908 Stanley Show guide explains their unique selling point:

Patchquick Patent Patches.
Woodgates Bros., Tiverton. Stand No. 150.
There are several novelties on this stand in the way of patches for cycle and motor tyres. As regards the ordinary patches, it is claimed they are the only make which are vulcanized on the outer side and left unvulcanized inside, so that when a special solution, which is also sold by the firm, is applied, it practically dissolves the unvulcanized side, which adheres more firmly than the ordinary solutioned patch vulcanized on both sides equally.

Exhibition display case of Patchquick products

The company advertised heavily, attended a lot of exhibitions and shows, and had a good distribution network. The name lives on today in motocross as the Patchquick Trophy. TMX has some history on the trophy:

The Patchquick Tyre Company of Tiverton donated the trophy to the club in the early 1930s, when it cost 100 guineas, and is now worth many thousands of pounds and is the biggest trophy in British Motocross. It was first won in 1934 by Exeter rider Tommy Whitton when it was raced for in the Dartmoor Scramble. In 1955, the great Jeff Smith won it and this event continued until 1957. It then ran as a centre event until 1966 when the club decided to run the first three-leg Patchquick Motocross on a Wednesday evening. On that occasion the winner was Dave Bickers. In 1973, the event was upgraded to national status and was won by Badger Goss. It ran at the beginning of March each year until the year 2000, with such riders as world champions Neil Hudson, Graham Noyce and Dave Thorpe taking the trophy.

You can see a photo of the trophy on the Auto Cycle Union website.

Canberra Bomber Crash

At 6.45pm on 21st November 1961 an English Electric Canberra crashed into the canal at Tiverton. The cold war era aircraft, registration XM266, was part of No. 3 Squadron RAF on a high-low-high training exercise from RAF Geilenkirchen in Germany to RAF Chivenor in North Devon.

During the low part of the exercise at 4,000 feet, they suffered an engine fire and entered a spiral dive. Both the pilot, Flight Lieutenant Roger Moore, and the navigator, Flying Officer Martin Archard, were killed.

An extract from the official Board of Inquiry report:

The aircraft took off for a United Kingdom cross-country flight in the High Low High profile.The pilot climbed to Flight Level 310 and subsequently let down over south-west England under radar surveillance. Contact was lost at 4,000 ft and the aircraft was later reported to have crashed at West Manley. Both the pilot and navigator were killed. Weather conditions at the time were four-eights stratus at 1,000 ft, visibility 3,000 yards with continuous slight rain. Cat 5/Two killed. Provisional Cause Coding - Unknown.

In 2003, during dredging, polluted silt was removed from the canal, along with many fragments from the aircraft.

There is an information board at the site on the canal with a memorial stone set beneath it:

Canal Information Board

18/07/2021 Update: DevonLive published an in-depth article about the crash which you can read here.

Tiverton Civic Society: 50 Years 1968 - 2018

A Tiverton Community Radio podcast from 2018 discussing 50 years of the Tiverton Civic Society.

Rivers Carew: Footprints in the Sand

A Tiverton Community Radio interview with Rivers Carew on his book Footprints in the Sand: The Story of the Carews of Devon 1086-1945.

Magna Britannia - Vol 6 - Devonshire

Author: Daniel Lysons & Samuel Lysons
Published: 1822
Provider: Google Books (Alternative Transcribed: British History Online)

East India Company Charter Renewal Petition of 1813

East India Company flag (1801)

On the 8 February 1813, Tiverton presented a petition to Parliament in respect of the renewal of the East India Company's charter. The town made "long ells" - an unusually long cloth with combed wool warps and carded wool wefts in a twill weave - for the East India Company. With the woollen trade struggling, and two-thirds of all production for the East India Company, the town was keen to see the commercial monopoly the East India Company held with China continue. The Charter Act of 1813 passed in July that year, preserving the monopoly. The petition reads as follows (line breaks added for clarity):

A Petition of the inhabitants of Tiverton, Devon, was also presented; setting forth,

"That the renewal of the charter to the E. I. Co. for an exclusive trade to China, and the means of preserving it unmolested, is of vital importance to the interests of the town of Tiverton, which, during some years past, has had very little of other employ for its numerous labourers but the manufacturing an article called long ells for the E. I. Co.;

and that, previous to the war, there was a considerable commerce from that town to different parts of Europe, which consumed the wool grown within many miles of it, and gave full employ to the labourers, but since that time there has been no demand for the usual sorts of woollen goods, and, but for the orders given by the Company for long ells, the labourers, with their families, must have been reduced to depend on parochial relief, and the establishments in the town have remained idle;

and that the E. I. Co. have been long and assiduously endeavouring to establish and increase a permanent system of export in woollens to China; that they have made great sacrifices, and incurred heavy losses, for the attainment of these objects; that they have at length succeeded, and established a system for purchasing, finishing, and exporting their goods, so regular and economical, that it insures to them a constant supply of the best quality on the lowest terms, and to the manufacturers those steady sales which are so essentially necessary for the employment of their labourers;

and that the petitioners are alarmed at the attempts now making to deprive the E. I. Co. of the exclusive trade to China, being convinced that no extension of our exports is to be expected from such a measure, but that, on the contrary, the very existence of the China trade would be endangered thereby, the jealous and peculiar character of the Chinese government requiring all that systematic regularity and caution which the Company and their resident agents are ​ from long habit enabled to practise;

and that, should the trade to China be thrown open, even should this much-to-befeared event not take place, as it is a well-ascertained fact that the company without a competition cannot get a price for the long ells at Canton that will leave a profit, the petitioners cannot expect, when there are rivals in the market, the Chinese will give as much as they do at present, or, even if they did, that individuals would export goods for public benefit only;

the result must therefore be, in either case, the destruction of the almost only remaining woollen trade in the western counties; and that, should it even be proposed to continue with the E. I. Co. the exclusive privilege of trading to and from China, but to permit to the outports a free import trade from India, the petitioners conceive that measure would ultimately, but surely, lead to the destruction of the regular China trade, by opening such extensive channels to smuggling teas, and other articles, as no financial regulations could possibly counteract, the duty of about 95 per cent. on teas, and from 36 to 70 per cent. on manufactured goods, being stimulants to a contraband trade too powerful to be successfully resisted;

and that the petitioners entertain the most serious apprehensions that this measure, if sanctioned by the legislature, will assuredly tend to the destruction of the E. I. Company's China trade, of a most extensive and beneficial branch of the staple manufacture of this kingdom, and to the deterioration of the expensive buildings and machinery erected purposely for its use, thereby occasioning the ruin of very many industrious families, and depriving thousands of labouring poor of their means of subsistence;

and that the petitioners are fully aware of the specious reasoning which has been and will be made use of to induce the legislature to concur in the measure of opening the India trade, but they are convinced that no lasting increase of that trade would be obtained thereby, the Company and the private merchants at present engaged therein being already in the habit of furnishing the Asiatic markets with European goods, and the European market with Asiatic productions, to the full extent of their consumption, a fast which appears sufficiently proved by the very small proportion of the tonnage appropriated to the private trade, which has been taken up by our private merchants;

and that, on the most attentive review of this important subject, the petitioners are fully impressed with the belief that opening the trade to India and China to individual speculation, would not only endanger its prosperity but its existence; and praying the House not to sanction so hazardous an experiment as that of risking a trade the source of such extensive benefits to the agricultural and manufacturing interests of this kingdom, and of a net annual revenue to the state of nearly four millions sterling, and that the trade to China may, on the renewal of their charter, be continued exclusively to the E. I. Company, and that the imports from India may be confined to the port of London."