We first saw it advertised in the local paper...
'New Perspectives', the launch of the Lottery Funded project to record and archive the hidden histories of North Devon which also includes the digitisation of the photographs of James Ravilious from the Beaford Archive. So off we trotted last Sunday afternoon to the Hatherleigh Community Centre to find out more.
For those who may be unaware, James Ravilious was the son of Eric and Tirzah Ravilious, an artist in his own right who married Robin Whistler (daughter of Laurence of those windows at Moreton Church that I wrote about a while back) and fell in love with a particular corner of North Devon where the couple made their home. For many years James Ravilious worked with the Beaford Archive to create a photographic record of the people and the places, some 80,000 images in total,
and Bookhound and I have been huge fans of his work since stumbling across this exhibition back in 2010.
'When he moved from London to Devon with Robin to her family cottage near Dolton, he found an isolated community that was entrenched in tradition.
Son of painter, wood-engraver and designer Eric Ravilious and an artist by trade, he turned to photography after being bowled over by a V&A exhibition by French documentary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.
He was considering a career as an art teacher until he was approached by James Lane, the first director of Beaford Arts to 'take a few photographs' for the Beaford archive.
It became a life's work which Robin collaborated on 'officially and unofficially'...
You can read more from that piece here.
Hatherleigh Community Centre was buzzing; scores of people poring over tables of old photographs as well as a wonderful display of many of James Ravilious's iconic pictures. Bookhound channelled his Inner Ravilious and took some nice pics...
Me (in stripes) having a ponder over tea and cake..
...and the conversation was flowing. Lots of town elders happy to remember life as it was, recognising old friends and family in the photos and willingly sharing their stories...and now I'm catching this Inner Ravilious thing with my camera too...
I talked to one gentleman in his nineties who had lived in Hatherleigh all his life. He picked up a picture of some workers on a local estate...
'Do you know where that is?' I asked him...'Oh yes, lots of people worked there,' and he proceeded to tell me all the details including his recollections, as a young boy, of being drafted in to help 'deal with' the rooks.
'They'd give us half a dozen to take home and mother would know exactly which bit to use, because you can't eat all of a rook you know, and she'd make us the most delicious rook pie. 'Twas lovely. You see we'd eat it in those days, they call it vermin now, but we had to eat what there was, there were no food banks, no fridges but we never went hungry because we all ate what we were given and looked out for each other.'
Is it any wonder that generation might find themselves slightly bemused by 2017.
During the war he'd left the town and his job as an apprentice butcher to work as an RAF mechanic on the Spitfires...
'I'd never been out of town, let alone to London but I thought I'd best go and help so I decided I might as well be doing something I'd enjoy.'
Nearby was Bet (I hope I have the right name)
'I'm ninety-seven you know...'
And we chatted away as she named all the people in the picture she was holding.
What a fantastic project and hats off to Beaford Arts for such a wonderful afternoon, and for taking this project to digitise the archive out to the community, many of whom might never see a computer.
James Ravilious died in 1999 at the tragically young age of sixty and, in that blogendipitous way that these things happen, his planets seem to have aligned around me this year....
A couple of months ago I was invited to go back to Port Eliot Festival to do an event this summer. I took a few days to think about it....just the one event I agreed, and no transporting house and home, or setting up a tent, or having to read a hundred books, or write it all up through August, but best of all it could be with guests and a subject of my choice. I decided that I would dearly love to be in conversation with Dartmoor photographer Chris Chapman and retired director of Heritage Protection for English Heritage Peter Beacham on the subject of James
Ravilious. Both had been good friends with James, and Peter and I had touched on that friendship at an event I had done at my last Port Eliot outing. He had told us the heart-wrenching story behind one of my favourite books Down the Deep Lanes and there followed an audience on the brink of tears and a mad stampede to buy the book.
How I came to discover Down the Deep Lanes is another whole story.
For anyone who might be at Port Eliot next month I think the event is scheduled for Sunday July 30th at 2pm in the Tiddy Tent up in the Walled Garden (where the dovegreyreader tent used to be) but check the schedule nearer the time in case it changes.
As if this wasn't excitement enough...
I had been up at the Devon Records office researching Dr Blackall and his Drive and thought I might as well see anything they had on James Ravilious while I was there...
'Are you interested in James Ravilious?' asked the man behind the desk as he handed me the file. I explained about Port Eliot at which point his eyes lit up and Bookhound and I were taken into the nether regions of the office to meet the people from Beaford who were digitising the archives...
So many dots joining up, and then this...
After I had written about Eric Ravilious last week I heard from a publicist who told me that there will be a new and very special edition of the photographs of James Ravilious published this autumn and the launch will be in Exeter...
...would I be interested, would I like to see the book and be at the launch....
But here's a question...I would be interested to know how many of you out there around the world know of James Ravilious's work...
How well known is he beyond the West Country...
Because, if he is in the shadows I have a feeling his moment is coming with the publication of this biography in the autumn too...
I'm starting to feel in need of oxygen.
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