Our offices in Fore Street, Kingsbridge are about to undergo a transformation following a flood last year.

As part of this there has been a clear out of practically all the contents and I decided to contact the Kingsbridge Cookworthy Museum to see if there was anything that they would like to salvage.

Their newspaper archives had a number of gaps which they were hoping to fill with different years ranging from between 1882 and 1967.

Over the years the paper has had a number of names.

Of our titles that are now owned by Tindle Newspapers the original Kingsbridge Gazette and the Dartmouth Chronicle both date from 1854, the Totnes Times from 1860 and the Ivybridge & South Brent Gazette is much more recent with it’s first issue rolling off the presses in 1975.

In addition to that there were a large number of photographic prints from days gone by.

Museum Volunteer Nicola Fox explained:

‘’At the museum we have records of the Kingsbridge Gazette under its various names from about 1855 onwards on microfilm but there are some years which we don’t have so we wanted to rescue some of the years we don’t have.

‘’We found some of the 1960’s newspapers which we wanted, 1952 and another few odd ones.

Rescuing papers from the musky, old archive isn’t straightforward as Nicola said:

‘’Ann and Dick have an out building, they separate them so there’s air circulating and put a de-humidifier to dry them out very gradually, because if you change their environment too rapidly they can be destroyed.’’

‘’The process takes around five weeks.’’

Ed Bennett added: Once the papers have dried out you can literally take the papers outside and blow the mould away but if you don’t do it slowly they can disintegrate.’’

In addition to the newspapers, a large number of photographs were found as Nicola outlined:

‘’They date from when the Gazette had it’s own in-house photographer and own darkroom.

‘’The contractors who have been clearing the building found a lot of their files and records with photographs and contact sheets from the newspapers so we have two very large bags of photographs to look through.’’

Whilst respecting out history, our refurbished premises will also be designed for the digital age and our websites will become an increasingly important part of what we have to offer.