Author: Peter Hood Prince Maurice’s Regiment of Dragoones
(and Project Manager for the Genesis Project)

Orders of the day, Volume 31, Issue 2, March/April 1999

In the summer of 1996, just prior to the August re-enactment of the Battle of Torrington, a consortium of bodies - statutory, voluntary and private led by the Great Torrington and District Community Development Trust - bid for a major regeneration scheme under the Rural Challenge scheme. Entitled ‘The Genesis Project’, the scheme was wide-ranging but centred on the redevelopment of two key listed sites in the town - a Victorian Pannier Market and a late Georgian house in its own grounds. Coupled with this was an IT training scheme, the extension of the Tarka Cycle Trail and a transport scheme. This achieved its target funding of £1 million from Rural Challenge and matched funding from a variety of sources. Its objective is to create employment, to stimulate the local economy, and to foster community social regeneration.

Torrington is a town with a great sense of the past but with a vision for the future. So it was logical that when reviewing opportunities for the use of part of the Georgian site, consideration would be given to creating a visitor attraction related to its Civil War past. The support and involvement of the local community in the commemoration march in February and the re-enactment in August 1996 by the Sealed Knot was a measure of its concern with the history and helped raise awareness.

The whole Rural Challenge Project was developed by community-based working groups for each key element of the project. The Civil War Centre working group included two Sealed Knot members from the outset and worked with the Project Manager (also SK) and the designers - H&H Sculptors - to create what will be a unique centre. Whilst it is designed as a visitor attraction, it is based on sound historical research. Early on the question of the ‘glorification of war’ arose and it was agreed to recognise this and endeavour to place the English Civil War in its historical context and the context of civil war as a whole.

The design that has evolved has been achieved by teamwork between the team and the company. It has been an exciting process and has resulted in a unique centre that will blend information, interaction and living history. There has been a deliberate policy of use of low technologies in the interactive elements wherever possible. The visitor will enter a passage which will take them from the 20th Century to the 17th by a series of displays before entering the main exhibition hall. Within this area will be displays relating to food, health, clothing, communication, etc., plus detailed information on the Battle of Torrington itself. Having explored this area the visitor will move to a foyer from which they will enter a guided walk through as if they were entering Torrington at the end of the battle.

At this time I can reveal no more of this without giving away some of the surprise. Outside the building will be the Living History area, which will be used for displays by our own staff and volunteers, and for good quality displays by visiting groups. Adjacent to this is the Physic Garden, of which John Wardman wrote in the November/December “Orders”. In a very practical way this has developed as a community project from research to shovelling manure!

The ‘Torrington 1646’ element of the project will create employment with eight part- and full-time posts. It will bring much-needed stimulus to the local economy with 30,000 visitors coming into town, and above all it has involved many of the community in a voluntary capacity. It will have cost approximately 15% of the overall budget (building restoration and displays etc. combined). The association with the Sealed Knot has been strong throughout, from the first commemorative march in 1996 to the Torrington campaign at Easter this year, and the direct involvement of Sealed Knot members in the whole design process and the practical garden work. The Sealed Knot have donated some items from the old Edgehill Museum to be used within the displays, which were gratefully received - for however much funding is available it is never enough! More to the point is the principle of participation by as many as possible, and through the SK connections this is being achieved.

Our aim is to provide a valuable insight into the 17th century and the troubled times of the Civil War in a way that captures the imagination of the ordinary visitor to North Devon. But we will expand beyond this, by developing an educational outreach service, and in the longer term to develop the on-site educational resources. Not least of the latter will be finding ways of linking with our own IT training centre on site. Potentially this could lead to closer contact with other English Civil War centres and sites, to broadening availability of information and research ... ideas welcomed! As I see the dreams of the working group coming to fruition I am excited by the scale of the vision and its reality. I look forward to its opening at Easter when I hope that relatives of Sir Ralph Hopton and Sir Thomas Fairfax will be present. I also hope that throughout the year fellow Sealed Knot members will take the opportunity to visit ‘Torrington 1646’.