It may not be the history most people are familiar with, but Devon has a rich, diverse and intriguing multicultural history, which has been researched and brought to public attention by teams of volunteers across several town communities.
Telling Our Stories, Finding Our Roots, is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and run by Devon Development Education. It began in 2013 and has already run projects in Exeter, Tiverton, Okehampton and Bideford. It is currently underway in Honiton and Ilfracombe.
Facts discovered in previous projects include that in Okehampton enslaved people were freed at the crossroads as far back as 980 AD; that by 1715 Exeter had a sizeable population of French Hugenots who’d fled persecution in their home country and that in 1969 two men from Hong Kong opened the first Chinese restaurant in Tiverton.
The project’s co-ordinator, Hilda Kalap, says: ‘The common view is that Devon’s population has always been white, Anglo-Saxon and mono-cultural. However more and more evidence has and continues to emerge that the real history is quite different. In fact Devon has a long multicultural history that’s not commonly known about. We’re slowly but surely changing widely-held perceptions and understanding with our work as spotlighting the contribution of these peoples is creating more inclusive societies.’
She says the project is much needed, especially at this time, when not only are the stories of Global Majority people at risk because they are not being recorded and saved but also because negative portrayals of asylum seekers and refugees has created a challenging environment for Global Majority people.
Stories are uncovered through archive research and oral history interviews, undertaken by trained volunteer researchers, some of whom are from diverse ethnic backgrounds including from Ghana and the Dominican Republic. The stories are then disseminated via a website, museum exhibitions, new educational resources and historical walking tours.
‘It’s exciting to see the emerging stories that are being unearthed,’ says Hilda. ‘These include Honiton’s Romany Gypsy heritage and the stories of ayahs – young Indian women working as childminders in wealthy English homes.’
‘Our stories connect us via our common humanity,’ she says. ‘They lead to greater understanding, empathy and acceptance - and that’s vital at a time when the world is going through turmoil and conflict.’
Transformation through migration
Ghee Bowman was one of the project’s first volunteers to research Exeter’s multicultural history – and the discoveries he made led to a life-changing decision
‘Why’s it called Blackboy Road, Daddy?’
That was the question that started it off, back in 2010. A well-known street in Exeter, running eastwards from the Odeon roundabout up past the Bowling Green pub towards Pinhoe. Was this old thoroughfare in some way connected to the slave trade?
Working with Sandhya Dave and other colleagues at Devon Development Education, we started to do a little local research. The assumption we had encountered – which you may be familiar with – was that Devon is an all-white county and always has been. We wanted to test that.
So, with funding from The Heritage Lottery, and building on previous work by Lucy MacKeith on Black History in Devon, we started our quest to find out about people from around the world who had migrated to Exeter over 2000 years of recorded history. And we were amazed.
What a wealth of stories! Roman soldiers and merchants who founded the city in 55CE. Vikings, Saxons, Normans. Mediaeval Jews who paid money to ransom Richard the Lionheart. Peter Blackmore, our first black resident over 500 years ago. Joseph Pitts, the first Briton to visit Mecca. The Ethiopian Prince Alemayehu, kidnapped by the British in 1868, sketched at St Davids as he changed trains. The founding of our Mosque, Polish airmen defending the city in the Second World War. More and more fascinating stories were uncovered, showing an extraordinary richness and diversity that nobody had guessed at.
We had a wonderful multi-cultural team on the project. Volunteers with heritage in India and Nepal, West Africa and China, Slovakia and the USA interviewed local people and dug into records online and in archives. And when the research was finished - or rather when the funding was running out – we held two great story-telling evenings to share what we’d found. Our African-American volunteer Crystal sang a rendition of Swing Low Sweet Chariot, first heard in Exeter in 1875 when the Fisk Jubilee Singers performed at Victoria Hall. And we told stories of Ganesh, the Hindu god who has resided in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum for over 140 years. We launched a website, we made videos and we developed activities for schools.
We also developed a walking tour of Exeter’s multi-cultural history, which I have led nearly 70 times, which includes our first named resident – a Roman legionary called Lucius Julius Hipponicus who lost his wine cup in the city, and our first Chinese restaurant, opened in 1958 on North Street. There is also the quintessential Exeter story of Saint Sidwell. That archetypical Exeter woman was – in fact – an ethnic and linguistic pioneer, bringing the English language and Saxon culture to our city in the 8th century. Before her, the only languages spoken in Devon were the old language of the Dumnonii – somewhat like Welsh – and the Latin of the Romans.
The project was an overwhelming success. So much so that we ran a similar project in Tiverton, Bideford and Okehampton, and now in Ilfracombe and Honiton. The stories continue to unfold and widen out.
But the project was also life-changing for me personally. While looking through a book on Devon during the Second World War, I came across three photos of Indian soldiers with turbans, leading mules down to a beach. I thought I knew about the war, but I didn’t realise there had been Indians here in Devon! So in June 2013 I went to the National Archives in Kew and found the 1940 War Service Diary of the 25th Animal Transport Company of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps. And my life changed.
The story I read there – written day by day in pencil by Major Wainwright – was of a voyage across continents and cultures. Starting in Kohat on the North West Frontier, they travelled by train to Bombay (now Mumbai), by ship across the Indian Ocean, arriving at Marseille on 26th December.
Up to Northern France to join the British Army near Lille, where they stayed for the Phoney War. When I read of their withdrawal to Dunkirk at the end of May and their evacuation from the beaches, tears filled my eyes and I was hooked. By the end of the year they were in Devon, staying at the Monastery at Woodbarton and a hotel at Shaldon.
And so, at the age of 53 I went back to university. I did a Masters at Exeter University and then a PhD, and in the middle of lockdown my first book came out The Indian Contingent: the Forgotten Muslim Soldiers of Dunkirk. In May this year my second book will be published by The History Press: The Great Épinal Escape: Indian Prisoners of War in German Hands.
I am now a public historian, called upon to give advice to films and TV shows. My life has been transformed, and all because of Blackboy Road and three photos of Indians in turbans.
