The Society is continually collecting and updating artefacts, photographs, documents and other relevant archival material chronicling Ottery's rich and famous past.

"TRUMPS" - THE GENERAL STORES IN BROAD STREET

The assistant serving at the counter is Charlie Burdett. He lived at "Rose Cottage" in West Hill. In the evenings and at weekends Charlie worked as a foyer attendant at the cinema in Jesu Street now A & J Morris's Carpet Shop.

RALEIGH HOUSE

The Reverend John Swete was born in July 1752 at Ashburton. Between 1789 and 1800 he undertook a number of lengthy excursions around Devon. These are recorded in a series of exquisitely illustrated diaries, seventeen of which survive and are held in the Devon Record Office. In November 1794 Swete visited Ottery St Mary and produced a "sketch" of what was reputed to have been a residence of Sir Walter Raleigh. It was the largest of a block of five. On 15 May 1805 the original building burnt down and the present "Raleigh House" was built on the site.

THE KING`S SCHOOL IN THE COLLEGE (demolished in 1884)

The Collegiate Church at Ottery College founded by Bishop Grandisson in 1337 had choristers and clerks, some of them in minor orders, who needed to be taught both plainsong and Latin grammar. Hence the provision at the outset of a choir school. The building where it was housed measured approximately 60 feet by 20 feet. Joining it at right angles and forming the east side of the little court of which the schoolhouse was the southern side was a "Hospitium" (i.e. hostel) for the eight choristers and their master.
When Ottery College was surrendered to the Crown in 1545 the the old choir school was refounded as "The Kynge's Newe Grammar Schole of Seynt Marie Otery". The site is now occupied by Grandisson Court, a private dwelling, whose front entrance through the wall is that which originally led to the school.

THE GREAT FIRE OF 1866

After a long period of dry weather the fire started shortly after midnight on Friday, 25 May 1866 in a cottage behind the National School in Jesu Street. Within four hours 111 houses had been destroyed, and 500 people rendered homeless - 10% of the population. A great part of the town extending westwards from the school to the silk factory in Mill Street was reduced to a heap of smouldering ruins. Remarkably, apart from some minor burns, there were no serious injuries amongst the inhabitants of Ottery.

OTTERY RAILWAY STATION

The railway came to Ottery on July 6th 1874 when the London and South West Railway line between Exeter's Central Station and London's Waterloo Station was connected to Ottery St. Mary. The line was built and owned by the Sidmouth Railway Company but operated on its behalf by the L&SWR. From the connecting station at Feniton, the branch line ran through Ottery St. Mary and Tipton St. John to Sidmouth. A total of seven trains ran daily taking 30 minutes for the journey. This reached a peak of 24 services each way in the 1930s, when trains ran on both the Exmouth and Sidmouth branch lines. Ottery station was closed to passenger traffic on 4th March 1967. The route of the old railway line can be discerned most of the way down the Otter Valley, and north of Gosford bridge it is now a public footpath. One stretch of about one hundred yards, a quarter mile to the south of St. Saviours Bridge, still retains the original embankment with the gravel surface on which the tracks were laid.