| Description | The Collection consists of 36 largely Agfa reel to reel audio tapes, which are 12.5cm in diameter with the tape 0.5cm wide. Accompanying the tapes are approximately 30 files of associated papers which include project reports, oral history guides, funding applications, correspondence and some transcriptions.
Farms investigated through this research include:
- Mr P Osborne, Trewey, Nancledra
- Mr and Mrs E J Wellington
- A Eddy, Boleigh Farm, St Buryan
- Mr J N Pollard, Luthergwearne, Heamoor
- J H Eddy, Kelynack
- Mr R C Matthews, Parc Webban, Gulval. |
| Admin History | The Institute of Cornish Studies (ICS) was launched in 1971 as a collaborative venture between the then Cornwall County Council and the University of Exeter. At this time its Director, Charles Thomas, defined the Institute's purposes as The study of all aspects of man and his handiwork in the regional setting (Cornwall and Scilly), past, present and future. The development of society, industry and the landscape in our fast changing world is as much of concern
as the history of those vast topics in the recent and remote past.
'Family Farming in West Penwith, 1919-1939' was the first project undertaken by the Institute of Cornish Studies as part of a programme of Cornish oral history begun under the supervision of David Lance, Keeper of the Department of Sound Records at the Imperial War Museum. An oral history steering group was formed with members including: Andrew Jewell, former Director of the Reading Museum of English Rural Life, Joe Pengelly, broadcaster and friend of the Institute, Veronica Chester, tutor of local history at the University of Exeter's Department of Extra-Mural Studies, Francis Uren, Lecturer in Agriculture at Cornwall Technical College and Penwith farmer along with ICS Director Charles Thomas.
The subject of the Project was selected not only due to the general importance of agriculture to a rural region such as Cornwall, but due to the of the importance of West Penwith as an area made up of numerous small family farms of thirty acres or less with its own distinctive economy and relationships. The time period was chosen with its lower limit giving consideration to the age of potential interviewees and its upper limit to capture the impact felt by farms under government legislation during World War II. The project was led by Rosemary Robertson and consisted of a series of structured interviews with farmers, of which the main line of enquiry was farming practice and living and working conditions on small farms.
Recordings were made on AFGA PE 36 long play tape using a UHER 4000 Report 1C portable tape recorder (mono at a speed of 9.5cm per second). The tapes were transcribed by Mrs Margeret Bunt of the Institute of Cornish Studies with synposis and cataloguing undertaken by Rosemary Robertson.
Outcomes from the project included a paper on the major areas of historical enquiry covered in the interviews and a preliminary analysis of the intial findings was published in the Journal of the Institute of Cornish Studies (No 7, 1979). A further paper was included in a weekend seminar on oral history convened by the Department of Economic History at Dartington in May 1980. It was also proposed that a copy be made of each of the interviews and given to the The British Institute of Recorded Sound so that results of the project be preserved within the National Archive of Recorded Sound and made accessible to researchers. (NB there is no documentation within this Collection to suggest whether or not this took place).
Information gathered from files in this Collection and from http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/history/research/centres/ics/about/ (accessed 21 February 2017.) |