South Molton Museum

08/10/2026

END OF SEASON SALE !
Price reduction
Christmas is coming 🎅
We will be ending our season at the first week of December !
So pop in and grab a bargain bag

08/10/2026

Hundreds of Santas on motorbikes are heading for North Devon this December. Find out where you can see them and what is happening in South Molton

02/10/2026

These incredible lost images have opened a window into North Devon's past

02/10/2026

02/10/2026

🏆 We’ve only gone and got another one!

After South Molton Pannier Market was named Britain’s Favourite Market 2026, I’m absolutely thrilled to have won another award, Britain’s Market Manager of the Year 2026.

This one means even more knowing it came from nominations by our traders. I’m genuinely so grateful to every one of you. Thank you 💚

02/10/2026

They were fragile glass plates gathering dust on a shelf in a box. Then Bryan Shanley happened to spot them while visiting a customer — and an extraordinary piece of North Devon history began coming back to life. 📸😮

The Edwardian negatives contain remarkably detailed scenes believed to date from around 1905–1910: children playing on Combe Martin beach with wooden sand spades, early football teams, school classes, cyclists, family portraits, stone masons and a Bristol Channel packed with steam ships.

The collection belonged to Ilfracombe sign writer, photographer and craftsman William Frederick Trawin. After his death in 1943, his son Reginald quietly preserved the plates and original wooden camera for decades. Bryan has now spent £1,400 having the archive professionally cleaned and digitised — and believes around 90 per cent of the people and locations have been identified.

Now the pictures will go on public display in Ilfracombe before the collection is donated to the town’s museum. Could you recognise a location — or even an ancestor — among these faces from more than a century ago? 👀