Fortunate discovery of lost legal document waiting for cataloguing.
Recently the clerk to Crediton United Charities called at the museum on the trail of a lost legal document. Karen Limon had been searching for 2 years for legal proof that the charity owned a small parcel of land in the midst of a much larger area they had already proved they owned. This would enable them to register the remaining piece of land with the Land Registry.
Karen had lots of internal papers about the acquisition in the early 1970s but despite searching far and wide, including likely solicitors firms, no-one could help. She visited the museum on the off-chance but there was nothing in our index. Chair David Nation thought he remembered seeing more unindexed papers to do with the history of the charity and later contacted Karen to say he'd found them. Later Karen visited the Society's archive at Downes and she and David ploughed through the boxes looking for clues. Suddenly Karen let out a whoop of excitement as, to our amazement she had found the Conveyance of 1973 proving the transaction. Karen said "I couldn't believe my luck. This has saved so much time and trouble." David said "This proves two things. Firstly how quickly we need to get on completing indexing, for which we need more volunteers, and secondly what treasures there are to be found in local history archives."