Newton's Place & St Leonard's Church

A history of Newton Abbot Museum and the Newton’s Place project

Brief history of the museum

It’s been a long road for Newton Abbot Museum to get to where it is now. It has grown from a random assortment of objects kept at the library to a custom-built space at the heart of the town.

Before the museum

Newton Abbot has had a small collection of items of historical interest for many years before the museum even existed. The items were looked after by a Mr Moon and kept on the top floor of the library. The collection had no governing policy and consisted of a wide range of artefacts, many of them with no connection at all to the town’s history.

This photo shows the Devon Square building in the 1950s, when it was the YMCA.

Number 9 Devon Square

In 1989, Newton Abbot Town Council was formed and moved to a new location at Devon Square. It was here that the idea of a proper museum for Newton Abbot, connected to the local history and the huge influence of the railways, was born.

Plans were drawn up and in October 1989 a part-time curator was employed for just 2.5 days a week, with the modest aim of creating an exhibition on the history of the town. In July 1990 the museum was officially opened, housed in a single room within the Town Hall at Devon Square.

The museum was opened by Diane Fishwick, Chairman of the Area Museum Council South West, July 1990. Felicity Cole (second from left) was the curator.

Despite limited space, over the next 15 years the museum went from strength to strength: hosting a huge outdoor Transport Festival, publishing books, designing travelling exhibitions, bringing together pottery collectors from around the world to display their locally made pots, and much more.

Felicity Cole and her crack team of volunteers created a huge variety of displays and exhibits within the Town Hall: using colourful floor-to-ceiling display boards, a great many stories were told in a tiny space.

The museum was popular, attracting between 1,200 and 6,000 visitors a year despite being tucked away quite a distance from the town centre.

However, feedback showed that we were losing some visitors due to being hard to find and difficult to access. A larger, more accessible space that was welcoming for everyone was always the ambition. The Town Council supported this dream: wanting to create a community hub that combined Council services with community spaces as well as the museum – but finding a suitable space proved very difficult.

Festival of Transport at Forde House in 2000

The early days of the museum, a single room with simple cases and display boards

In 1991 a Great Western Railway Room was added to the museum

The GWR room included a working signal

Later: dividing walls were added and large-scale printing was used to make use of every inch of space- even the floor, to tell the story of Lethbridge and his diving engine

Every bit of space was used to tell the stories of Newton Abbot

The church when it was an antique centre in the late 80s/ early 90s

Newton’s Place is conceived

The new location needed to be accessible, easy to find and bigger than what we already had. Finding such a building was no easy task, but in 2016 Newton Abbot Town Council finally began to realise their aspiration of a new, more central home by purchasing the former St Leonard’s Church. This meant that not only would the town gain a new community hub, but a decaying landmark building would also be rescued.

History of the church

St Leonard’s Church is a Grade II listed building, which first welcomed worshippers in 1836 (it replaced an earlier nearby church, most of which was demolished for a road-widening scheme). The ‘new’ St Leonard’s flourished in the first half of its life and was extended in the 1870s.

But in modern times attendance fell sharply and the church closed its doors permanently in 1997. Since being deconsecrated, the former church spent quite some time as an antiques centre. After the closure of the antiques centre, it stood empty and deteriorating for many years.

Rescue, restoration and reimagining

The next four years were a whirlwind of activity. The community were consulted in many different ways to find out what they would want to see in the new space, designs were drawn up, and building and conservation work began.