Fenwick Collection

The Fenwick Collection comprises 216 glass plate photographs taken by Dr Charles Fenwick between the late 1800s and c.1920. They were offered to the Dartmoor Trust Archive in 2024 by Joan and Tim Key having been discovered in an outbuilding at their Dunsford home, formerly the house and surgery of Dr Fenwick the local GP and his wife, Ellen, who married in May 1895. Strangely,both Charles and Ellen were the offspring of clergymen and both shared the same surname, Fenwick.

Charles’ forebears held a landed estate at Kilmacrenan, a village in Donegal, the family home Greenhills (Raphoe) being a large if austere country house. Charles however was born at Stoke Damerel, Plymouth, where his father was vicar.

Educated at Blundells and subsequently training as a medic, Charles is recorded in Kelly’s 1889 Directory of Devon as “Charles Fenwick, East Hill House. L.R.C.P. Edinburgh, Physician and Surgeon, and Medical Officer, and Public Vaccinator, Dunsford district, St. Thomas Union and Cheriton Bishop district, Crediton Union.”

According to elderly village residents in 1970s and 80s, the Fenwicks had no children of their own, but often had parties for them in their garden. Charles was involved in the school, and took the village children to the pantomime in Exeter, hiring the carrier to take them. “He was very nice, and you didn’t have to stand on ceremony with him”. “He was slim and freshlooking, and didn’t have a beard until he was older” recalls one Dunsford resident. No certain photograph of him has been identified.

Newspaper reports of the time speak of Charles’ popularity, skill and compassion as a local GP, while his attendance upon of the sick and at inquests into accidental deaths and suicides bear witness to his dedication.

Fenwick’s popularity is further born out in the photographs themselves. In these we see a touching portrait of a small community - a photo album of young and old who travel from their homes in their Sunday best to sit stock still in the Fenwick’s garden while the glass plates are painstakingly exposed. Occasionally the camera is taken out into the landscape nearby to record picnics beside the River Teign, local carnivals, sporting events and village theatricals. To date, only a few of the people in the photographs have been positively identified but as a record of people, costume and culture in one small Devon community at the end of the Victorian era the Fenwick Collection is a unique and important contribution to the Dartmoor Archive.

The original glass plates now reside in the Devon Heritage Centre Exeter.