Friday's events:

Roving poets will be in the Museum from about 12 noon - come and hear some poetry! 

Local writer Bob Mann will be talking about local authors from the 20th and 21st centuries at 2.00pm. 

Totnes Museum is taking part in Heritage Open days again this year and the theme is Everyday Histories. We'll be open on Friday 11th, Saturday 12th, Tuesday 15th, Friday 18th, and Saturday 19th September from 10.30am until 4.00pm each day. 

There is an exhibition featuring local authors from the past - both well known and less well known - with extracts from their work, photographs and stories you may not have heard before. We're featuring Sean O'Casey, William Brockedon, Benjamin Kennicott, Edmind Crispin, Desmond Bagley, Mary Wesley, Allen Saddler, Joan Brady, Edmund Lye, William Keble Martin and Hugh Watkin.

We also have several events lined up including local writer Sam Richards reminiscing about his father the author Allen Saddler, who lived and worked in Totnes, on Saturday 12th from 2.00pm.

Local author Alison Huntingford will be in the Museum on Tuesday 15th in the morning chatting to visitors and signing books.

Totnes based poetry slam champion Harula Ladd will be creating three minute poems on a vintage typewriter in the afternoon of the 15th and other local poets will also make an appearance throughout the week.

Bob Mann will be talking about 20th and 21st century Totnes writers at 2.00pm on Friday 18th September. 

And as HOD is all about celebrating Everyday Histories, and is being supported by the family history website FindMyPast which is providing resources, you may also be enthused to start researching your own family history! 

In 2025 the Museum’s National Heritage Open Days event celebrated the house being 450 years old. We had information and exhibitions focusing on the transformation of this 16^th century house built in 1575 into a museum. The transformation was completed in 1962. 

Totnes Museum took part in National Heritage Open Days in 2024 and exhibited a display of photographs of some of the beautiful 16th and 17th century decorated plaster ceilings in Fore Street and High Street in Totnes.  The display has been packed away now, so the best opportunity of seeing one of these ceilings today is to look up at windows above the shops as you walk along Fore Street and High Street.

If you're lucky enough to live in a house with one of these lovely ceilings, perhaps you could open the curtains and shine a light on the ceilings so people in the street below can see them?