Topsham

Today, I went down to Topsham, a favorite destination of University of Exeter club and society social outings. However, the purpose for my visit was a little different. I went to the Topsham Library to do some research.

That I might need to go to Topsham didn't occur to me until a Rotarian at the Tiverton club made an esseitnally throwaway comment about their being some letters from prisioners of war in the Napoleonic era in the library. I thought that there might be something in there that I could use, so I made a note to go down and check it out. While much of the material doesn't fit with my topic in the least, there are a couple of things in the letters that could prove useful. I'll want to discuss them with Dr. Duffy and see what he thinks about them. It appears that the last time they were really looked at was for a PhD thesis about forty years ago, but I may be wrong about that. In any case, Topsham has a nice little library, and I may have to go down there again sometime to take a better look around town!

As an aside, there is debate over whether the name is pronounced "TOP-shum" or "TOPS-ham." I've never heard anything but the former; however, someone claiming to be from there told Amanda at church one day that it was the latter. This may be one of those cases like the name "Barham," which is either pronounced "BAR-hahm" or "BAR-ram." In that case, it was an issue because one of the Royal Navy's dreadnoughts (commissioned 1915; sunk by a u-boat in 1942) had that name, and different captains reportedly imposed punishments on their ship's company for mispronouncing it-however it was the captain thought it should be pronounced! The consensus on that one seems to be "BAR-ram," but that could be wrong!