Quantocks Landscape Partnership Scheme

The Quantock Landscape Partnership Scheme (QLPS) is a National Lottery Heritage Fund, £2.6m, 5-year project, created to address changing pressures on the on the Quantock Hills and surrounding parishes. The scheme comprises 23 individual projects each intended to contribute to the long-term future of the hills by protecting, restoring and increasing understanding of the distinctive features of the Quantock landscape.

Of those 23 projects, a number specifically relate to the historic heritage of the hills. These include the commissioning and interrogation of a specially commissioned LiDAR survey; oral history interviews; an extensive Community Archaeology programme; and a project dedicated to documentary research of the Quantock landscape, named ‘Unlocking the Archives’.

Unlocking the Archives

The aim of ‘Unlocking the Archives’ has been the cataloguing, conservation, and research of a huge amount of archive material relating the Quantock Hills, held in storage at the Somerset Heritage Centre. These records include the archives of the Friends of Quantock and the Kingston Historical Society, along with a number of Quantock estate, family, and business records from the 18th and 19th centuries. This information is clearly of immense value – a potential treasure trove for researchers, whether they are academic social historians or members of the public exploring their own family history.

Volunteers Discover Heritage of the Hills

Covid-19 had a huge impact on many QLPS projects, which were originally due to commence in the spring of 2020. ‘Unlocking the Archives’, being dependent on access to the physical archives held at the Somerset Heritage Centre, was particularly badly affected. After a near two-year delay, we were finally able to launch the project in the spring of 2022 and thanks to the archivists of the South West Heritage Trust and a dedicated team of volunteers, have been able to achieve a huge amount in a relatively short period of time. The QLPS has been able to fund the archive team to commence the process of cataloguing the various Quantock-related collections; volunteers have been recruited and, under the guidance of the archivists, have spent much of this year undertaking themed searches of this and other Quantock related material held in the archives.

Article kindly written by Dan Broadbent, Historic Heritage Officer with QLPS