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Home |

About Us |

How to Find Us |

Education Services |

Current |

Research Services |

Tour |

Links|

Contact Us

•  The John Young Gallery offering exhibitions, functions, conference facilities - and has a loop system for those with hearing difficulties

•  Museum Shop - offering purchases to complement your visit

•  Tea Rooms nearby

•  Access: Braille book about the museum and its exhibits; WC for wheelchair users

•  A lift giving wheelchair access, if we are advised before the visit

•  ‘Handling Collections’ to loan to schools and groups

•  Teachers’ Information Pack available - (see the Education pages)

Re-development 5 years ago was funded by: Heritage Lottery Fund; EU; South West Regional Development Agency;  West Devon Borough Council;  Dartmoor National Park Authority; The Okehampton Disabled Fellowship; Okehampton Non-Ecclesiastical Trust; Adapt Sightline;  Okehampton Town Council;  Dartmoor Museum Association, and the community.

With a growing collection of local objects to be housed and displayed, a project was started in 1976. A group of volunteers raised funds to purchase the present site and its empty, derelict buildings. The courtyard is believed to be a medieval burgage plot. Much time and effort was then put in to refurbish the buildings for their new role. The museum opened to the public in 1982.

Over the years work has continued on further enhancements and additions to displays, galleries and facilities to win

awards and provide the present services and representations of Dartmoor’s history.

The museum concentrates on local history and is run by and supported by local people.

As Dartmoor Life is an independent museum partly supported by grants and donations, in order to help meet its running costs there is a charge for admission.

Refurbished displays at the Dartmoor Life museum feature the home and working lives of people who lived on and around Dartmoor. The museum building itself was a granary built in 1811. Its picturesque, Victorian, cobbled courtyard features granite rails on which the wheels of delivery carts would run between West Street and the granary.

In addition to three floors of exhibits, the building includes a state-of-the-art Gallery where special exhibitions and other events are staged.

At the side of the building is a large, working waterwheel - which used to be busy in the valley at what is now Roadford Reservoir. In its time there it took two lives.

This waterwheel had a former life at Combe Park Farm (now under Road-ford Reservoir) where killed two people.