Newton Abbot Town & GWR Museum

The Social history gallery has a core exhibition about the ancient and more recent town's history, together with a central room which has a new exhibition each year. Events and demonstrations are organised to link with each new exhibition. for more info. please visit the Events Pages.

This years exhibition 'The Sights & Sounds' will include two ancient objects have been loaned to the museum. One object is a prehistoric wooden figure, known as the Kingsteignton Idol, discovered by WBB clay workers in 1867.  It was previously on display at Exeter Museum.  It will be the first time that the idol has been displayed in Newton Abbot. The second object of great historic interest is over 2,500 years old!  It is a rare, bronze- age spear head, found near the ‘Idol’ in the river bed near B&Q! These two ancient exhibits will bring the ancient history of the town to life. 

In 2009 the museum celebrated the 250th Anniversary of local, 18th century inventor and diver, John Lethbridge.

       John Lethbridge a local wool merchant, lived in Wolborough Street, Newton Abbot.

Little is known of his childhood, but as from at the age of forty, John Lethbridge soon came to the notice of the  London-based  Shipping Companies: the English East India Company, Verenigde Oostindishche Companie, the Dutch United East India company, and the diving fraternity. 

He was to be known as the English man from Devon who invented a unique type of ‘diving engine’. Lethbridge’s improved engine differed greatly from the traditional  diving bell and  other diving apparatus.  His invention offered greater under water mobility and better working conditions for the ‘fisher’ (diver) thus proving more successful when retrieving ‘treasures’ and lost cargo from the sunken ship wrecks on behalf of the various shipping companies. 

Over the next thirty years Lethbridge was to prosper.  So successful, he rose from an unsuccessful wool merchant struggling to support a large family in Wolborough to  a well sought after ‘fisher of wrecks’ ,  living in comfort with his family, and eventually,  owning  the estate of Odicknoll in Kingskerswell.And so it was, John Lethbridge’s own voyage of discovery began in 1715.

 A full-sized model of John Lethbridge's diving machine is now available to view in the museum.