The Box is a major cultural and heritage attraction and archive, which opened in Plymouth’s city centre in September 2020. Its collection, formally the South West Film and Television Archive (SWFTA), is the regional film archive for the South West of England, comprising the combined programme libraries of Westward Television and Television South West (TSW). It also includes a significant number of donated film collections dating back to the early 1890s.
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St George's Island Owner
Evelyn Atkins tours her Cornish island off Looe for the camera
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Overview
Reporter Stephen Matthews visits St George’s Island off the coast of Looe to talk to its owner Evelyn Atkins about the publication of a new book documenting the experience. We bought an Island is an autobiographical tale written with her sister Babs about how the two quit Surrey in 1964 for cottages in Looe in South East Cornwall but how, within 14 months, purchase the 22.5-acre island replete with house, boathouse, and out-buildings for the sum of twenty thousand pounds.
Evelyn dies at the age of 87 in 1997 and Babs retires to living on the island until she passes away in 2004 at the age of 86. They write a sequel entitled Tales from our Cornish Island (1986). The island, also known as Looe Island, is bequeathed by the sisters to the Cornwall Wildlife Trust to be a nature reserve in perpetuity and it is open in the summer to visitors. The Trelawny family own the island from 1743 to 1921 and a small neighbouring island called Little Island returns to the Trelawny family on Bab’s death in 2004 and is renamed Trelawny Island.
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