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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Burrator
A documentary on Burrator reservoir in the Dartmoor National Park
From the collection of:
Overview
Burrator is narrated by David Rodgers and was produced and directed by Michael McCloy. It takes us through the recent history of the Burrator manmade reservoir located at the southern end of Dartmoor National Park. The documentary includes the Fishing Feast Ceremony where Sir Francis Drake is honoured for giving Plymouth a reliable water supply in the 16th century.
The last tenant of Longstone Manor, George Shillibeer is given notice and the reservoir built under the supervision of Plymouth’s Water Engineer, Edward Sandeman and completed in 1898. The landscape is styled on a Swiss lake. The reservoir has two dams, the 1893 Burrator Dam across the River Meavy at Burrator Gorge and the 1894 Sheepstor Dam on the dividing ridge between Meavy and Sheepstor Brook. The reservoir can hold up to 1026 million gallons of water.
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