Foxes and Otters  were visited by Colette from Devon county council this week. Her job is to look after listed buildings in our local area and she came to show us what Barnstaple high street looked like in the past. We looked at lots of old photographs from the last 50 years and compared the shops that were there then with the shops that are there now. We discovered that although the shops have different names and sell some different things now, there were lots of similarities too. We still have some shops like pharmacies, bakeries, butchers and cafes and the windows and shapes of the building have often stayed the same. Some buildings had been changed, knocked down and rebuilt and some places, like the Cattle market car park, had had their use changed altogether. 

Colette even told us a funny story from when she was growing up and had been studying in Barnstaple library when she heard a big noise that turned out to be a cow escaping from the cattle market. The cow ran all over the high street!