Ask Wembury – and see where it takes you
There’s a new feature on Wembury Waves called Ask Wembury, and it’s turning into something rather more interesting than I first imagined.
The idea is simple. You type in a question about Wembury and it tries to answer it from its own growing local knowledge base. Not from the whole internet, but from material specifically about Wembury: old estate papers, maps, sale catalogues, local-history research, personal memories, archive material and the excellent work of the Wembury Local History Society.
So you can ask about the Mewstone, Knighton, Langdon Court, old farms, wartime Wembury, wildlife, smugglers, local families, water supplies and all sorts of other things. Type in something broad like “water”, “smuggling”, “farms” or an old surname and it will hopefully point you towards something worth exploring.
It’s growing all the time. Recent additions have included the 1927 Langdon Estate sale, Wembury’s water supplies before the mains arrived, Admiral Sir John Kingcome, old Wembury families, Mewstone smugglers and even the wonderfully odd story of the supposed Mewstone Submarine.
Of course, it doesn’t know everything. Far from it. But that’s now part of the fun. If someone asks a question it can’t answer, the question is quietly logged. I can then have a look through those unanswered questions, decide which ones are worth following up, do a bit of digging and add new answers.
So Ask Wembury isn’t really finished, and I’m not sure it ever will be. It’s becoming a sort of growing, slightly eccentric Wembury brain.
Have a go. Ask it something sensible, obscure or downright awkward.
And if you manage to stump it, you may just have helped to make it better.