Qualla: Holsworthy https://qualla.com/holsworthy en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/c/holsworthy-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Holsworthy https://qualla.com/holsworthy Holsworthy: Introduction https://qualla.com/holsworthy/ Photo credit SequenceDancer, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the first day of St Peter's Fair, every July, the people of Holsworthy gather in Stanhope Square and wait for a doorway. The doorway is in the tower of St Peter and St Paul's church. At noon it opens, and a young woman of the parish steps out — the Pretty Maid — to be greeted by everyone she has known her whole life, none of whom were supposed to know it was her. She has been chosen in secret by the churchwarden, as she has been every year since 1841. Her name was kept a secret until now. The reward is two pounds ten shillings, written into the will of a vicar's brother, and the right to stand for one afternoon as the unmarried young woman of Holsworthy most esteemed by the young, the most handsome, the most noted for her qualities. Nearly two centuries later, the parish still finds her.

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Image: SequenceDancer | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/c/holsworthy-wp/gchc-holsworthy-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Holsworthy: The Charter and the Tree https://qualla.com/holsworthy/ Photo credit SequenceDancer, CC BY-SA 3.0. St Peter's Fair itself is older than the Pretty Maid by more than two hundred years. King James the First granted Holsworthy its charter in 1614, giving the town the right to hold a fair in the saint's name. Every year, on the first morning, the town crier proclaims that charter ...

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Image: SequenceDancer | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/c/holsworthy-wp/gchc-holsworthy-the-charter-and-the-tree.mp3 0:06 2 full Holsworthy: Heald's Enclosure https://qualla.com/holsworthy/ Photo credit David Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. The name Holsworthy is a thousand-year-old fossil. It started as Heald's worthig — Heald being a Saxon farmer or chieftain whose name we will never know more about, worthig being his enclosed farmstead. The Domesday Book of 1086 records it as Haldeword. By 1228 it had become Hald...

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Image: David Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/c/holsworthy-wp/gchc-holsworthy-healds-enclosure.mp3 0:06 3 full Holsworthy: The Pannier Market https://qualla.com/holsworthy/ Photo credit Alex McGregor, CC BY-SA 2.0. Until 2014, Holsworthy was home to one of the largest livestock markets in the South West of England, held on the same site for over a century since 1905. Farmers brought their cattle, sheep and pigs into the centre of town every Wednesday morning. The market eventually outgrew i...

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Image: Alex McGregor | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/c/holsworthy-wp/gchc-holsworthy-the-pannier-market.mp3 0:06 4 full Holsworthy: The Cows Power the Houses https://qualla.com/holsworthy/ Photo credit MichaelMaggs, CC BY-SA 3.0. Just outside Holsworthy sits something that looks unremarkable from the road and is one of the more interesting energy experiments in the country. The Holsworthy anaerobic digester is the only centralised slurry-to-biogas facility in the United Kingdom. Local dairy farmers send t...

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Image: MichaelMaggs | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/c/holsworthy-wp/gchc-holsworthy-the-cows-power-the-houses.mp3 0:06 5 full Holsworthy: The Prisoners' Windows https://qualla.com/holsworthy/ Photo credit David Glover, CC BY-SA 4.0. The parish church of St Peter and St Paul keeps two unusual artefacts from the Second World War. POW Camp Number 42 stood at what is now Stanhope Close, on the edge of town, holding German and later Italian prisoners. The Italian prisoners built themselves a Roman Catholic chapel...

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Image: David Glover | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/c/holsworthy-wp/gchc-holsworthy-the-prisoners-windows.mp3 0:06 6 full Holsworthy: Britain's First Female Newsreader https://qualla.com/holsworthy/ Photo credit Simon Cobb, CC0. Barbara Mandell retired to Holsworthy and died here in 1998, but in 1955 she had been the first woman in Britain to read a national television news bulletin — for the brand new commercial broadcaster ITV, which launched on the 22nd of September that year. The BBC took another fiv...

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Image: Simon Cobb | CC0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/c/holsworthy-wp/gchc-holsworthy-britains-first-female-newsreader.mp3 0:06 7 full