In the 1980s, Vietnamese refugees came to the wider Bideford / Barnstaple area. Their descendants can still be found in North Devon. The first Vietnamese family welcomed to Barnstaple were the Liu family, who arrived in 1981. There is also a Mr Liu recorded...
The Ugandan Asian crisis of the 1970s led to several families settling in the North Devon region. During October 1972, nearly 2500 people arrived at resettlement camps at Honiton and Plaisterdown. Though most eventually settled in London and other cities in the UK, a...
A Chinese presence in Bideford goes back to the 1960s, when The Capital Chinese restaurant was opened at 22 Bridgeland Street. The Capital Chinese restaurant was opened by the proprietor of the Great Wall Chinese Restaurant in Barnstaple (which opened in 1962). ...
In the 1940s and 1950s, Italians, Spanish and residents of several countries in Eastern Europe arrived in Bideford, possibly refugees from the advance of Communism in the post-war period. Naturalisation records record that people were coming to live in Bideford from...
Several refugees from the Nazi advance came to live in Bideford. The Fischer family from Czechoslovakia became well-known glove manufacturers in Bideford. Several refugees from the Nazi advance came to live in Bideford. One prominent family were the Fischers, from...
The 1939 Register indicates the presence of Pullman and Chensil Singh, from India, working as travelling Drapers. It records Pullman and Chensil Singh as living at 2, Rope Walk. There were other Singhs living in Barnstaple at this time too.Their descendants have...
Maurice Myer Greenside Prince founded the Strand Cinema on the Pill in Bideford in 1938, where he later sheltered Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany. Maurice Prince (1899–1991), who was of Jewish heritage, moved from west London to North Devon in the...
The twentieth century brought more settlers. Before the Second World War, there are settlers recorded from a range of countries, including: Denmark, Norway and Belgium, as well as Germany. Surnames such as Frederiksen, Larsen and De Ryke, found in naturalisation...
Bideford, like many towns in Devon, provided a temporary home for refugees from Belgium during the First World War. During the First World War, Bideford provided a temporary home for about 200 Belgian refugees fleeing the battlefields of Europe. A gravestone in...
There were also residents from France, including over 30 nuns of French origin living in the Ursuline Convent in Northdown Hall. The Ursuline Convent in Northdown Hall was where Charles Kingsley wrote part of Westward Ho!. The nuns arrived in England in 1904, and...
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