Celebrating Devon’s World-Class Heritage


In 2025 the Devonshire Association was thrilled to receive a grant of almost £40,000 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for our Celebrating Devon’s World-Class Heritage project. Huge thanks go to National Lottery players for making this possible.

This enabled us to launch a year-long programme of activities in 2025 to raise awareness of the natural and historic heritage of the six outstanding assets in Devon designated by UNESCO as being of global significance. They are:

  • The Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site
  • The Dorset and East Devon Coast World Heritage Site
  • The Exeter UNESCO City of Literature
  • The Exeter Book, an entry in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register
  • The English Riviera UNESCO Global Geopark
  • The North Devon UNESCO Biosphere Reserve

To highlight the significance of these six world-class assets the Devonshire Association hosted twelve free Discovery Days and three Flagship events between April and November 2025. We also published two illustrated booklets and sponsored two young people’s creative bursaries. 

The following links will take you to further information about the highlights of our very successful project:

  1. Celebrating Devon’s World-Class Heritage project booklet
  2. Programme of Discovery Days, April – July 2025
  3. Flagship Event: President’s Symposium, May 2025
  4. Flagship Event: Exeter Cathedral Study Day, May 2025
  5. Programme of Discovery Days, September – October 2025
  6. Exeter City of Literature Discovery Day recording, September 2025
  7. Managing the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site – video
  8. Flagship Event: Climate Change Lecture, November 2025
  9. Young People’s Creative Bursaries, December 2025
  10. Shore to Shore – Devon and Newfoundland Songs and Storytelling, November 2025

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