In 2020 I inherited a collection of photographs from my grandfather, Peter Jeevar. The photographs had been taken in preparation for a book that never got finished. He had already written and published two small booklets on rural heritage, namely 'Dovecotes of Cambridgshire' in 1976 and 'Curiosities of Rural Cambridgeshire' in 1977. He self illustrated these booklets and would go out around East Anglia taking reference photos to create his drawings from. He had wanted to write similar books for the other East Anglian counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. However, in the early 1980s his life went in another direction and he moved to Scotland. Thankfully he kept the collection of photographs and his original notes, and it was these I inherited when he passed away in May 2020.

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At first I wanted to just finish the booklet he was intending to write, another rural curiosities volume, on Norfolk. However, that evolved into the wider Norma Explores project to visit and record all manner of sites where our rural heritage is still just about hanging on. The focus is still much the same; dovecotes, windmills, lost pubs, barns, and those oddities that pop up in the most unexpected of places.

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I am sharing images from the archive on social media via instagram and the Norma Explores Bluesky account. I am also slowly researching and revisiting these places to see what the last 50 years has done to them. Some have been lost. Some repurposed. Just a few are largely unchanged. As I visit more places and can share 'then and now' articles I will share via our Substack. You can subscribe to the Jeevar Archive content HERE 

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