50 Stories in 50 Years: Story 41 – Edgar Daniel

The Heart of the Matter – Rev Edgar Daniel in conversation with Robert Musgrave MBE, August 2026.

Edgar was Chair of the Shallowford Trust in the years before Elizabeth Braund’s passing, and acted as a mentor and confidante to her.

I doubt I would ever have found my way on my own to East Shallowford on the first occasion. I had just started as superintendent minister in the Newton Abbot Methodist circuit. I had heard of the farm, mainly of the bible studies that Elizabeth Braund led at Shallowford, and how helpful people found them. The Rev Peter Smith took me to meet Elizabeth, and the first of many conversations took place by the great fireplace in the living room.

Of course Elizabeth told me the story of the origins of Providence House, which resonated with the youth work I had engaged with in my early ministry. I was struck by the incongruity of this upper middle-class woman encountering that downtown community and the kids on the streets and relating to them, creating a youth club and it growing, and how it opened out to Shallowford. The whole story just fascinated me.

I began working in the area in 2005, and stayed until 2012 when I retired. During that time I became more and more connected to Shallowford, and for a while was Chair of the Trust. It was during that period that Elizabeth had the vision to re-furbish the farmhouse. That in itself was amazing that she at her age was willing to decamp, while the renovation work could take place. By this time Rosemary had had her unfortunate accident.

There are two things that were key to me about the whole Shallowford project. The first was the Christian heart of the project. Shallowford was evangelical Christianity practically applied in a significant and profound way.

Secondly, the organic link between the farm and Providence was distinctive about Shallowford. Other farms brought kids from inner cities to experience the countryside and so on, but here was this close, dynamic connection between two very different places.

Young people at Shallowford were coming into a community, indeed a sense of Christian community. There was a homeliness about it. In winter time that blazing fire, and young people gathered round it. It was a homely place.

Darkness was always a talking point with the young people. Coming from inner city London to the heart of Dartmoor, it was the darkness of the nights that they really found difficult to cope with at first. Equally, I noticed that when a group went to London from Dartmoor, what they found was the ever presence of the artificial lighting, and it never being dark.

In the time I knew Elizabeth, she talked extensively about ‘the heart of the matter’ to describe Shallowford. There were several occasions in which I was asked to speak on the subject, and outline what I understood it to mean. One of those occasions was at Providence House to quite a large crowd. Another was in the old barn at East Shallowford on a Saturday morning, crammed full of people in every corner. If I were asked to summarise what the heart of the matter meant to Elizabeth, I would simply say: Christ. He is the heart of the matter.

I didn’t know her at the peak of her strength, but it was clear that she was a deep thinker, widely read, a practical thinker in her application about faith and society. What she never let go of was her thinking about the future. That was always in her mind, about how the work would go on; and, of course, it has gone on.

At Shallowford people came into a homestead as much as they participated in a project. I would like to see that carry on, a continuing sense of community, a continuing sense of belonging, when people come to the farm. And, of course, that Christian foundation.’