Budleigh Past and Present

This is a post which originally appeared on my Great War at Fairlynch blog, which you can find via Google. I found that Facebook did not like linking to the site because apparently the automatons believed that it contravened 'community guidelines'. ???!!!  Maybe there's some politically incorrect content that I've been oblivious to. Anyway I'm reposting here in the hope that Budleigh & Brewster will be acceptable.    War memorials come in all shapes and sizes. Not many people would associate this drain cover with the Great War. But whenever I see it as I walk down my garden path I think of Alfred and the son that he lost just a few years before he built our 1920s house on Exmouth Road in Budleigh Salterton. Alfred Demant had moved from Highgate in London to live in the Budleigh area at some time after 1911. He and his wife Amelia Maude Louise had taken up residence in Ivy Cottage – now Yew Tree Cottage – next to the Baptist Chapel ...

The exhibition of nominated heritage assets is taking place soon as I mention elsewhere , and I now I’m feeling guilty that I contributed so little. I’ve been too busy blogging. It’s too late to submit anything now, I think, but here goes… Manhole covers!  Do you notice them? I mean the ones that have names on, like the one at…  But I hesitate. I have a problem here, because I have always noticed them, and ever since reading about the unscrupulous metal thieves who scoop them up and carry them off to be melted down I’ve been worried about their future.    They’re definitely part of our heritage: “ a fascinating part of local history" as Charles Wagner, the London Historic Areas Adviser at English Heritage said in response to news of the crime wave which was sweeping the capital’s streets ten years ago, leaving dangerous empty holes. The problem has not gone away. In fact ‘Manhole cover...