Budleigh Past and Present

Another ramble across the heaths with a friend from Shanghai, following the track to East Budleigh and the family home of Sir Walter Raleigh, the Elizabethan courtier whose pioneering expeditions led to the birth of a new English-speaking nation in America. There in the church of All Saints where Raleigh worshipped as a boy I discover to my pleasure and surprise a stained glass window commemorating Vice-Admiral George William Preedy, another Budleigh worthy about whom I knew nothing. Strangely, there is no mention of Preedy and his window on the information display in the car park outside the church. I had read many years ago, perhaps in one of my childhood encyclopedias, of the ship that he commanded, HMS Agamemnon , and the transatlantic cable it laid in partnership with the USS steam frigate Niagara . And thinking about this, and the way in which Columbus, Raleigh, Marconi & co all led inevitably to Microsoft, Google and my own humble use of Blogspot made me keen to learn more...