Budleigh Past and Present

 Continued from  https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2024/06/around-town-and-over-pond-11-pacifist.html   AROUND THE TOWN AND OVER THE POND A walk around Budleigh Salterton to interest transatlantic visitors. Every so often there’s a diversion which may inspire you to visit places like East Budleigh, Exeter, Sidmouth, Colyton or even places in the United States and Canada.        The walk is set out in parts. Here’s the twelth part: 12. FAIRLYNCH: THE SIR WALTER RALEGH ROOM     And so to the quaint little building called Fairlynch, originally Primrose Cottage, which became Budleigh Salterton’s Museum and Arts Centre in 1967.   On the way you pass The Octagon, where the Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir John Everett Millais is said to have stayed while starting work on ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’.   ‘Raleigh and his son Walt’ in my digital version.  The original, dated 1602 by an unknown artist, is in the National Portr...

      Former Fairlynch Museum steward Mary Bryars. Photo by her grandson Ben Simpson   Volunteer helpers at Budleigh’s Fairlynch Museum were sorry to hear in January 2011 of the death of Mary Bryars. Along with her husband Denys, Mary moved to Budleigh Salterton in 1980. Five years later, like many married couples, they volunteered to become stewards at Fairlynch. 'He did the desk, she did upstairs,' recalled the late Sylvia Merkel, who organised the stewards' rota. Denys, who had come to live in Budleigh after retiring as company chairman of the Sheffield Smelting Company, was remembered by Sylvia as ‘a lovely man with a white beard’. Mary, who lived to the great age of 94, made many friends among her fellow-stewards and was also much involved with the church. Sadly, she was widowed but carried on the work of being a steward at Fairlynch until she moved to live at Shandford Care Home on Station Road in Budleigh. ‘There have been 400 stewards since ...

The photo shows the model of a rhynchosaur, made by Budleigh-based designer Neil Rogers and displayed in Fairlynch Museum Yesterday I went to my first meeting of a local poet’s group in Budleigh Library. I read my poem ‘Dear Rhynchosaur’ about this strange Triassic reptile which lived about 235 million years ago. Its bones were found near the east bank of the River Otter in the 19th century. The creature helped me to realise that, whether LORP is a success or not, the project occupies, relatively speaking, only a few seconds of our local history. But here’s my poem: Dear Rhynchosaur, inside your case, You have a really funny face. Your beady eye and parrot’s beak, As creatures go, are quite unique. In ancient times, it seems, your paws Walked upon Budleigh’s streets with claws Like those of really savage brutes. Yet all you ate were simply roots. I wonder, does your lizard’s tail Mean that you were an adult male? The pattern on your scaly back Could camouflage against attack. Your b...

  Continued from    https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/06/painting-from-history-two-artists-at.html Budleigh resident Nick Speare as The Sailor in the 2018 ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’ re-enactment by Fairlynch Museum volunteers. Photo credit: Rob Coombe    Still remembering that swelteringly hot day in May 2018 when we re-enacted ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’ on Budleigh beach, I’m continuing to relate John Washington’s sketch to Millais’ masterpiece. Young Walter as portrayed in Millais’ The Boyhood of Raleigh As Millais and every artist knows, hand and arm gestures play a key role in their work, guiding the viewer to a certain conclusion. Young Walter’s gaze is internalised, fixed on the world of his imagination, thousands of miles distant from what we actually see in the painting. He seems to be looking through the sailor rather than at him. The Boyhood of Raleigh, on s...

An East Devon smuggler called Jack One evening came under attack. But he proved himself wily In behaving most slyly. Of escaping he’d developed the knack. ©  Michael Downes 2014 This painting by  Peter Goodhall (b.1957) is part of Fairlynch Museum’s art collection. It is entitled ‘A Revenue Cutter Apprehends the Smuggler Jack Rattenbury off Budleigh Salterton .’     A fuller commentary on the work will be published in due course. © the artist  Photo credit: Fairlynch Museum

I wrote the following piece in 2014, and it first appeared at  http://fairlynchgreatwar.blogspot.com/ , hence my thoughts about the German-born Herkomer, split between love of his native Bavaria and his adopted country of England.  Sir Hubert von Herkomer as caricatured by FG (Franz Goedecker) in Vanity Fair, Jan. 26, 1884. He died on 31 March 1914 while staying in Budleigh. I’ve never been to Bushey, in Hertfordshire. Unlike the peaceful coastal town of Budleigh Salterton it seems to be very much a domitory place for commuters to London, with a population some five times bigger than ours. But in the late 19th century it was “a sleepy, picturesque place” as one of its most famous former residents recalled. “It had no water laid on, and there was no sanitation except of the most primitive kind. The drinking-water was brought to the houses in buckets, for which the old people, who carried it round, charged a halfpenny a bucket. The one and o...