Budleigh Past and Present

  Visitors to Fairlynch who enjoyed the R.F. Delderfield Centenary Exhibition in 2012 will be pleased to know that the author, pictured above, has been honoured with a blue plaque at the house where he lived from 1918 to 1923 in Addiscombe, Surrey. The Addiscombe & Shirley Park Residents’ Association funded the plaque to commemorate the distinguished novelist and dramatist who later moved to East Devon. The plaque, at 22 Ashburton Avenue, was unveiled on 4 September by the Worshipful the Mayor of Croydon, Councillor Manju Shahul-Hameed, by kind permission of the present owners of the house and in the company of members of the Delderfield family.   R.F. Delderfield’s The Avenue novels, comprising The Dreaming Suburb and The Avenue Goes to War , were directly based on his life in the Addiscombe area and were later made into the successful London Weekend Television series ‘People Like Us’ (1977-8) starring John Duttine. He also wrote about t...

Two recently published books marking important local centenaries are now on sale at Fairlynch Museum 's shop. Copies of Antarctic expert Meredith Hooper's The Longest Winter sold out within months. A new stock has arrived in readiness for Budleigh Salterton's Literary Festival in September when the author will be one of the distinguished guest speakers.   Antarctic author Meredith Hooper, left, with Fairlynch Museum Secretary Iris Cooper The Longest Winter is the harrowing account of former Budleigh resident Murray Levick, the doctor with Scott of the Antarctic's Northern Party who survived the six-month polar winter in terrible conditions.   Internationally acclaimed for its depth of research and readability the book was published to coincide with the Scott 100 celebrations.   Marking 100 years since the birth of East Devon author R.F. Delderfield, the centenary edition of Butterfly Moments by author Marion Lindsey-Noble appeared earlier thi...

Enthusiasts of the author R.F. Delderfield who've enjoyed visiting the Fairlynch exhibition about this much-loved East Devon author will be looking forward to seeing the Exmouth production of one of his most successful plays. Ronald Delderfield, playwright, novelist and lover of East Devon The Exmouth Players are celebrating Delderfield's 100th aniversary by staging a production of his wartime comedy, Worm’s Eye View , at the Blackmore Theatre in Bicton Street . Worm’s Eye View is set in Albert House, the Bounty family's residence at Sandcombe, in the winter of 1942-43. Sandcombe, the name that Delderfield used for his first novel All Over The Town , is clearly Exmouth, the town where he grew up. The plot centres on the family of Mr and Mrs Bounty, their daughter Bella and Mrs Bounty’s son Sydney from a previous marriage. Reluctantly, the Bountys have accepted that five RAF recruits are to be billeted with them. Mr Bounty is more willing than his wi...

Following the Fairlynch Winter Talk about R.F. Delderfield by his biographer Marion Lindsey-Noble on 12 March comes a colourful and informative display at the Museum about the East Devon writer, part of the centenary celebrations to mark his birth on 12 February 1912. Some of the novels by this prolific author are shown above.  Delderfield loved this area. Many of his novels such as A Horseman Riding By are set in East Devon. In later life he was a prominent defender of  Woodbury Common, pictured above, when it was threatened by development. He was an early supporter of 'the right to roam.' "The people of East Devon have, for generations, considered themselves to possess this right and I for one have walked and ridden over it, without challenge, since I was a boy back in 1924," he is quoted in Margaret Wilson's book A Woodbury Triumph (2004). The proposal to develop its 500 acres for use as a golf course, was not, he stated, the provision ...