Budleigh Past and Present

Continued from https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2021/02/stories-from-southlands-hotel-by-iris_28.html   Pictured above is Budleigh resident Iris Ansell. As a volunteer at Fairlynch Museum Iris looked after the Costume Department. In this article, the eighth and last in the series, she recalls more memorable moments from her time as proprietor of Southlands Hotel in Budleigh Salterton      About the late 1980s the economic situation changed in Britain. VAT was increased, stocks and shares were paying very little, and the cheap holiday abroad had arrived, with guaranteed good weather.   Southlands Hotel brochure After two years with bad weather, and guest occupancy down due to lack of funds of our older clientele, we decided to give up the hotel life after nearly 20 years.   The Jacuzzi: offering hotel guests a sensuous experience, it remained sadly empty!   Image credit: Pavel Ševela We sold to a young couple w...

Continued from 10 April 1940: Leading Stoker Frederick William Richards    D/K 57749, Royal Navy, HMS Hunter https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/11/ww2-75-in-corner-of-foreign-field-that.html   The grave of Milne Vickery Meads  Image credit:   westberkshirewarmemorials.org.uk Every so often, while researching the lives of these war dead of WW2, but not being as expert as I should be in matters of genealogy, I find myself faced with issues which seem to hide the truth. In the case of Milne Vickery Meads, there were at least four.   The first and obvious one was that he is not listed on Budleigh’s War memorial. And yet the Commonwealth War Graves Commission describes his mother, Laura Sophia Meads, as ‘of Budleigh Salterton’. However she does not seem to have a grave in our St Peter’s Burial Ground. And, unusually, the CWGC omits any mention of a father.   Images of the Berkshire village of Compton: Newbury Lane, as it was; in a ...

It's been quite an eye-opener to discover the thousands of photos in Fairlynch Museum's collection. I used quite a number in the recent re-edition of the Budleigh Salterton Railway booklet.  Now that the Museum's Local History Room is being re-organised there's a need for photos to illustrate various aspects of the area's past.  Sometimes the photos are not quite as perfect as one would like. The attached pic shows waitresses at the Rosemullion Hotel in Budleigh, demolished many years ago and replaced by blocks of flats. No date is given for the photo, and only Miss Lucy Sanders, front row, left, has been identified.  If you think that their uniforms look unnaturally dazzling white, as if they've been washed in biological detergent, that's because the wonders of the IT age allowed me to clean up those pinnies, which were definitely on the grubby side in the original photo.  After all, the Rosemullion was s...