Budleigh Past and Present

  Research on Budleigh Salterton's 19th century sponge expert by Fairlynch volunteer Michael Downes has helped curators prepare an exhibition at London's Natural History Museum.  Above: The feature on Henry Carter FRS in the Natural History Museum's display 'Untold Human Stories from the NHM Porifera Collection.'  Budleigh Salterton’s only native-born Fellow of the Royal Society Henry Carter was the main subject of the 2013 Fairlynch exhibition ‘Sea, Salt and Sponges.’     The exhibition was accompanied by a booklet ‘The Scientist in The Cottage’, written by Fairlynch Museum Secretary Michael Downes. It was praised by the NHM’s Emma Sherlock, Curator in the Invertebrate Section of the Zoology Department at the Museum, and is the first-ever published biography of the Budleigh-born surgeon, geologist and spongologist.  Emma explained that the booklet had helped in a project that she and her NHM colleagues...

Naturalists and geologists worldwide will be celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Henry John Carter, the subject of Fairlynch’s main exhibition next year. Carter has the distinction of being the only Fellow of the Royal Society who was born in Budleigh. Having trained as a doctor, he spent much of his working life on the Arabian and Indian coasts. He is celebrated above all for his research into sponges. For the last years of his life his home was Umbrella Cottage on Fore Street Hill.   He is celebrated for his significant contribution to our knowledge of the natural world.   A species of gecko, Pristurus carteri , is named after him, as well as the frankincense tree Boswellia carterii .   “No writer   better deserves the respect   and gratitude of Indian   geologists” was one of the points made by the writer of Carter's obituary, published by the Royal Society in 1895. This army surgeon wrote a staggering total of 1,894 page...