Budleigh Past and Present

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 first part, based on the section from  Budleigh Salterton Information Centre to the Raleigh Wall, and called 'The Twins that never were'.  Summary: How Budleigh Salterton almost became twinned with a town in the USA.   Image credit: Christopher Wroten Did you know that Budleigh Salterton, according to Wikipedia for several years until the mention mysteriously disappeared, had an American twin? Don’t believe me? Take a look at this fine road sign on the approach to Brewster, Cape Cod. 'TWINNED WITH BUDLEIGH SALTERTON, ENGLAND', it announces. But I wonder whether it’s still there.   The name of our alleged sister-town on Cape Cod has nothing to do with the brewing i...

      Annie Whittaker More than sixty years after she was evacuated to Budleigh Salterton during WW2,  Marilyn Reynolds had vivid  childhood memories of that  most traditional East Devon  home industry: lace.  As a six-year-old wartime  evacuee in Budleigh Salterton, she recalled how, ‘o nce a week, the Honiton lace-making ladies would climb aboard a bus and, sitting with  t heir huge pillows propped on their knees, set off for the charming village of Otterton to pursue their craft.’ The chances are that Budleigh’s wartime lacemakers so vividly remembered by Marilyn Reynolds were on their way by bus to be supervised by one of East Devon’s truly legendary lace teachers, still spoken of with awe by today’s lace experts.   Fairlynch Museum volunteer Sue Morgan explains the finer points of lacemaking to members of a Probus group in October 2017 Fairlynch’s resident lace curator Sue Morgan writes: ‘Mrs Annie Whittaker, n ...

      Pictured above is Budleigh resident Iris Ansell, who as a volunteer at Fairlynch Museum looked after the Costume Department. She recalls more memorable moments from her time as proprietor of Southlands Hotel in Budleigh Salterton.  This is the sixth in a series of her recollections.   Southlands Hotel  as it used to be, situated  on Budleigh's Marine Parade. It has been replaced by Marine Court   Not all hotel guests arrived by car during the 1980s. They would take the train or coach to Exmouth, then on to Budleigh by taxi. A week, full board accommodation, sea facing room of course, just gentle exercise – an amble through town to the ‘Dolphin Café’ for morning coffee, a stroll along the front in the afternoon, tea in the ‘Longboat’, maybe a walk along the Otter, take in the cricket, a sherry before dinner, or maybe just sit in the garden and watch the world go by. All very relaxing, and all needing good weather. One suc...

Continued from  26 August 1941 – Buried in Winchester:  Aircraftman 1 st Class Horace Bucknell (1905-41) Royal Air Force  https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/12/ww2-75-26-august-1941-buried-in.html   Ship's badge of HMS Repulse, the Royal Navy battlecruiser on which Boy 1st Class Peter Anstey served in World War II No words can describe the ugliness and chaos of war. For the families who’ve lost loved ones there’s some small compensation in the neat orderliness of war cemeteries. On land, all over the world, 23,000 of them are beautifully maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. And for shipwrecks at sea, most governments with any humanitarian awareness have a policy of treating war graves as protected places. So the recent news that there are parts of the world where scavengers have been stripping WW2 ships for metals such as aluminium, brass and steel is a cause for distress and anger.   Map of the 1941-42 Malaya...

Continued from 26 Jan 1942: Fighting with ‘The Forgotten Air Force’:  SERGEANT DERYK VAUGHAN SAUNDERS (1920-42)     https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/12/ww2-75-26-january-1942-fighting-with.html Writing about Budleigh and WW2 it’s impossible to ignore Joyce Dennys’ books, ‘Henrietta’s War’ and ‘Henrietta Sees It Through’. Published respectively in 1985 and 1986, both books are based on letters purportedly written by Henrietta Brown, the doctor’s wife in a small Devon coastal town to her childhood friend Robert. Front page of the 12 May 1915 issue, featuring Rita Jolivet, British actress who survived the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.  Photograph by Foulsham and Banfield, Ltd.  The letters are dated from 1939 to 1945 and were originally published in the ‘The Sketch’, a glossy illustrated weekly journal, which focused on high society and the aristocracy and ran for 2,989 issues between 1 February 1893 and 17 Jun...