Budleigh Past and Present

This post carries on from a previous one at  https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2015/07/hunting-ladies-of-raj-part-i.html Lord Byron in Albanian dress painted by Thomas Phillips in 1813. Venizelos Mansion, Athens (the British Ambassador's residence).   Did he know any ladies of the Raj? My journalist visitor at Fairlynch Museum whom I mentioned  p reviously  was Mavis Ellis. She seems to have specialised in writing on 19 th century subjects including Lord Byron, who is buried at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall near her home in Nottinghamshire. A blue plaque identifies Henry Carter's home on Fore Street Hill, now known as Umbrella Cottage  I sent her up the hill to look at Umbrella Cottage, the home of Henry Carter, the doctor, geologist and marine sponge expert who had spent so much of his working life in 19 th century India. She ...

                      Like many Budleigh residents of the past, the artist Cecil Elgee had an Anglo-Indian background and it was for this that her name will be known by those familiar with   Costumes and Characters in the Days of the British Raj , the book which appeared just before her death. But her work as a painter and illustrator covered a wide range of subjects. Born in 1904, Cecil Elgee, better known by her family nickname as Moppie or Mops, went out to India to join her parents in Bombay in 1922 when she was 18. She studied part time at the Bombay School of Art, where she was the only European apart from the headmaster, the architect Claude Batley (1879-1956).                                               The School,...