Budleigh Past and Present

One of Fairlynch Museum’s best-known artefacts is home again after a spell of thorough restoration at the hands of experts in mechanical music. The overhaul was made possible by a generous donation from a Friend of the Museum. “A rather sedate and old-fashioned juke-box” is how the Exmouth Journal described Fairlynch’s polyphon in June 1968 when the museum had been open for only a year. Since then, its tinkly rendering of familiar tunes has entertained thousands of visitors. Polyphon is the trade name given to disc-playing music boxes first manufactured by the Polyphon Musikwerke, located in Leipzig, Germany. Invented in 1870, full-scale production started around 1897 and continued into the early 1900s. Polyphons were exported all over the world and music was supplied for the English, French and German markets, as well as further afield. Museum records show that Fairlynch’s instrument originally came from the King’s Arms, Otterton and give it a date of 14 Novembe...

Maggie Giraud Long hidden pictures in Fairlynch’s art collection are being put on display thanks to the efforts of volunteers including locally-based freelance art historian and curator Maggie Giraud. Maggie’s talk ‘Understanding Henri Matisse’ was chosen to round off the Museum’s AGM on 29 April. It was one of many talks which she will be giving during 2015. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Maggie lists her specialist topics as Renaissance Florence, the early 20th century period in Paris, and Dartington Hall, where she was employed as curator and archivist.     High Cross House, Dartington Hall Image credit: Ruth Sharville Maggie was the founding curator of High Cross House at Dartington, designed by Swiss-American architect William Lescaze in 1932 and considered to be one of the UK's best examples of modernist architecture. On 20 May, at the Ken Stradling Collection Design Study Centre in Bristol, she...

New Fairlynch Chairman Trevor Waddington at work on a new project. What he’s holding will be yet another story for the Museum     Friends of Fairlynch Museum approved the appointment of a new Chairman at their Annual General Meeting on Wednesday 29 April. Trevor Waddington moved to Budleigh Salterton in 2012, retiring after a 35-year career in the Royal Navy followed by 17 years of running an antique clocks business in Bradford on Avon.  Brought up in Peterborough, he joined the Royal Navy at the age of 15, retiring with the rank of Commander and the award of an OBE in the 1992 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.    With a background in engineering, Trevor’s hobby of clock restoration seemed appropriate. After graduating from the West Dean College/British Antique Dealers' Association diploma course in the conservation-restoration of antique clocks he went on to become a Fellow of the British Horological Institute, a Liveryma...

Visits to museums helped contribute £195,113,005 to the South West’s economy in 2013/14… 1.8 million of the visitors were children… donations to SW museums totaled £2,281,067…   These are just some of the eye-opening statistics from this page published in the South West Museum Development Programme’s Annual Report for 2013/14. We are confident that Fairlynch Museum played a full part in contributing to this bright picture.   To find out more about the South West Museum Development Programme click here

The face of a hero as created by Vivien Mallock FRBS One of the eye-catching exhibits in Fairlynch Museum’s ‘Beyond the Boyhood’ display in the newly refurbished Sir Walter Ralegh Room is the Budleigh Salterton Venture Art Club’s version of the famous Millais painting. As a work in progress it was featured elsewhere on this site.  Another rather special artefact in the exhibition is a life-size bronze face created by sculptress Vivien Mallock when she was working on the statue of Sir Walter now standing in East Budleigh. Vivien Mallock’s Raleigh statue being unveiled on 7 February 2006 by (l-r):  HRH The Duke of Kent, Steve Baker, who was chairman of East Budleigh Parish Council, Hugo Swire MP, sculptress Vivien Mallock   The statue was unveiled by HRH the Duke of Kent in 2006 and occupies a focal point in the village near All Saints Church. Its origin was not without controversy. East Budleigh residents had ho...