Painting Budleigh history: 1. A view of the Spanish Armada, 1588

Continued from 
https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/07/painting-history.html

Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, made to commemorate the defeat of the Spanish Armada, depicted in the background, and now in the Collection of Woburn Abbey. Believed formerly to be by the artist George Gower, the painting is one of three versions. The most recently restored is known as the ‘Drake’ version, on display in the Queen’s House, at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich

Following on from my suggestion that there might be scenes from local history which deserve to be painted, it was pointed out that this very thing had been done to record the strafing of Budleigh High Street by an enemy aircraft during World War Two.  The painting had been put on public display for Poppy Day and it was featured in the Exmouth Journal of 7 May 2020.

Lots more ideas have been suggested, some of them quite fanciful and even bold. But there’s nothing wrong with that. From a grain of truth I’m sure you can create a masterpiece.

A Topsham flag!

Many masterpieces, like the ‘Armada’ portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, have been inspired by the defeat of the Spanish Armada. A good idea, I thought, when it was suggested by my friend Alan Tilbury.

And there seems to have been some kind of telepathic endorsement! Within a few seconds of starting to type these words I noticed that Topsham Museum had posted something about the subject. A strange coincidence!    

‘How Topsham earned this flag’ was the theme of the Museum’s post. In 1588, the town was one of the coastal communities instructed by the English government to send ships ‘to attend on Sir Francis’, Drake having set up his headquarters in Plymouth.

The English fleet leaving Plymouth: one of five UK postage stamps designed by Graham Evernden in 1988 to commemorate the 400^th anniversary of the Spanish Armada

  

 ‘By early July, four Topsham ships were in the Estuary and Topsham Quay must have been bustling with workmen and sailors loading supplies,’ the Museum tells us. ‘On 9 July, three of the ships and 140 men set off down the Exe, bound for Plymouth Sound: Bartholomew 130 tons, 70 men under Captain Nicholas Wright, Rose 110 tons, 50 men under Captain Thomas Sandye and Gift 25 tons, 20 men. On 13 July the fourth ship, the Grace of God, cleared the Estuary to join the fray.

As late as the 19^th century in European coastal communities there was a fear of being abducted by Barbary pirates and sold into slavery. This 1815 print in the British Museum is entitled ‘Capt Croker horror stricken at Algiers, on witnessing the miseries of the Christian slaves chain’d and in Irons driven home after labour by Infidels with large Whips’ 

Topsham is not Budleigh Salterton of course. Not that Budleigh Salterton consisted of very much in 1588. Maybe a fishermen’s hut or two.  Nobody wanted to live actually on the coast in those days because of the danger of pirates.

According to one historian's estimate in 2011, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries, although the figure has been queried.  Certainly there was no shipyard on Budleigh Bay.

Devons’ Beacons

But Budleigh had a beacon! As important in those days as any World War Two radar station.  Historians have identified at least 488 beacons in England, of which 89 are believed to have existed in Devon, more than in any other county, explains a useful document published by Devon County Council. This is probably because Devon has a very long coastline, with many good landing points, which made it vulnerable to attack from the continent.

Although the above illustration includes signal stations from the 19^th century Napoleonic Wars, there’s no reason to think that Budleigh’s West Down beacon was not in use at an earlier period. 

From the trig point on West Down Beacon: looking west towards Straight Point and Torbay in the distance 


It does offer a superb view over the English Channel as I know from a favourite walk which takes me there in about a quarter of an hour.

Culmstock Beacon, on the Blackdown Hills, east of Tiverton. The beehive-shaped structure was built of flint. It was rebuilt in 1870 after the collapse of the earlier one.  Image credit: Nilfanion

And I don’t see why one should rule out the possibility that West Down had a little stone shelter like the one at Culmstock.  The Budleigh site clearly had  strategic importance, especially in the age of the Reformation. In 1570 Pope Pius V would denounce England’s Protestant queen as a heretic and a ‘servant of crime’, would release her subjects from allegiance to her, and would excommunicate any who obeyed her orders.

Reconstruction drawing showing Culmstock Beacon as it may have appeared in the 16^th century, as featured in Devon County Council’s document

In 1558, Elizabeth I acceded to the English throne, in succession to the Catholic Queen Mary. That year, the Lord Lieutenant of Devon stated in a report quoted in ‘Fire Beacons – Warning Signals across the Countryside’ that ‘all such beacons as hath been accustomably used and set upon the sea coast or elsewhere, where they have been last used be… erected and re-edified as in their former state, and that men of understanding be appointed as watchers.’

The Spanish Armada off the English coast (1620-25) by Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen, from the Rijksmuseum Collection

So with the hated Armada galleons moving menacingly eastwards over Budleigh Bay and some angry Elizabethan ‘men of understanding’ making sure that West Down beacon does its job of warning England of the intended invasion, I would think that there’s enough historical truth to make a painting come to life.  

A different spin: detail from another history painting set in Budleigh

Inevitably, I thought that an outstretched arm pointing to the horizon might be an interesting addition. But it might have to point in a different direction.

The Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1796) by the French-born British painter Philip James de Loutherbourg, in the Collection of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich  

Time of day? How about one of those beautiful blood-red Budleigh sunrises over Otter Head to hint at the impending disaster for Spain?

PS. As a footnote to all this, as the fire beacons of history developed into radar with the approach of the Second World, West Down became the site in 1942 of a Royal Observer Corps base for Churchill’s ‘Secret Army’. It’s hidden away, near Castle Lane. 


The Royal Observer Corps badge. Looking closely at it, I see that the little figure is in Elizabethan military costume, and holding a fire beacon! Which somehow fits well with the theme of this blog post. I could have called it 'From the Armada to the Atom Bomb'  

And then, at the time of the Cold War, between 1960 and 1968, the base evolved into an underground bunker for the ROC to monitor the effects of an enemy attack with nuclear weapons. But that will be another story for Budleigh – Past and Present.    

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