Budleigh Past and Present

Continued from 15 October 1944 PRIVATE ALBERT GEORGE WATKINS  (1915-44)     1 st Battalion, Devonshire Regiment https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2021/04/ww2-75-15-october-1944-budleigh-man.html     Harry Bartlett's grave in Budleigh Salterton Image credit:  https://images.findagrave.com Harry Bartlett, usually known as Roy to his family, died of illness as a result of wounds received in Italy more than a year earlier. You might think, on seeing his grave at St Peter’s Burial Ground, with its reference to Harry as the treasured younger son of Brigadier H. Bartlett CBE, that this was a typical military officer-class Budleigh background, including, of course, a public school education. In fact, although his name appears on Budleigh Salterton’s war memorial, his only connection with the town – apart from a training stint with the Royal Marines at their Dalditch camp - was that his wife Joan was apparently a Saltertonian.   Harry’...

Military historian Simon Fogg took senior staff from the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines (CTCRM) at Lympstone on a tour of the old World War Two Dalditch Royal Marines Training Camp in October 2019  While Budleigh Salterton remained relatively quiet during the Second World War, only a few miles away was a hive of military activity. Exmouth resident Simon Fogg has made himself into an acknowledged expert on Woodbury Camp.   He has always had a love of military history and has been a dedicated rifle target shooter from a young age.  Simon with his first book   Wartime Dalditch Camp and Finds On Woodbury Common ,   published in 2016 It was through this activity that he developed a fascination for the Common as a site for discovering military artefacts. Simon’s second book, entitled Inside Dalditch Camp, A Wartime History Of The Royal Marines On Woodbury Common , was published last year and is, in his w...

A work in progress - Roger Conant the Peacemaker: How John Washington's painting of the 1625 scene at Fishermen's Field, Cape Ann, was looking by 3 September Local history is often better told in pictures than in words. A visual impact is more engaging, and artistic licence means that a controversial slant can be introduced – which is always good for enjoyable and balanced discussion. There are very few paintings inspired by Budleigh’s history, and yet our area is crowded with fascinating events and people who would make good subjects.    Sir John Everett Millais’ 1870 painting ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’ was surely the first and the best known. Then a century or so later we have Peter Goodhall’s 1983 depiction of smuggler Jack Rattenbury’s escape from the excise officer Captain Stocker – now in Fairlynch Museum. That painting was followed by the more recent one of the German Heinkel bomber strafing Budleigh High Street during WW2 And now local a...

  These six men, including Murray Levick (second from right), the northern party of Captain Scott's last expedition, stand outside the entrance to the snow hole in which they have just spent the 1911-1912 Antarctic Winter in darkness. Image credit: Scott Polar Research Institute Murray Levick, who lived on the outskirts of Budleigh Salterton in his retirement, is well known as an Antarctic explorer and authority of penguins. But he also had a distinguished service career in WW1.  Born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1876, Levick joined the Royal Navy in 1910 after a short medical career.   It was as a member of the six-strong Northern Party that he took part in Captain Scott's ill-fated 1910-13 Terra Nova Expedition for which he had been recruited as medical officer and zoologist.   The group spent the summer of 1911–1912 at Cape Adare in the midst of an Adélie Penguin rookery. Levick's observations of the birds were later published in his 1914 book Antarctic Penguins. P...