Budleigh Past and Present

A familiar face  This photo on a Facebook page attracted 3k views in one day.  It shows Jean Blathwayt being presented with a quilt on her retirement in 1983 from the Budleigh Salterton Brownie Pack. And a famous family  Blathwayts had been associated since the 17th century with Dyrham Park, near Bath.  Jean’s great-uncle, Colonel Linley Wynter Blathwayt, was a noted supporter of suffragettes. Her father, the Revd Francis Linley Blathwayt, was a parson-naturalist, Rector of Melbury Osmund in Dorset from 1916 to1929, and it was there that Jean and her elder sister Barbara were born.   An inspiration An unpublished manuscript written by Jean Blathwayt in the 1940s records the influence of Lady Lilian Digby, above , a neighbour living close to Melbury Osmund. Awarded MBE in 1918  for her VAD work during WW1, Lady Lilian, of nearby Lewcombe Manor, was a keen Girl Guide and District Commissioner...

      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 ...

  A talk about Roger Conant, founder of Salem, Massachusetts, is being given in the church where his family worshipped over four hundred years ago.  Ian Blackwell is a published author who is noted for his books on the Italian Campaign of World War Two rather than on 17th century history.  However he and his American wife Bonnie have lived for nearly thirty years in Roger Conant's birthplace of East Budleigh, and Bonnie has a special connection to Salem.  Both her parents can trace their roots to the Mayflower, and her father's family lived in Salem for many generations. Her great-grandfather was associated with the city's Peabody Essex Museum and her uncle was involved with the Salem Historical Commission.  In researching the book, as far as possible, Ian has gone back to primary sources written at the time the Conant family lived in East Budleigh, for example documents held by the Devon Heritage Centre and the National Archives.  He has also m...

Image credit:   www.firstchurchinsalem.org This was the Sermon written and presented to those gathered for the Founders’ Day Service at the First Church in Salem on 7 August 2022 by Diane Smith, Chair, Archives Committee:   Founders Day is a very special day. The coming together of this church is a significant moment in the history of this country, but equally important is what our founders accomplished for us. Here we are today, you and me, together to play our part in the continuation of what people like Roger Conant, Captain Trask, Thomas Gardner and others began 393 years ago. Today, we’ll focus on just a few things. For example, one of our members, one who took his lovely bride in marriage right here in this church, just published a history focused on our Founders, we had visitors from Tennessee who trace their family tree back to one of our Founding Pastors, a film crew from California spent some time here in our meetinghouse reflecting on the role of The F...

Wolfgang Koch, the church member who delivered a greeting about Roger Conant from the latter’s home village of East Budleigh    Founders’ Day Service at The First Church in Salem on 7 August 2022. The First Reading was presented by church member Wolfgang Koch: Most of us are familiar with the fact that in the fall of 1626, Roger Conant led a band of people, a fishing company known as the Dorchester Adventurers, from Gloucester to Naumkeag. He and others from that group are among our founders. Of the 30 or so people listed in our Records Book who gathered on August 6, 1629 to sign and declare our covenant, the names we call out today are: • William Allen, • Peter Palfray, • Captain Trask, • John Balch, • Thomas Gardner, • John Woodbery • And again, Roger Conant At Naumkeag, historians have found evidence that these colonists were among those who built houses, interacted with the indigenous people of the area, and cleared and prepared the land for the plantin...

The First Church in Salem  Image credit:  www.firstchurchinsalem.org  Over the last few years members of the Roger Conant Club have been researching the life and times of the founder of the American city of Salem. The Club’s interest in East Budleigh’s ‘other hero’ has been enthusiastically welcomed by his descendants and by Salem residents on the other side of ‘the pond’. Among the latter are members of the First Church in Salem, founded by Roger and his West Country friends nearly 400 years ago, on 6 August 1629. As you can read from the Order of Service below, it is one of the oldest Protestant churches founded in North America. It embraced Unitarianism in the early 1800s, and today the Church remains a self-governing congregation that follows its own by-laws and democratically elects its own officers. Diane Smith, Chair of the Archives Committee of the First Church in Salem, invited the Roger Conant Club to contribute to the Founders’ Day service held last month...

Photo of Her Majesty the Queen during her visit in 2015 to HMS Ocean in Devonport at a ceremony to rededicate the ship.  Image credit: Joel Rouse/ Ministry of Defence News of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II has been met with sadness around the world. Here in Budleigh messages have been received from Americans who feel a special link with our area thanks to memories of their ancestor Roger Conant, born in East Budleigh in 1592. Noted as a peacemaker in American history he is celebrated for founding the city of Salem in 1626. Among the thousands of his living descendants many meet in Conant family reunions in different parts of America. Some have visited or are planning visits to East Budleigh especially in the run-up to Salem’s 400 th anniversary. From California, Luli and Frank sent this message, following their visit to East Budleigh in June this year. ‘ We send our condolences about the loss of your Queen Elizabeth. The news of her passing evoked such sadness and shoc...

      Former Fairlynch Museum steward Mary Bryars. Photo by her grandson Ben Simpson   Volunteer helpers at Budleigh’s Fairlynch Museum were sorry to hear in January 2011 of the death of Mary Bryars. Along with her husband Denys, Mary moved to Budleigh Salterton in 1980. Five years later, like many married couples, they volunteered to become stewards at Fairlynch. 'He did the desk, she did upstairs,' recalled the late Sylvia Merkel, who organised the stewards' rota. Denys, who had come to live in Budleigh after retiring as company chairman of the Sheffield Smelting Company, was remembered by Sylvia as ‘a lovely man with a white beard’. Mary, who lived to the great age of 94, made many friends among her fellow-stewards and was also much involved with the church. Sadly, she was widowed but carried on the work of being a steward at Fairlynch until she moved to live at Shandford Care Home on Station Road in Budleigh. ‘There have been 400 stewards since ...

  The Millais tableau, part of Fairlynch Museum's  Raleigh 400 exhibition: (back row) Nick Speare, Anthea Downes, Michael Downes, Rosemary Griggs, John Washington, Chris Fry; front row: Ollie Batson & Bailey Rouson If you happened to be on Budleigh beach during a hot summer day back in 2018, in pre-Covid times, you might have seen this colourful group of people in Tudor costumes posing for the photographer.  Some of them had been acting out a scene from 1870, when the famous Victorian artist Sir John Everett Millais visited the town to make a start on his painting ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’.   Cllr Tom Wright (Mayor of Budleigh) admires 'The Boyhood of Raleigh' by Sir John Everett Millais at the opening of the Raleigh 400 exhibition on Monday 28 May 2018 It was all about marking the 400 th anniversary of the death of East Devon’s most celebrated historical figure. A highlight of the year for Budleigh’s Fairlynch Museum was the display of Millais’ painting ...