Budleigh Past and Present

Commander in Chief of the Allied forces General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Image credit: www.dodmedia.osd.mil When the USA came into WW2 to fight against the Axis dictators Devon was an obvious place for Allied forces to rehearse the invasion of Normandy. The county is justly proud of its hedgerows. It has more of them than any other region in England, just like the landscape of tiny enclosed fields and sunken lanes which make up what is known as ‘le bocage’ in that part of northern France. It seems that some of the Allied generals underestimated the difficulty that cumbersome tanks would face in such a landscape. Historians of WW2 often refer to the frustrating and deadly months of June and July 1944 as ‘The War of the Hedgerows’. So many Allied soldiers lost their lives to German snipers at that time.    Sheplegh Court, near Blackawton in South Devon But Devon was also, it seems, an ideal base for the generals to plan D Day while hidden away in the county’s seclu...

  A group of local residents wish to honour Roger Conant, one of Devon's unsung heroes, with a blue plaque in the village of East Budleigh, where he was born. He crossed the Atlantic and founded the city of Salem in Massachusetts in 1626.  Previously he acted as a peacemaker and helped to prevent bloodshed and a possible civil war between settlers in New England as seen in the wonderful painting by Budleigh artist John Washington. ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’ is the title of the painting.  Now seems to be the right time to remember one of the ‘good guys’ in history.  All contributions are welcome via https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/michael-downes-1 It is proposed that the blue plaque be sited near this millstone. The photo shows Jeff Conant, a direct descendant of Roger Conant, who travelled from California to East Budleigh in 2016 to explore the land of his ancestor's birth.