Budleigh Past and Present

  Congratulations to Benjamin Shallop on his book   The Founding of Salem: City of Peace   (2022) about the founding of his home city and East Budleigh-born Roger Conant’s part in it. Below is a series of questions and answers with dates, put together as an online interview that I conducted with the author.     13 February 2023 Q: No book has been written about Roger since 1945. Why do you think that is? I think there are several reasons for that. First and foremost he is not an easy guy to research! It took me nearly ten years to piece together what little I could of his story in my book, and that is because sadly not much has survived and what has survived is not very accessible. The people who recorded much of the history of the 1620s in New England were mostly religious leaders with their own agendas, and often were more interested in making themselves look good to people back in England rather than acknowledging the actual work of people who they regarded as ‘Strangers’ (a label c

    One of the striking images on display in RAMM’s ‘Gatekeepers to Heaven’ exhibition  Image credit:  Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery; Bodleian Library, Oxford There’s a fascinating exhibition at Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) which gives an insight into life in the Middle Ages, bringing back six exceptional medieval manuscripts to Exeter for the first time in over 400 years. The manuscripts, originally part of Exeter Cathedral’s collection, are on loan from the world-famous Bodleian Library in Oxford. They are the star attraction of the exhibition, entitled ‘Gatekeepers to Heaven: religion, knowledge and power in medieval Exeter’.     If you enjoy spotting blue plaques and are familiar with Exeter you may be aware of the city’s connection with the Bodleian Library, for it was founded by none other than an Exonian. Sir Thomas Bodley was born in the city in 1545 and is commemorated by this plaque on the corner of Gandy Street. Closer to home is another connec