AROUND THE TOWN AND OVER THE POND - 12: FAIRLYNCH: THE SIR WALTER RALEGH ROOM
Continued from
https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2024/06/around-town-and-over-pond-11-pacifist.html
AROUND THE TOWN AND OVER THE POND
A walk around Budleigh Salterton to interest transatlantic visitors. Every so often there’s a diversion which may inspire you to visit places like East Budleigh, Exeter, Sidmouth, Colyton or even places in the United States and Canada.
The walk is set out in parts. Here’s the twelth part:
12. FAIRLYNCH: THE SIR WALTER RALEGH ROOM
And so to the quaint little building called Fairlynch, originally Primrose Cottage, which became Budleigh Salterton’s Museum and Arts Centre in 1967.
On the way you pass The Octagon, where the Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir John Everett Millais is said to have stayed while starting work on ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’.
‘Raleigh and his son Walt’ in my digital version. The original, dated 1602 by an unknown artist, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
There is a sad story linked to this work. Fifteen years after the painting was done, young Walt was fatally shot during Sir Walter’s expedition to the Orinoco River in Guyana. A detachment of his men under the command of his long-time friend Lawrence Keymis attacked the Spanish outpost of Santo Tomé de Guayana. This was in violation of peace treaties with Spain, and against Raleigh's orders.
Keymis informed Sir Walter of his son's death and begged for forgiveness, but did not receive it. He at once committed suicide.
On the return to England, an outraged Spanish ambassador, demanded that Raleigh’s death sentence be reinstated by King James.
The copy of 'The Boyhood of Raleigh' was made as a collaborative venture in 2015, with each member of this 20-strong local art group working on a separate panel.
The Venture Art Club's finished painting in position in Fairlynch Museum's Ralegh Room
Members involved were Iris Ansell, Linda Barrack, Julie Bingham, Ralph
Bingham, Jane Briscoe, Michael Chignell, Teresa Creton, Brenda Dodd, Pam
Harber, Jean Harmsworth, Wendy Markham, Susan Noblett, Dorothy Ormerod, Sue
Sayers, Robert Sellin, Ken Simmons, Nick Speare, Chris Stacey, Sheila Stacey.
The Venture Art Club painting is just one of the many items in the Ralegh Room. The walls are lined with panels illustrating aspects of Sir Walter’s life. Above are the arms of Devon families to which Raleigh was related. Below the panels there’s a useful timeline of events.
From the Collection of the British Museum
Used to accompany a collection of arrowheads, axe heads, and other tools used by North American Indians on the eastern seaboard of America, this is a copy of one of the many watercolours painted by Raleigh’s mapmaker John White in around 1585. It depicts a Secotan Indian holy man or ‘conjuror’.
White’s watercolours are part of the British Museum collection. The collection of tools is on loan from Bristol Museum and Art Gallery.
Fairlynch has many original paintings and some form part of the Ralegh Room collection. Which of these two is an original?
The answer is the top one. It depicts Place Court in the nearby village of Colaton Raleigh, where Raleigh is thought by some historians to have been baptised. The artist Alfred William Parsons RA (1847-1920) was an English illustrator, landscape painter and garden designer, well known for his English landscape paintings and fine botanical illustrations. The painting was donated to the museum by the owner of Place Court. On the back is an inscription: ‘This is where he planted his potatoes.’
Below that painting is a portrait of explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert, copied by Budleigh artist John Washington from the original by an unknown artist in Compton Castle, home of the Gilbert Family. Humphrey is depicted with his half-brother Walter in Millais’ painting ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’ (1870).
In 2018 Fairlynch Museum acquired this interesting painting which probably dates from the 17th century. The work is thought to have been owned by William Drake Gould of Lewtrenchard Manor, Okehampton, a relative of Raleigh, and could depict Sir Walter himself.
The Raleigh
coat of arms in the painting is unusual but identical to the one portrayed in
the National Portrait Gallery’s line engraving of Raleigh by Frederick Hendrik
van Hove.
Here are two very different examples of Raleigh the author.
Left: On 26 July 1584 he wrote to Richard Duke, the owner of Hayes Barton, East Budleigh. Raleigh had, he explained, a ‘naturall disposition’ to the place, ‘being borne in that howse’, and went on to write: ‘I had rather seat my sealf ther than any where els’.
Mr Duke was unwilling to sell, even to a man who was at the height of his powers and fame at Court. Raleigh at that stage in his life was a powerful royal favourite who had hinted in his letter of the benefits that could be obtained through friendship with such an important neighbour. So East Devon’s loss became Dorset’s gain. Raleigh built a castle in Sherborne rather than at East Budleigh.
Right: Thirty years later, no longer a royal favourite, Raleigh was a prisoner in the Tower of London. There he wrote his History of the World. The work covers the creation of the world to 146 BC and consists of five books nearing one million words in total. It was eventually published in 1614, with numerous reprints continuing throughout the seventeenth century. This later edition of the book was generously donated to Fairlynch Museum.
These two items give an insight into the importance of religion in the time of Raleigh.
Left: A replica of rosary beads
in boxwood
recovered from the 1545 wreck of the Mary Rose, made by Crossman Crafts. The beads were an important part of traditional
Roman Catholic practice before the Reformation. A rosary featured in the Prayer
Book Rebellion of 1549.
According to a story told by the 16th century chronicler John Hooker, Ralegh’s father, Walter Ralegh Senior, was involved in the event. Ralegh is said to have criticized a Clyst St Mary parishioner’s use of her rosary as a superstitious custom, causing an anti-government riot in the village on the outskirts of Exeter. The villagers rose up, it was said, ‘like a swarm of wasps’.
At the Battle of Clyst St Mary which followed, in August 1549, an estimated 1,000 Cornish and Devonian Catholic rebels were killed by government forces. Following the encounter, it is said that 900 bound and gagged rebels had their throats slit in ten minutes. Some 2,000 died at the Battle of Clyst Heath a few days later.
Right: A replica of the 1570s silver chalice crafted by Exeter goldsmith John Jones, made for All Saints Church, East Budleigh. The chalice is unlike the highly decorative church vessels favoured by the Catholic Church in pre-Reformation times. Yet it is in silver, and moderately decorative. Extreme Protestant churches would have preferred a plain vessel, even in wood.
The chalice bears the emblem of the Tudor rose as a symbol of the government of Queen Elizabeth I, noted for her policy of seeking a ‘middle way’ between Catholicism and Protestantism in religious matters. The pewter replica was commissioned by Fairlynch Museum in 2015.
‘Raleigh's First Pipe in England’: an illustration included in Frederick William Fairholt's Tobacco, its history and associations, published by Chatto & Windus, 1876. To the left in the picture is Raleigh’s servant, about to throw a jug of water over his master thinking he was on fire. Also on display is a collection of clay pipes.
Did smoking rather than the executioner's axe really kill Raleigh? Of course not. Sir Walter was executed in 1618 following his disastrous expedition to South America. But King James I, who ordered the execution, did hate smokers.
Smoking, he wrote in ‘A Counterblaste to Tobacco’ (1604), was ‘A custome loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmful to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse.’
A model of Her Majesty's Ship Ark Royal
This was the Flagship of the English Fleet which defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588. Originally named Ark Ralegh, she was built at Deptford for Sir Walter in 1587 by master shipwright Richard Chapman and was later purchased by the Crown for £5,000.
The 1:144 scale model was built by Friend of Fairlynch Patrick Camp for display in the Sir Walter Ralegh Room.
You can see more about Fairlynch Museum’s Sir Walter Ralegh Room by clicking on https://www.fairlynchmuseum.uk/sir-walter-ralegh.html
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