Budleigh Past and Present

  Sir Walter Ralegh: the Devon hero who lost his head but helped Britain build an empire. His statue stands near All Saints Church in East Budleigh   Exciting discoveries have been made at the site of an American colony pioneered by East Budleigh-born Sir Walter Ralegh. The finds will be of interest to the Fairlynch team which worked on this year’s exhibition to honour the great Tudor explorer and courtier. Excavation at the Hatteras sites in 2012, where the ingot and counter was found and in 2015, where the rapier and slate were found. Image credit:   University of Bristol Archaeologists from the University of Bristol have uncovered artefacts that they believe may help solve the long-running mystery of the fate of the first English colonists in North America. Excavations on the Island of Hatteras (North Carolina) have discovered a number of artefacts, dated to the late ...

    The Temple Church in Redcliffe, Bristol, founded in the mid-12th century, was bombed in November 1940 during the Bristol Blitz. More than 80 years later it still stands as a ruin  When I was born, in 1946, the Second World War had only just finished but my childish memories of its impact are still vivid. Rationing wasn’t completely abolished for another eight years. I think I remember car parks in Bristol which seemed to have been made out of enormous bomb craters.   And some parents had vivid stories to tell: my mother seemed to have enjoyed her times in the WRNS, in safety in Scotland, while, disturbingly my father told atrocious stories of how he and his tank crew had dealt with the Japanese in Burma.   Other parents, of course, never spoke of those days.     I never tired of endless WW2 films and devoured books of PoW escape stories. Though that may have been my own escapism from a succession o...