Budleigh Past and Present

Try a madeleine cookie, or a YouTube clip Feeling the need for a bit of nostalgia? Visit a museum! It’s not just self-indulgent. Museums can have a powerfully therapeutic effect when it’s a matter of dealing with something like dementia. Of course you don’t even have to visit a museum. French author Marcel Proust found that the taste of a madeleine cookie, the tinkle of a teaspoon or the sight of a hawthorn hedge in bloom could transport him back to childhood in what he describes as a magic armchair whisking you through time. My madeleine experience came the other night with friends in The White Hart pub in Woodbury. I’d just happened to mention my current museum obsession when from the other end of the table came that long forgotten but instantly recognisable, wheezing, strangulated, raging cry: "Get these buses out, Butler!" Clicking  he re will have a similar effect as you remember from all those years ago a much loved British entertainer. And see...

  Fairlynch’s newly refurbished Priscilla Carter Room at last has an acknowledgement of the role that the eminent scientist Max Perutz played in the Museum’s origins. The story of Perutz and Fairlynch’s radioactive pebbles is now on display in the area’s geology section.  

Budleigh Salterton’s Fairlynch Museum welcomed visitors today with a range of brand new exhibitions and a smartly designed and renamed ground floor room to house its archaeological and geological artefacts. For the first time in many years the Museum will be open on Saturdays, giving Budleigh weekend visitors the chance to appreciate something of the town’s heritage as well as soaking up the sun on the beach. The World War One centenary, an exhibition of 1920s fashion, beautiful displays of lace, a collection of children’s toys and a look at the folders in Local History Room will all make for a fascinating afternoon for visitors. Especially if the sun doesn’t make an appearance. Archaeological and geological items at the Museum, including the remarkable radioactive pebbles described by scientist Max Perutz, are on display in the refurbished Priscilla Carter Room. Find out more about Fairlynch by clicking on our sites at http://devonmuseums.net/fairlynch ...

Budleigh Salterton’s Fairlynch Museum is appealing for local residents to contact them with World War One stories. “The Local History exhibition next year will focus mainly on the people who were living in Budleigh and the surrounding villages at the time of the First World War,” explains Museum spokesperson Margaret Brett. “However we are interested in hearing about anyone who took part in that war - now is the time to record their achievement.” “ The starting point was the names on the War Memorials,” says Margaret. “ We would also like to hear about those who returned from the War, or had reserved   jobs at home. What do we know about their families?   What contribution did local women make to the War Effort?   Was the area affected or involved in any particular way? We are interested in your stories.” To further their knowledge Margaret and her fellow-museum volunteers have planned three drop-in sessions at the Museum, when they hope that anyone who h...

For some years now passers-by have been wondering what's going on behind the screens and locked doors of an imposing Victorian building on Exeter's Queen Street, pictured above. Well, on Monday 18 Oct 2010, all will be revealed to the Friends of Budleigh Salterton's Fairlynch Museum when they welcome Nena Beric, above, Project Co-ordinator at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum. As the Development Project Officer she has been intimately involved since the start in 2005. When Prince Albert died in 1861, one of the Secretaries for the Great Exhibition and a Devon MP, Sir Stafford Northcote, proposed a memorial to Albert should be established in Exeter. An appeal for funds was launched and a meeting the following year created the blueprint for the Devon and Exeter Albert Memorial Institution. This was to be a new building on Queen Street housing a museum and art gallery, a free public library, a school of art and a college. "An exquisite jewel box of a building; a Venetian c...