Budleigh Past and Present

  Research on Budleigh Salterton's 19th century sponge expert by Fairlynch volunteer Michael Downes has helped curators prepare an exhibition at London's Natural History Museum.  Above: The feature on Henry Carter FRS in the Natural History Museum's display 'Untold Human Stories from the NHM Porifera Collection.'  Budleigh Salterton’s only native-born Fellow of the Royal Society Henry Carter was the main subject of the 2013 Fairlynch exhibition ‘Sea, Salt and Sponges.’     The exhibition was accompanied by a booklet ‘The Scientist in The Cottage’, written by Fairlynch Museum Secretary Michael Downes. It was praised by the NHM’s Emma Sherlock, Curator in the Invertebrate Section of the Zoology Department at the Museum, and is the first-ever published biography of the Budleigh-born surgeon, geologist and spongologist.  Emma explained that the booklet had helped in a project that she and her NHM colleagues...

The logo of Sidmouth’s Café Scientifique, part of the town’s second Science Festival Sea, Salt and Sponges, our bicentenary exhibition in honour of East Devon’s great Victorian scientist Henry John Carter FRS comes to an end when Fairlynch Museum closes on 30 September. But the Museum will open on Wednesday 16 October from 10.00am to 1.00pm to coincide with the second Sidmouth Science Festival which runs from 14 to 20 October.   Sidmouth, just a few miles east of Budleigh Salterton, is noted for its four former residents who were Fellows of the Royal Society and who are honoured by individual displays in the town’s Museum   - see http://budleighbrewsterunited.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/good-fellows-of-budleigh-and-sidmouth.html However the Science Festival’s focus is very much on 21st century issues rather than on the past. The Festival organisers, made up by the Vision Group for Sidmouth (VGS) and the Norman Lockyer Observatory, believe that with so many...