Budleigh Past and Present

  Two groups of children from Budleigh’s St Peter’s C of E Primary School learnt at first hand about the area’s unique geology from experts at Fairlynch Museum.  On Wednesday 8 June, Sycamore Class and Cedar Class explored fossils and rocks with the Museum’s Head of Geology and Environment Nicky Hewitt and Kate Somerby, Fairlynch Trustee and Arts Education Specialist.   The two museum volunteers are seen, left, in the above photo  as they greeted pupils and accompanying teachers. The children were fascinated to learn about the collection’s oldest fossil, named after the town where it was discovered and known officially as Orthis budleighensis. They learnt how the fossil, a rare brachiopod similar to a mollusc and at least 445 million years old, had come out of a pebble on Budleigh beach.  The children were shown the different strata in the mountains which formed the local landscape millio...

  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.  

  Max Perutz dancing with his wife Gisela at the 1962 Nobel ball Image credit: Wikipedia Not too many Fellows of the Royal Society or Nobel prizewinners have been drawn to Budleigh Salterton’s delights. So I was excited a few years ago to discover a genuine Budleigh scientist who’d remained faithful to the town of his birth and in 1862 settled here in retirement after an adventurous life on the other side of the world.   Henry John Carter FRS was deservedly honoured with a rare blue plaque on the wall of his house off Fore Street Hill. Max Perutz was not a Budleigh resident. But he certainly helped to give the place distinction, and for that reason among many others I will be toasting his health on 19 May. It’s 100 years since his birth, recognised this year by Royal Mail which has honoured him with a stamp as part of the ‘Remarkable Lives’ series.    Max Ferdinand Perutz, OM, CH, CBE, FRS, was an Austrian-born British ...

Naturalists and geologists worldwide will be celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Henry John Carter, the subject of Fairlynch’s main exhibition next year. Carter has the distinction of being the only Fellow of the Royal Society who was born in Budleigh. Having trained as a doctor, he spent much of his working life on the Arabian and Indian coasts. He is celebrated above all for his research into sponges. For the last years of his life his home was Umbrella Cottage on Fore Street Hill.   He is celebrated for his significant contribution to our knowledge of the natural world.   A species of gecko, Pristurus carteri , is named after him, as well as the frankincense tree Boswellia carterii .   “No writer   better deserves the respect   and gratitude of Indian   geologists” was one of the points made by the writer of Carter's obituary, published by the Royal Society in 1895. This army surgeon wrote a staggering total of 1,894 page...