Budleigh Past and Present

A Friend of Fairlynch has generously donated this charming Joyce Dennys portrait to the Museum. Regular readers of my scribblings will have noticed that the name of Joyce Dennys has cropped up frequently over the years on this blog, and many visitors to this year’s ‘Great War at Fairlynch’ exhibition will have admired the famous VAD recruitment poster that she designed in 1915. As an effective piece of propaganda it ranks alongside equally successful wartime appeals such as Kitchener’s ‘Your Country needs you.’ Most of Joyce Dennys’ artwork on display at Fairlynch is on loan from Budleigh Salterton Town Council; you can see some examples at     http://budleighbrewsterunited.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/more-joyce-dennys-paintings-on-display.html Her paintings are among the favourite items at the Museum enjoyed by both visitors and volunteers. So the news of the latest donation by Friends of Fairlynch Michael and Valerie Jackaman has been received with...

Budleigh Hospital Hub project development manager Rob Jones with a jar used for storing live leeches by 19th century doctors. Barts Hospital in London used 100,000 leeches annually to bleed patients A Victorian surgeon’s set of instruments, cupping therapy equipment and  a leech jar are among the artefacts that could be on view for visitors to Budleigh Salterton’s new Health and Wellbeing Hospital Hub. But patients can rest assured that the items will remain in glass cabinets as medical curiosities. If, like me, you tend to visit doctors’ surgeries and hospitals more often than you would like, the chances are you’ll wonder how our various ailments were treated in the past.  And how they’ll be dealt with in the years ahead. CT scans, hip replacements, robotic surgery and laser eye treatment would all seem miraculous to patients and doctors of just a century ago. As for genetic engineering, we can only dream of ho...

Valerie Dwerryhouse: admired by colleagues for her work behind the scenes at Fairlynch Museum  Over the years Fairlynch has been fortunate in finding many volunteers with a professional background in research, enabling the Museum to maintain high standards normally found in much bigger institutions. The good scientist’s ability to think critically is of special value and Dr Valerie Dwerryhouse, a highly respected immunologist and Fairlynch volunteer for many years, was certainly distinguished in that respect. She was born Valerie Stacey on 17 September 1933. Brought up in the village of Holsworthy, in north-west Devon, she studied Microbiology at Imperial College after graduating in Household and Social Science at London University’s Queen Elizabeth College. Some of the inspiration and motivation for her studies came from the family doctor in Holsworthy, Stuart Craddock, who had been a research assistant to Sir Alexand...

    Some Budleigh residents may remember from many years ago their visits to the old Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital at its Southernhay site in the city centre. Not that they would remember seeing horses and carriages of course. The above engraving by Exeter artist and photographer Owen Angel (c.1821-1909) dates from 1849 and not even longevity-celebrated Budleigh can boast of having citizens from that time. An inscription below the engraving tells us that the work was printed by Mr Angel, on the occasion of the Fancy Bazaar in aid of the Funds of the Devon & Exeter Hospital , held on Northernhay, Exeter , on 31 July and 1 August 1849. The ‘Royal’ was added only following the visit by the Duke and Duchess of York in 1899. Mr Angel’s work appears here because it’s one of the many interesting items on loan from the Devon and Exeter Medical Society which will be on show at Fairlynch’s forthcoming exhibition ‘Sea, Salt and Sponges.’   ...