Budleigh Past and Present

I call in from time to time at Katy Gooding’s vintage and collectables shop at 57 High Street in Budleigh Salterton. There’s a blurred line between some of its contents and some of the artefacts that make up Fairlynch Museum’s collection. In my quest for traces of Budleigh’s Anglo-Indian heritage which I mention h ere   I wondered whether I might find the odd pith helmet or stuffed tiger among Katy’s collectables, or even a Belinda Lee poster.   No such luck, but Katy did show me something equally rare and interesting for an admirer of William Morris designs.    Jeannie Foord was a Glaswegian painter of plants and flowers who in 1901 published a fine book intended for use by artists, designers, students and others. The Daily Telegraph noted, "Never before has the essential character of different plants received from the point...

  It’s not all ball gowns and bustles in Fairlynch Museum ’s Costume Department. To add a dash of glamour to this year’s ‘Sea Salt and Sponges’ exhibition they’ve come up with a display of vintage bathing costumes. There’s even a model of a bathing machine, one of those weird contraptions used by Victorian ladies to preserve their modesty while preparing to frolic in the waves on Budleigh beach.   ‘Sea, Salt and Sponges’ opens at Fairlynch Museum on 29 March and runs until 30 September with extra opening during October half term http://www.devonmuseums.net/fairlynch Talking of vintage, while going round the shops in Budleigh to ask if they’d be kind enough to display posters for the Museum I always find a welcome at What Katy Did. Well, the owner Katy Gooding, pictured below, has more than a passing interest in Fairlynch’s contents, seeing that she specialises in the kind of vintage goodies that will eventually end up in museum displ...