Budleigh Past and Present

    Thinking about the tour of Budleigh Salterton for the Literary Festival that I’m running on 19 September I noticed that our sister-town of Brewster, Massachusetts, has scheduled something similar - but five times bigger. Well, that’s America for you! Actually, all that’s happening is that the Brewster Historical Society is inviting visitors to a ‘Sea Captain’s Tour and Tea’, highlighting 30 historical sites and homes in the Cape Cod town.   But the event takes place five times during the holiday season, and you can enjoy luncheon as an extra, provided by the Candleberry Inn. There are two remaining dates: Thursday 14 August and Thursday 18 September.   Click on http://www.brewsterhistoricalsociety.org/events.html   to find out more. One other big thing about the ‘Sea Captain’s Tour’ is that it is scripted by author Sally Gunning, and based on her acclaimed historical novel The Widow’s War , fi...

Barry & Janice Webb from Worcestershire said that the book sale was “the best deal in Budleigh”  The Grand Book Sale on 28 June raised around £500 for the Museum. Organisers declared themselves delighted with the result. The event coincided with the Budleigh Hospicare Open Gardens event. Some of the visitors who had come to admire the flowers went away with some very good book bargains.   A permanent shelf of secondhand books is now in place in the Museum Shop.               Another happy book-hunter: the smile says it all    

From time to time I've been asked by the Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival organisers to give a tour of the town's landmarks associated with creative people of the past and present who've lived or who are living in Budleigh. That includes writers, artists, musicians and scientists.  A bit of exercise is involved with some uphill stretches, but there are good views to make up for that, and sometimes some benches. When I've done this sort of thing in the past, people asked if there was a book or leaflet where all that information was written down. Well, there isn't really! So I thought I'd have a go here, but focusing on writers who have used Budleigh Salterton as a setting for their novels or who've described it in their memoirs. Many writers have mentioned Budleigh Salterton or a similar name evoking it, among   the most famous being Noel Coward and J.K. Rowling. If, like me, you think this is one of the most romantic...

Adam Bunch is a man on a mission. If you happen to be in Budleigh, or Exeter, or Oundle, or any one of more than a dozen places in Britain that he’s been touring this summer you might be lucky enough to find one of these little postcards that he’s left in strategic positions. Modern To ronto's skyline from the harbour  Image credit: Wikipedia and Jeangagnon  They’re all part of a grand project that he’s dreamt up to let as many people as possible know about the origins of his home city of Toronto. The project, appropriately enough is called Toronto Dreams, and the postcards have been specially created to let the reader imagine what life might have been like a few centuries ago for one of the pioneering figures of Canada’s history. Regular readers of my blog will know that I’m talking about John Graves Simcoe (1752-1806), the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, who was responsible for building T oronto though it was called Y ork in those da...

  Members of the Exmouth & District U3A History Group combined a visit to Fairlynch on Thursday 5 June with a walking tour of Budleigh. Led by Museum Secretary Michael Downes and Chairman Roger Sherriff, the group enjoyed their exploration of the town in brilliant sunshine before a coffee break, followed by a trip round the Museum.  

  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...