Budleigh Past and Present

     The St Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572, a painting by the French Huguenot François Dubois (1529–1584)  Elsewhere on this blog I posted my editorial 'Remaining Thoughts', published in the Autumn 2016 Fairlynch Museum newsletter The Primrose.  As I wrote it, I had various things in mind, including the little-known story of East Budleigh's Huguenot refugee Daniel Caunières (1661-1739). He was appointed as vicar in 1689, four years after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes during the reign of Louis XIV.  Caunières went on to become Rector of Filleigh, near Barnstaple in 1704. He was appointed on 10 March 1722 as chaplain to 27-year-old Lord Hugh Fortescue (1695-1751), later to become 14th Baron Clinton.  My little piece of bloggerel can be sung to the tune of 'La Marseillaise'.  (My words are much nicer).   We’re going to sing a song of freedom Of bravery and liberty; Of Daniel Caunières, a...

Reg enjoyed painting as a hobby for much of his life  Only a few weeks remain until the end of a sale at Budleigh’s museum which offers the chance of owning an original signed Reg Varney oil painting. The star of ‘The Rag Trade’ and ‘On the Buses’ was a talented actor and a gifted musician, but he was also a skilled artist.   Reg did this sketch of two dogs at the age of 14 Reg Varney wanted to go to art school, but failed the maths exam. He followed a different career path, but always enjoyed painting. A number of his pictures, on loan from his family, are now on display in Fairlynch Museum as part of a free exhibition which runs until October 30.   Seven of the paintings are being auctioned off to raise money for the charity Children’s Hospice South West, which runs hospices in Devon, Cornwall and Bristol, and which is marking its 25 th anniversary in 2016....

This gold medal was issued by the New York-based Tiffany & Company to celebrate the achievement of those who had laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858, including former Budleigh resident Admiral Preedy CB (1817-94). I thought I would add my own bloggerel contribution to mark the Admiral's bicentenary in 2017.  It can be sung to the tune of ‘Miss Lucy had a baby’. 1. Now let us sing of heroes, who sailed the ocean blue, And of a Budleigh worthy, and don’t forget his crew. Two hundred years ago it was - from rural Worcestershire - That Georgie William Preedy came: A nautical high-flier. He passed all his exams, of course, and rose up through the ranks.   We’re sure that to an army life he would have said ‘No thanks!’ Chorus So let us raise our glasses to our Admiral Preedy! This year is very special as his bicentenary. HMS Agamemnon , launched...

  Budleigh Salterton War Memorial Well, I’ve stuck out WW1 for almost half of its grim catalogue of senseless slaughter. But as the centenary of 1 July 1916 approaches, with its list of eight men from the Lower Otter Valley who lost their lives on that one day alone, I simply cannot go on.   As readers of The Great War at Fairlynch http://fairlynchgreatwar.blogspot.co.uk/ have seen, I had originally intended to mark the centenary of each of the 168 casualties linked to the area with a commemorative post on the above website. In most cases an account of their lives has already been published on excellent sites like the one at http://www.devonremembers.co.uk/  in which researchers from Fairlynch have already been involved.  Inevitably there were extra details which I wanted to explore, or photos that I felt could add to the picture. But there are limits! The two-year Great War at Fair...