Budleigh Past and Present

    Kate Winslet at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival   Image credit: Wikipedia Could we be about to see this Oscar-winning English actress being filmed on Marine Parade for a biopic which will include a host of other stars including Marion Cotillard and Jude Law?   A US Army Official Photograph showing Lee Miller as a war correspondent in 1943. Image credit: Wikimedia Due for release probably in 2023, the film ‘Lee’ will have Kate Winslet in the title role portraying episodes in the life of Lee Miller, the American photographer and photojournalist who started her career as a fashion model in New York in the 1920s before becoming a war correspondent for Vogue magazine.   Events that she covered in the 1940s included the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris and the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Dachau. But in the summer of 1941, according to a report by Britain’s Special Branch, she was spotted spending a short holiday in one of ...

Commander in Chief of the Allied forces General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Image credit: www.dodmedia.osd.mil When the USA came into WW2 to fight against the Axis dictators Devon was an obvious place for Allied forces to rehearse the invasion of Normandy. The county is justly proud of its hedgerows. It has more of them than any other region in England, just like the landscape of tiny enclosed fields and sunken lanes which make up what is known as ‘le bocage’ in that part of northern France. It seems that some of the Allied generals underestimated the difficulty that cumbersome tanks would face in such a landscape. Historians of WW2 often refer to the frustrating and deadly months of June and July 1944 as ‘The War of the Hedgerows’. So many Allied soldiers lost their lives to German snipers at that time.    Sheplegh Court, near Blackawton in South Devon But Devon was also, it seems, an ideal base for the generals to plan D Day while hidden away in the county’s seclu...

  A group of local residents wish to honour Roger Conant, one of Devon's unsung heroes, with a blue plaque in the village of East Budleigh, where he was born. He crossed the Atlantic and founded the city of Salem in Massachusetts in 1626.  Previously he acted as a peacemaker and helped to prevent bloodshed and a possible civil war between settlers in New England as seen in the wonderful painting by Budleigh artist John Washington. ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’ is the title of the painting.  Now seems to be the right time to remember one of the ‘good guys’ in history.  All contributions are welcome via https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/michael-downes-1 It is proposed that the blue plaque be sited near this millstone. The photo shows Jeff Conant, a direct descendant of Roger Conant, who travelled from California to East Budleigh in 2016 to explore the land of his ancestor's birth.

  'The Conjurer' by the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516). Image credit: Wikipedia.  People have always been fascinated by the tricks of conjurers. Budleigh historian Roger Lendon discovered that we had our own celebrated conjurer living in the area and has kindly contributed this article to Budleigh – Past and Present.  I was first alerted to this man when I came across this short piece in the Western Times dated 20th June 1846: Moon, the Conjuror - This celebrated professor of the science and mystery of legerdemain having for some years past settled down at Budleigh Salterton as an agriculturist, is about to limit his practice, and in this day’s paper advertises one of his farms to be let. The farm was Upper West Down Farm which was in the Parish of Littleham and thus not far from his home which was in Knowle according to the East Budleigh tithe apportionment. In the 1851 census Thomas Moon was recorded as having been born in East Budleigh in 1773 and...

Continued from  10 June 1941 'A Vaseful of Remembrance':  SERGEANT JOHN LAKE ENDICOTT (1921-41)   https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/12/ww2-75-10-june-1941-vaseful-of.html Identifying Peter, who died at the age of 19 while on a minelaying mission, proved difficult: with just the initial P on Budleigh’s war memorial for guidance, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) database yielded only two servicemen, both named Peter.  For a long time I included him as one of my ‘orphans’ – Budleigh-linked WW2 servicemen about whom, sadly, barely anything is known. Finally with immense help via Ancestry from Budleigh resident Carolyn John, Peter Pritchard’s story emerged. It seems that the Pritchard family was based mainly in London, but details uncovered by Carolyn included Peter’s address as ‘Cove’, Budleigh Salterton.  Evidently this fine 19 th century house at 2 West Terrace was a holiday home for the family, which would explain why Peter’s name is ...