Budleigh Past and Present

      On Friday 12 May this year, local MP Simon Jupp was joined by two American descendants of Roger Conant in a formal unveiling of a blue plaque at East Budleigh’s Church Hall.   The event had been arranged to honour the East Budleigh-born founder of the American city of Salem in Massachusetts, as Mr Jupp explained in a speech. The unveiling was followed by dinner in the Sir Walter Raleigh pub for around 30 guests.   © John Washington/Peter Bowler East Budleigh’s Roger Conant Club was formed recently to raise awareness of this early European settler in the run-up to the 400 th anniversary of Salem’s founding. Along with the blue plaque a fine painting by local artist John Washington is now displayed in All Saints Church. It depicts a moment in early American history when Conant intervened as a peacemaker in a potentially violent quarrel between West Country fishermen and a group of armed soldiers from Plymouth Colony commanded by the Mayflower Pilg...

  Raleigh in a portrait of 1588: ‘dark with a prominent nose, high forehead and narrow face’.    Revealing facial traits, according to two American authors The search for one’s forefathers (and foremothers of course) has become even more fascinating with the advent of DNA testing, explaining the never-ending popularity of shows like ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ It’s just another aspect of   the inter-connections in our global village. Those who cling firmly to notions of racial purity will be a bit put out by the theories published in recent years by researchers like the American academic  Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman, a professor of marketing at Rutgers University. When Scotland Was Jewish  was the title of a book she published in 2007. Its thesis was that ‘DNA evidence, archeology, analysis of migrations, and public and family records show twelfth century semitic roots’ for many Scots; not surprisingly one reviewer wrote that the volume would enrage some a...

A familiar face  This photo on a Facebook page attracted 3k views in one day.  It shows Jean Blathwayt being presented with a quilt on her retirement in 1983 from the Budleigh Salterton Brownie Pack. And a famous family  Blathwayts had been associated since the 17th century with Dyrham Park, near Bath.  Jean’s great-uncle, Colonel Linley Wynter Blathwayt, was a noted supporter of suffragettes. Her father, the Revd Francis Linley Blathwayt, was a parson-naturalist, Rector of Melbury Osmund in Dorset from 1916 to1929, and it was there that Jean and her elder sister Barbara were born.   An inspiration An unpublished manuscript written by Jean Blathwayt in the 1940s records the influence of Lady Lilian Digby, above , a neighbour living close to Melbury Osmund. Awarded MBE in 1918  for her VAD work during WW1, Lady Lilian, of nearby Lewcombe Manor, was a keen Girl Guide and District Commissioner...

      Annie Whittaker More than sixty years after she was evacuated to Budleigh Salterton during WW2,  Marilyn Reynolds had vivid  childhood memories of that  most traditional East Devon  home industry: lace.  As a six-year-old wartime  evacuee in Budleigh Salterton, she recalled how, ‘o nce a week, the Honiton lace-making ladies would climb aboard a bus and, sitting with  t heir huge pillows propped on their knees, set off for the charming village of Otterton to pursue their craft.’ The chances are that Budleigh’s wartime lacemakers so vividly remembered by Marilyn Reynolds were on their way by bus to be supervised by one of East Devon’s truly legendary lace teachers, still spoken of with awe by today’s lace experts.   Fairlynch Museum volunteer Sue Morgan explains the finer points of lacemaking to members of a Probus group in October 2017 Fairlynch’s resident lace curator Sue Morgan writes: ‘Mrs Annie Whittaker, n ...

  A talk about Roger Conant, founder of Salem, Massachusetts, is being given in the church where his family worshipped over four hundred years ago.  Ian Blackwell is a published author who is noted for his books on the Italian Campaign of World War Two rather than on 17th century history.  However he and his American wife Bonnie have lived for nearly thirty years in Roger Conant's birthplace of East Budleigh, and Bonnie has a special connection to Salem.  Both her parents can trace their roots to the Mayflower, and her father's family lived in Salem for many generations. Her great-grandfather was associated with the city's Peabody Essex Museum and her uncle was involved with the Salem Historical Commission.  In researching the book, as far as possible, Ian has gone back to primary sources written at the time the Conant family lived in East Budleigh, for example documents held by the Devon Heritage Centre and the National Archives.  He has also m...