Following the series of successful events in 2018 marking 400 years since the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh the museum is staging a display highlighting the achievements of other 16th and 17th century navigators.  The exhibition looks forward to the Mayflower 400 celebrations in 2020 which will commemorate the historic voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers and the founding of modern America.  However, the exhibition is making the point that Devon men such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Humphrey Gilbert established English colonies in North America decades before the Pilgrim Fathers sailed.

Items on display include a large model of Sir Francis Drake's ship the Golden Hinde, kindly lent by Dartmouth Museum, and Fairynch's recently acquired portrait thought to be of Sir Walter Raleigh.

In the Local History room we have an exhibition titled 'The Changing Face of Budleigh Salterton High Street'.  The exhibition was put together by Roz Hickman, Head of Local History and is designed to show how the town's shop fronts have evolved over the years.

Also forming part of the display are paintings by Ken Walker which are recognised as an important archive of the town's architectural heritage.

A number of artefacts and photos of many long-gone businesses on the High Street dating back to 1867 are also on display.

To mark 100 years since the end of the Great War a Local History display will feature the Red Cross hospitals in the area.  Bicton House, a few miles east of Budleigh, was the home of the Clinton family.  In 1914, like so many country houses during the Great War, it became a VAD military hospital and for four years provided care for sixty wounded soldiers.  In Budleigh Salterton itself there were hospitals for the war wounded.  One of the town’s well known residents was artist and author Joyce Dennys, who designed this celebrated VAD recruitment poster.  In 1915 she was commissioned to draw the pictures for Our Hospital ABC with verses by Hampden Gordon and M.C. Tindall, published in the following year.  This rare book has been recently reprinted in a limited number of copies.

In our ground floor Exhibition Room, 'Raleigh 400' is our tribute to East Devon’s greatest historical figure.  A highlight will be the original painting ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’ by the celebrated Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir John Everett Millais, on loan to Fairlynch from the Tate Britain collection for the third time in 50 years.  We will also be exhibiting a second work by Millais entitled ‘The Boyhood – a study of the child’.  On loan from a private collection it is of special interest as it shows the artist’s son Everett. This will be the first time that the paintings have been shown together.  Alongside the paintings in the Exhibition Room will be various items from Raleigh’s period.  One of the stars of the show will be a pair of 1590s kid leather beautifully embroidered gloves.  It is thought that they may have been Sir Walter’s.  All these items are on loan from a variety of sources including the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery, Tuckers Hall and St Nicholas’ Priory in Exeter, Dents (Warminster) and a display of Elizabethan coinage from a private collection. 

The formality and ritual of Victorian society is no better reflected than in the complexity of a typical lady’s costume and the fact that, on occasion, the top end of seven kilos of skirts and underskirts required carrying and when necessary supporting.  And then came the velocipede, and the vital necessity to hitch those skirts well clear of pedals and brakes.  The Victorians’ ingenious answer to the problem was the skirt lifter.  You might think that a simple safety pin would suffice but you would be wrong: Scissor, Tong, Suspender, Screw Top, Spring Clip, Ball and Ring, Grappler, Edith and Penny Farthing, to name but a few, are all varieties of this extraordinary collectable. Carole Walker, a member of Fairlynch Museum’s Local History Group has put together a display of these curious items. Her book A History and Guide to collecting Ladies’ Antique Skirt Lifters is on sale in the Museum shop and available from Amazon.

Following our highly successful ‘Quilts and Textiles’ exhibition in our First Floor Exhibition Room, Budleigh Salterton Art Club is staging a display of work by members. Most pieces are for sale. 

Our 2017 display in the Exhibition Room marked the bicentenary of the birth of George William Preedy (1817-1894).  Originally from a Worcestershire family, Preedy retired to Budleigh Salterton after a distinguished naval career during which he captained HMS Agamemnon.  This was the Royal Navy ship which, together with the American Navy's USS Niagara, laid the first successful telegraph cable across the Atlantic in 1858.  The Preedy exhibition was complemented by a display in the Costume Room which showed a telegram being delivered to a Victorian household.
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