Agnes Ibbetson, Exmouth botanist

Another spinoff from Memorials of Exmouth: Mrs Agnes Ibbetson (née Thomson, 1757-1823) was an outstanding self-taught plant physiologist and polymath: the most prolifically-published female researcher on botany of the early 19th century. It's a pity, then, that the most readily-found contemporary biographical description drifts from listing her achievements into portraying her as an insanely charitable opium-swiller surrounded by an entourage of dotards.

The Temple and Tower at Exmouth

If you're in the area of the Imperial Hotel at Exmouth, Devon - on Alexandra Terrace, or its junction with Morton Road and the Esplanade, or the Clock Tower on the Esplanade - you can see an unusual neo-classical building in the grounds of the hotel. This is the surviving member of a pair of Grecian follies built in 1824.

Memorials of Exmouth

Memorials of Exmouth by the Rev. William John Wesley Webb (aka the Rev. William Everitt) is a pleasant and eclectic late 19th century compendium of Exmouth history and trivia - as the author describes it, a "scrap-book ... put together as a History for the Parishioner rather than a Guide to the Visitor. The latter, however, may get from it as much as he cares to know".

Invasion Exmouth, 189—

I just ran into an episode set in Exmouth, in Fred T Jane's 1895 future-war novel Blake of the "Rattlesnake": Or, The Man who Saved England : a Story of Torpedo Warfare in 189—., which imagines Britain in ocean-going conflict with a French-Russian alliance.

Route 2: Countess Wear to Starcross

The current heat wave continues, so I took myself for a walk along the National Route 2 cycle/foot track down the west side of the Exe estuary from Countess Wear to Starcross. I've walked sections before - see Route 2: Topsham Lock to Powderham - but this time put it all together (a decision partly forced by the Topsham ferry being closed on Tuesdays).

Devon: its Moorlands, Streams & Coasts

An out-take from The Dread Wrecker Featherstone: Lady Rosalind Northcote's 1908 Devon: its Moorlands, Streams & Coasts, an illustrated account of the landscape and history of Devon. It has extremely pleasant colour plates, from watercolours by Frederick John Widgery, who specialised in coastal art of Devon and Cornwall. The scenes range over the whole of Devon, but here I've selected a local sample from East Devon round to Torbay.

Exmouth Battery exposed

It was a beautiful and mild afternoon yesterday, so we went for a shop and a potter in Exmouth. It was a good excuse to check out a spot mentioned in the Exmouth Journal on Tuesday February 18th: Storms reveal Napoleonic sea defences on beach. As the news item explains, the recent weather heavily eroded the sand dunes along Exmouth seafront, exposing masonry that was part of the old Exmouth Artillery Battery, an gun emplacement dating from the early 1860s.

The Wiles of the Wicked

Small world: while Googling the geography of a recent walk (see Microclimate) I ran into a novel with a local setting in part, William Le Queux's 1900 The Wiles of the Wicked. It's a mystery thriller, distinctly far-fetched in some major aspects, that's nevertheless very readable, and intriguing in the puzzle its narrator has to solve. It concerns a man who calls himself Wilford Heaton:

Sherbrook later

One Saturday afternoon I took myself off to Budleigh again. Last time - see Sherbook now (9th February 2013) - it was chilly, overcast and drizzling, and I was only just creeping out of the exhaustion of chemotherapy. How different now. Even as I walked up Rolle Road toward the esplanade - the air smelt of chips and sea - there was a promise to the afternoon; and it turned out completely up to expectations.

"For older ones there's the Madeira Walk"

 

I briefly mentioned Madeira Walk, Exmouth, in a previous post (see Microclimate). In that connection, I just managed to hack out of Google Books snippet view a piece of Victorian doggerel about Exmouth.

Microclimate

The Geoneedle - Exmouth (far left) invisible in the mist

Odd day yesterday. It was sunny in Topsham, so we decided to go for one of our usual walks, the six-mile circular walk from Exmouth to Sandy Bay and back, at the western end of the Jurassic Coast. But in Exmouth, just five or so miles to the south, it was distinctly overcast from a mist blowing in from the sea.

Exmouth Museum - small but perfectly formed

Pardon the lack of posts lately. It's nothing sinister; I've just been massively busy practising for next week's The Mysteries production (see left sidebar). But last week I took myself out for the morning, and paid a long-overdue visit to Exmouth Museum.

Spring for a day

On Saturday, Clare and I took one of our regular walks around Exmouth, and along the beach to Orcombe Point and back - around four miles - taking in the newly-developed Jurassic Coast Gateway site - which, maybe for the benefit of the infirm or plain lazy, has been newly-built in addition to the pre-existing official Jurassic Coast start at the Geoneedle site on the clifftop above.

Edward Edwards - troubled library pioneer

Small world. Lily at The Topsham Bookshop asked if I could help with identifying the authorship of an anonymous 19th-century volume about the Exmouth area (Devonshire. Containing historical, biographical and descriptive notices of Exmouth & its neighbourhood. Pub: S Drayton & Sons, Exeter, 1868?). A bit of correlation of variant titles found it to be by the librarian and writer Edward Edwards (1812-1886) - a name I already knew vaguely for its Isle of Wight connections: Edwards died in poverty in Niton.

Estuary

We've been on this walk before, in both directions, but September 3rd was our 24th wedding anniversary, as a well as a beautiful bright and hot day. We took the bus to Lympstone and walked to Exmouth: not by the new cycle path, but round the headland along the beach to join the old path between the railway and the river. At very low tide, this can be a vista of baking mud, but on this day the tide had dropped just a little to leave miles of calm river reflecting the sky. A great afternoon.

Who you lookin' at?

Squirrel on Bath Road, the wooded pedestrian road at the foot of the red sandstone cliffs on the seaward side of Exmouth. This was taken with an inexpensive General Imaging Z1300 digital compact from Argos: increasingly, this is all I use for general photography.

The Coming Back of Laurence Averil

A gallery of images from Maurice Drake's The Coming Back of Laurence Averil, originally published as The Salving of a Derelict (Maurice Drake, London: T. Werner Laurie, 1910). These are from the New York: Edward J Clode 1915 edition, illustrations by AW Parsons, Internet Archive comingbackoflaur00drakiala). Maurice Drake (1875-1923) was an Exeter-based glass and stained-glass expert with a sideline in maritime crime fiction. See previous post for biography and bibliography: Maurice Drake and WO2.

Maurice Drake and WO2

I just followed up the reference in Adventure through Red Devon to "Maurice Drake's strange novel WO2", since it turns out to have local connections.

Geoneedle

Geoneedle site, looking east to Exmouth

I fancied a break after a dental appointment first thing, so we went to Exmouth for a quick walk to look at the redeveloped Geoneedle site at Orcombe Point. This artwork by Michael Fairfax, unveiled in 2002, marks the western end of the Jurassic Coast world heritage site. The redevelopment, done early this year, includes a gravelled trail with a wall and adjacent seating, and a "hopscotch trail" of slabs of various Jurassic Coast rocks matching those in the Geoneedle itself.

Route 2: Exmouth to Topsham on foot

As I mentioned in the previous post - Round The Point: Exmouth - on Saturday I was in Exmouth, and on impulse decided to walk home to Topsham along the recently-completed National Route 2 Exe Estuary Trail (the segment that runs up the east side of the Exe).