The thankful old lady of Topsham

While skimming topographical references, I ran into Elizabeth Jane Brabazon's Exmouth & its Environs, an 1866 travel account which takes a side-excursion to Topsham that wasn't entirely to the author's taste. Directed on a pleasant field walk to "the Countess Weir’s grand house", she finds she has been sent to a pub; and she has a run-in with smoky lodgings and the Panglossian "thankful old lady of Topsham".

River light

Pardon the rather hackneyed scenery shots ... but the last couple of days have seen the bright, crisp, and calm high-pressure weather that brings out the Exe at Topsham at its most photogenic.

"Oxford Somerset" - a mystery Topsham author

Further to the identification of "Richard Gray" as Jasper Salwey (see Salutation Inn), a correspondent just drew my attention to another mystery author with a Topsham pub connection: the strangely-named "Oxford Somerset".

Topsham church records

I've been doing some website work for the Devon and Cornwall Record Society, and in the process ran into some interesting Topsham-related material that could be of considerable use to researchers. Like many churchyards, that of St Margarets, Topsham, has suffered over the years: headstones have been variously moved or destroyed, or have fallen flat; and of those remaining, the majority are nearly illegible through weathering.

The Terror of Topsham ... no

Sorry (at least to hopeful Topsham enthusiasts). The recently-discovered sunken wreck from the Franklin expedition - see The Terror of Topsham ... perhaps - has turned out to be ... its sister ship the Erebus.

The Terror of Topsham ... perhaps

A major piece of archaeological news: BBC News reports Sir John Franklin: Fabled Arctic ship found. This is the discovery by Parks Canada of one of the two lost ships - the HMS Terror or the HMS Erebus - from Franklin's disastrous 1845 expedition in the search of a Northwest Passage.

St Margaret's Church: 3D

Following the experiments in 3D photos in woodland vistas - see Undercliff - there and back again: 3D - I took a few stereopairs in St Margaret's Church, Topsham.

The Freemasons' Hall, Brent Lodge, Topsham

For me, the highlight of the current Town Fayre Week was today's open day - the first, as far as I know - of Topsham's Freemasons' Hall, home of Brent Lodge No.1284. As I'd never seen inside a Masonic Hall, and my knowledge of freemasonry came largely from popular stereotype and Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King - it was an altogether interesting experience.

Topsham along the river Exe: UAV movie

Neil Ewins just sent me a link to his stunning UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) movie, Topsham along the river Exe: a flypast of Topsham's river frontage from the Quay upriver to the Sailing Club and back, taking in what must be a unique overhead view of the hulks on the opposite bank.

Mapping Topsham

Topsham Museum has made a major departure from the worthy-but-dull with Mapping Topsham, its current exhibition of creative and beautiful artworks interpreting the theme of Topsham maps, from the conventional to the highly stylised.

Topsham from the air

The Summer 2014 issue of EX magazine has a very nice feature on some photography commissioned by the local estate agents Wilkinson Grant, using a drone camera to take aerial videos and 'tilt-shift' stills of Topsham, Lympstone and Woodbury.

The Shapters

One of my several defences of going to the pub is the conversation; and on Tuesday I had a very interesting one about Thomas Shapter, a doctor who features prominently in Exeter history, and whether a couple of Topsham streets are named after him.

Bayan time (22)

A pleasant early afternoon today: I just played at the Topsham Music Festival (ongoing until 10pm) outside the Lighter Inn at Topsham Quay, in aid of the Macmillan cancer charity. It originally was to be a Blues Festival, but they widened the brief. Nevertheless, I stuck with the original plan and worked on some blues - a new venture for me - and went with Careless Love, a blues-y instrumental of Gershwin's aria Summertime, and the St James Infirmary Blues.

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.

Angry birds

It was a quiet afternoon on Topsham Underway: until the resident geese and a swan took exception to each other.

Topsham: roads not taken

A bright afternoon, so I took myself for a walk and a quick glance at the Museum, newly-opened for the 2014 season, where I spotted some pictures of of historical 'roads not taken'.

Secret Topsham

I'm still occasionally rather slow about realising the possibilities of the Internet; the Internet Archive often makes it possible to retrieve online material lost through site updates and domain changes. So I was delighted to recover this local history article I wrote, which I've now updated to reflect changes in Topsham over the past eight years or so.

Salutation Inn revisited

In March 2011 - see Salutation Inn - I mentioned an obscure novel I'd discovered through reviews: Richard Gray's Salutation Inn (pub. Michael Joseph, 1941). Gray, I found, was a pseudonym of the artist Jasper Salwey (c.1883-1956) and one review said that the setting, the fictional Ilham, is "a place which can easily be identified as Topsham".

Yesterday, a pleasant follow-up: Ed Williams-Hawkes, owner of the real-world Salutation Inn, kindly lent me his copy of the novel he'd found at some expense on eBay (the book is very scarce). I just finished reading it, and there is no doubt about the identification.

To Riversmeet: "Your care about your banks infers a fear"

View Larger Map

It's always interesting to visit new places, and sometimes they're only a stone's throw from familiar ones. Yesterday was a clear and bright afternoon, and I wandered out to take another look at the Goat Walk, damaged by the recent storms. On impulse, it being low tide, I decided to walk further along the shoreline by the wall skirting the grounds of the large houses at Riversmeet; this tract of land projects right out into the confluence of the Exe and Clyst, ending in a walled-earth pier.

Bright and Miss Follett: a Topsham courtship

Richard Bright (from Medical Portrait Gallery)

Browsing for history of the Goat Walk yesterday, I ran into a Topsham connection I never knew: the courtship of Richard Bright and Eliza Follett.

Richard Bright (1789 – 1858) was an eminent physician and an early pioneer in the research of kidney disease (Bright's disease - a historical classification of nephritis - is named after him). There's a chapter on him in the 1838 Medical portrait gallery. Biographical memoirs of the most celebrated physicians, surgeons, etc., etc., who have contributed to the advancement of medical science: see Richard Bright, M.D. F.R.S. Bright was married twice. His first wife Martha Lyndon Babington, died of childbirth complications in 1823. A few years later he courted a childhood friend, Eliza Follett, sister of the lawyer and politician William Webb Follett, and they married on 27th July 1826 (ODNB).

Follett Lodge, Ferry Road, Topsham

 The Folletts being a Topsham family, a deal of Eliza's courtship with Richard took place around Topsham, and their walks are recorded in the 1983 biography by Bright's great-great niece.

It is at Easter 1826 that we hear, in a letter written to his father, all about his visit to the Folletts at Topsham.

'Passage' (or Follett Lodge as it is known today) had been the family home since the first Folletts, natives of Normandy, had come to England in Henry II's time. Eliza's father, Benjamin Follett, was a retired captain of the 15th Foot Regiment and carried on the old family business as ships' chandler and timber merchant. He had married an Irish girl, Ann Webb of Kinsale, and they had a family of six sons and two girls.

'Goat's Walk' seems to have been Bright's and Eliza's favourite spot; it is often mentioned in Eliza's love letters. It was a narrow path along the water's edge. At high tide a vast expanse of water stretched before them, while at low tide the tortuous channel of the Exe was winged with sea birds plummeting down on to cushions of sea-pink. Here they would watch the bare-legged winkle gatherers, dressed in striped skirts looped to the waist. Their wind-ravaged faces arrested Bright's interested attention, and Eliza soon discovered it was the same when they met gypsies, or talked to her father's men in the timber yard. Exploring with him was a wonderful experience. He was always stopping to pick a flower, to identify the sound coming from a bush or to scoop up the clay where the river Clyst met the solid wall of the old Bridge Inn. Walking along the road where the Romans had marched, he would always find some evidence of their existence and of their battles.
- Dr. Richard Bright, (1789-1858), Pamela Bright, Bodley Head, 1983.

I guess you had to be there. Anyhow, this does show that the Goat Walk's existence as a path - and it seems its name - pre-dates the anecdote connected with its early 20th century upgrade to concreted form.

A later biography of Bright adds:

The wedding took place in the old church of St Marguerite [sic] at Topsham in July 1826. As with his marriage to Martha we have no surviving details of the ceremony nor the honeymoon.
- Richard Bright, 1789-1858: physician in an age of revolution and reform, Diana Berry, Campbell Mackenzie, Hugh L'Etang, Royal Society of Medicine Services, 1992 

- Ray