Exmoor birds of a feather...

We have now been at St Vincent’s Guest House for almost four years and every day are more and more impressed with the beauty, sounds and sights of the wildlife of Lynton, Lynmouth and Exmoor, especially the birds. Many of our guests come for the walking and to look at the scenery and animal inhabitants and we know they give a great deal of pleasure, especially to town and city dwellers who have very different kinds of wildlife.

On the radio recently, there was a feature from a young naturalist who “tweets” under the name @BirdgirlUK and the National Trust, talking about the importance of walking and listening to nature. Well worth a listen (1 42 30 in). This made us think of the wonderful naturalists and photographers in the area and the fact we have been admiring Jenny and John Elvin’s facebook posts for a while now, wishing a) we could take such good photos and b) we could gain such expert knowledge!

We contacted Jenny to see if they would send us five of their favourite feathered friends with a description. Jenny told us that together with her husband John who does most of the bird photos, they just enjoy their Exmoor home and the wonderful wildlife they come across on their travels.

So here is their top five (cue Top of the Pops opening credits).




 At number 5. Kestrel. This is quite common and a resident and its ability to hover in often gale force winds over the coast, combined with grace and beauty, make this a special bird.




Number 4. Dipper. Our master of the rivers, astonishing ability under the fast-flowing Exmoor waters.





Number 3. Long-tailed Tit. Well what can you say about this bundle of cuteness? Actually a tough survivor, winter feeding in family groups, descending on mass onto convenient feeders. Attitude, so I love that.!!!!!




At number 2. Redstart. Relative of our Thrush family, a summer visitor and gets to be on my favourite five list because of its startling beauty and enjoying our woodland and streams.




And in at the number 1 spot. Wheatear. Summer visitor, winters in the Sahara. Breeds here on Exmoor, near the coast and up on the moors. My number one favourite. That's it now, says Jenny, spring is nearly here and we will once again follow natures beautiful course on Exmoor and beyond.
 


We are very much looking forward to doing the same!

Thanks to Jenny and John Elvin for these beautiful photographs.

The Singer, the inventor, his wives and our treadles

St Vincent treadles

We like a tenuous link here at St Vincent Guest House!

Bangkok treadles

If you have stayed with us and been lucky enough to have some good weather and have breakfast al fresco, you may have sat at one of our two “upcycled” singer sewing machine tables made from treadles we found at the side of the house. It was when we were on a recent holiday to Thailand that we saw a café in Bangkok had done the same thing with their old treadles.

Interested in all of the things we have found at St Vincent’s, and remembering the pain of learning how to sew as teenagers at school (for those of us unlucky enough to be born female and not allowed to undertake metalwork) we thought it would be interesting to look at the history of the sewing machine and found that there were closer links to the company and inventor and Devon than we thought.

Isaac Singer

The BBC furnished us with an article in their “50 things that made a modern economy” series. It appears that the creation and design of the new-fangled sewing machine, designed to improve the lot of pretty much every female in the world who had to undertake such a task (it took around fourteen hours to make a shirt) was made by a failed actor turned inventor called Isaac Singer. He had rented space in a workshop showroom, hoping to sell his machine for carving wooden type, but wooden type was falling out of fashion. The device was ingenious, but nobody wanted to buy one. The workshop owner invited the demoralised inventor to take a look at another product which was also struggling: the sewing machine. So, in the 1850s, in that Boston workshop, the inventor sized up the machine he had been asked to admire, and quipped: "You want to do away with the only thing that keeps women quiet."

Isaac singer was considered to be a bit of a rogue, a womaniser, who fathered at least 22 children. For years he managed to run three families, not all of whom were aware the others existed, and all while technically still married to someone else entirely. It appeared he was not a natural supporter of women's rights – and ironically, his biographer, Ruth Brandon, dryly remarks that he was "the kind of man who adds a certain backbone of solidity to the feminist movement". Despite various copyright wrangles with several inventors suing each other for patent infringement and breaches, the so-called Sewing-Machine Wars of the 1850s were ended with the main players agreeing to work together, sharing ideas, and creating a near-perfect remedy to long hours taken to sew garments.

And now the link to Devon

Oldway House

So, there was now a sellable sewing machine and they were being bought by the thousands. Back to our erstwhile hero Isaac Singer. Following three marriages, one of them bigamous, and many affairs producing many offspring, Singer fled the US following a bigamy court case and moved to London in 1862. In 1871, Singer bought the Fernham Estate in Paignton, Devon. The old buildings on the site were demolished and he commissioned a local architect, George Soudon Bridgman, to build a new mansion as his home. As part of the designs, Singer instructed Bridgman to build a theatre within the house. Singer lived there until his death in 1875 and his son Paris took it on, making several architectural changes to the building. Singer junior left England in 1917 and during the First World War, the building became the American Women's War Relief Hospital, becoming the Torbay Country Club in 1929, with many different subsequent incarnations. Sadly, the building is now struggling and there is a group called the Friends of Oldway who are dedicated to restoring the building and heritage to its former glory.

Singer died in 1875, a millionaire dividing his $14 million fortune unequally among 20 of his children by his wives and various mistresses; one son, who supported his mother in her divorce case, received $500.

Despite all that, we like our tables.