Around Buckfastleigh
The name Buckfastleigh is a contraction of Buck (tied) fast (in the) Leigh. Interestingly, the actual word Buckfastleigh contains half the letters of the alphabet without any repetition!
The gallery starts with a few views of the Town, and ends with a rather sad note about the fate of the original Parish Church.
A distant view of Buckfastleigh, looking from the crest of the hill which separates it from Buckfast!
Just incase you didn't know where we're going!
Buckfastleigh's High Street. I'm not sure what the bunting is for; it seems to be up every time I've been there! Maybe some local person can "put me some the wiser"?
The Valiant Soldier – The Pub Where Time Was Never Called. This pub closed in the mid 1960's, and the contents have been left as they would have been then! Now a museum.
The John Loosemore centre. Part of this building is used by a person, to do what I do... build organs! Click here to find out more.
Holy Trinity Buckfastleigh. This poor Church was razed to the ground by a disastrous fire in 1992.
The former inside of this buiding looking East...
... And West. The tower still remains, and the bells have been annealed*. These bells actually rang in the new year of 1996!
St Luke, the Church that has replaced Holy Trinity. It has the original font from the old church. This Church was designed by an architect that was born in Buckfastleigh. The same architect was responsible for designing the Catholic Cathedral in Bristol.
* This is a process to alter the "hardness" of metal (the bells in this case). It is likely that in the original fire they got pretty hot, and possibly the firemen's hose "playing" on them had some sort of tempering effect. The annealing process in this case, means the bells were probably heated up to just below melting temperature, then allowed to cool down naturally, as though they'd just been cast.
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