The origins of the building that later became The Feathers are obscure.  Miss Maria Gibbons wrote in her account of the town in 1809 (“Budleigh Salterton Early Remembered Days..”) that “there were houses scattered along the main street only as far as where Mrs Ford’s shop now stands on that side”.  In the 1871 and1891 census  Ford’s shop was number 22 High Street and the Feathers was number 24 which was further north going out of town in what Miss Gibbons said was open cultivated land in 1809.  If she is correct then the building that became The Feathers wasn’t there in 1809.  She was however writing a long time later in 1887 and was not herself alive in 1809 and was therefore presumably reliant on locals alive at that time.  

The building that became The Feathers was lease number 341 in the Rolle (later Clinton Devon) Estates records.  This lease first appears in the records for the years 1811-17 (see below).  

Abraham Freeman 

The first landlord of The Feathers appears to have been Abraham Freeman. He stated in an advert in Trueman’s Exeter Flying Post in March 1844 that he opened the business in 1832: 

“Abraham Freeman begs respectfully to offer his most grateful acknowledgements to all for the liberal encouragement kindly patronised since his commencement in 1832 ..” 

Freeman was born in 1803 in Ashby de la Zouche in Derbyshire the son of Abraham Freeman and his wife Ann.  His father moved to Budleigh Salterton, and on 15th July 1817 he took a 99yr lease (number 34) on a messuage in Budleigh Salterton (probably 318 on the Tithe Map which was off to the left up what is now West Hill).  He also paid rent for a house in the High Street which later became The Feathers (lease number 341) but which year this was transacted is rather unclear as a Mr (? William) Pash paid rent for the same property from 1814-1817.  An Abraham Freeman continued to pay rent of £1-2-0d for lease 341 from 1818 – 1839 and beyond so it is likely that he paid the advanced rent in 1817.  

Abraham senior later took a 99yr lease (number 196) on Otterton Mill in 1821, however in 1825 he died and was buried on the 3rd August at East Budleigh parish church.  He was said to be aged 48 and from Otterton Mill.  Presumably his son inherited the lease and he eventually sold it to Henry Hill around 1830 and was then in a position to start up his business at The Feathers.   

Abraham junior also took over his father’s other leased properties and lands and at the time of the tithe map in 1842 he was occupying the inn and stables (tithe 85 Feathers), its attached skittle alley (tithe 82), a house (tithe 86) occupied by Thomas Collard later Creedy’s, the house and field up West Hill (318), and fields around the town and at Dalditch (452, 452.1, 476, & 848 to 851).   

He was described as a publican in the 1841 census living at the inn with his wife Isabella (nee Stickland) and daughter Lucy.  His daughter died later that year.  The name of the inn was the Feathers Commercial Inn and Posting House in 1838 (Pigot’s Directory) but if it had that name from its inception is unclear.  The front of the building was gentrified at some stage.  Pevsner described it as having a “Regency stuccoed front” but it seems likely that this wasn’t done till 1832 at the earliest.  It was also clearly built onto the front of an earlier cob building. 

In April 1843 Abraham went into partnership with William Seward who was the proprietor and driver of the Magnet Omnibus that ran between Budleigh Salterton and The Valiant Soldier in Exeter stopping en route at the King’s Arms in East Budleigh, the Globe at Woodbury and the Half Moon at Topsham.  The partnership however was dissolved in March 1844, “all debts to be paid by Seward”.  

Freeman carried out several businesses from the inn.  In the 1844 advert mentioned at the start of this article he carried on to say that “in addition to brewing for the supplying of families, Inn and Posting Business, I have undertaken that of a wine and spirit merchant”.   By 1846 the inn was a boarding house with saddle horses and carriages for hire, and he had flys for hire in 1850 (White’s Directory), and just before he sold the inn in 1856 he was described in Kelly’s Directory as having, flys, phaetons and excellent saddle horses. 

By 1850 Freeman was trying to sell the inn, and he tried again in 1853.  He eventually sold it in 1856 to Charles Hine.  The prospectus for the sale described the inn as having, a bar, a tap, a parlour and kitchen on the ground floor, two sitting rooms and five bedrooms above.  There was a yard and coach house, stabling for seven horses, a large club room, cellars and a plot of garden ground used as a skittle alley.  At that time he doesn’t seem to have been actually working as a publican as the prospectus said “A small portion of the property is let off as a retail ale and tap to a weekly tenant which produces upwards of £20 per annum”. “The property has a never failing spring of excellent water”.  

Charles Hine 

Charles was born in Otterton and he married Sarah Jane Thorn in the spring of 1853.  Sarah was born in Lympstone but was living in Budleigh Salterton at the time of the 1851 census because her father Joseph Thorn was the licensee at the King William Inn. 

Charles Hine held the lease on the inn from 1856 till his death on 2nd December 1868 when he died intestate.  The lease passed to his wife Sarah who a year later married her deceased sister’s husband George Charles Perriam.  According to letters written by Robert Lipscomb, the Rolle land agent, to the solicitors Frere and Co in November 1870, the marriage between George Perriam and Sarah was illegal; (the marriage between a man and his deceased wife's sister was outlawed until 1907) and this created a problem to the process of adding an additional name to the reversionary life lease to replace Charles Hine after he died.  It is interesting that Charles and Sarah got married in Exeter because presumably our local vicar would have been aware of the family connection between the pair and would not have been able to marry them. 

George Charles Perriam 

George was born in Budleigh Salterton in 1829.  His mother ran a grocery business in Fore Street and George continued to run it after she died and also after he had become the licensee at The Feathers.  He is described in the 1871 census as a grocer and licensed victualler.  In Kelly’s Directory in 1878 and 1883 he is described as a grocer in Fore Street, and a wine and spirit, ale and porter merchant, and a job and post master and victualler at Feathers Hotel.  

Around 1885, while the Rolle Chapel in East Terrace was being restored, the Long Room in Cliff Road at the back of The Feathers was used as a temporary chapel.  

George died in the summer of 1897 and the license passed to Harry Worth. 

Harry Walter Worth 

Harry Worth features in Kelly’s Directory for 1899 as the proprietor of the Feathers Commercial and Family Hotel.  He is described as a wine and spirit merchant, and he had carriages, waggonettes, breaks and dog-carts for hire.  

The Census and Returns of Births, Deaths and Marriages show that Harry Worth was born in Lydford in 1865 and in 1881 he was at the fee paying Proprietary School in Sampford Peverell (see Exeter Flying Post for 7/1/1863 for some information about this school).  He married Lucy Anna Thorne in Halberton in late 1889 and by 1891 they were running the Red Lion Inn in Fore Street Broad Clyst. They moved to The Feathers in 1897. Lucy was born in Clayhanger on the Devon/Somerset border but in 1881 her father was farming at Halberton. 

Harry’s name remained in Kelly’s Directory through to 1914 and, after he died in the summer of 1919, according to Jim Gooding (in Budleigh Salterton in bygone days), the inn became very popular when his wife called in her three attractive younger sisters to help run the business.  Lucy was the proprietor until 1926.  

Lucy died aged 79 in 1945.  Harry and Lucy’s son, Company Sergeant Major Harry Thorne Worth of the 2nd Battalion the Honorary Artillery Company, is commemorated on the Budleigh Salterton War Memorial.  He was killed on the 10th October 1917 at Polygon Wood near Ypres.  He was buried where he fell. 

Later Licensees 

Other 20th century licensees were, John Edward Heggs (Kelly’s Directory 1930) and William Pearce (Kelly’s Directory 1935 &1939).  Information at the Fairlynch Museum also mentions that from1956 , Alec Fox, Mr Bond, B. Hall, J. Margett were licensees, and  Eric Turner was recorded in 1974  and Peter Bernard Deller in 1986.  Since 2003 Mrs Joan Salt has been the licensee. 

There is further information and several photographs of The Feathers at the Fairlynch Museum.  Museum opening times and other essential information can be found at: http://www.devonmuseums.net/fairlynch 

Researched by Gerald Millington & Roger Lendon ©, 2011 

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