The neighborhood now known as Budleigh was, in the nineteenth century, a dairy farm called "Cloverdale." Owned by Dr. Richard H. Lewis, the farm is now completely gone, living on only in the street name "Lewis Farm Road." Lewis was a North Carolinian who received his M.D. from the University of Maryland but who returned to the area to treat maladies of the eye and ear. He was also a teacher and legislative counselor, influential in securing early legislation for the improvement of rural roads. The Cloverdale farm produced between five and ten thousand pounds of butter per year. Lewis died in 1926, was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, and the Cloverdale property was sold to become the Budleigh subdivision.
The name comes from the municipal borough, Budleigh-Salterton, in Devonshire where Sir Walter Raleigh was born in 1552. Many of the streets in the area come from English place-names, such as Banbury Road, Eton Road, and Exeter Circle.
Budleigh is an inside-the-beltline community, to the northwest of downtown Raleigh between the major arteries of Glenwood Avenue (Highway 70) and Wade Avenue. The current boundaries of the Budleigh subdivision as specified by Wake County are highly irregular. Bounded on the west by Dixie Trail and on the east by Oberlin Road, Budleigh stretches from just north of Lake Boone Trail to just south of Fairview Road. On some maps, Budleigh extends south all the way to Wade Avenue, and this is accepted among the residents here, although as far as the county is concerned, the southern part is the "Sunset Hills" subdivision.
Budleigh includes the Glenwood Village shopping center, where the Harris-Teeter grocery store is the anchor tenant. The shopping center also houses the Synergy day spa, Glenwood Grill restaurant, and Hereghty Heavenly Delicious, a French-style patisserie and cafe, as well as other upscale shops. The Glenwood Village shopping center is sited on a granite quarry that operated in the early twentieth century; behind the buildings you can still see the carved out rock faces of the old quarry.
Another forgotten feature of the neighborhood lives on only in the name "Lake Boone Trail." Lake Boone, also called Boone's Pond, used to be on the corner of Lake Boone Trail and Canterbury Road. This area has been filled in and now is the site of the Lake Boone Place residences.
Fire Station Six, sitting at the corner of Fairview Road and Oberlin Road, serves the Budleigh neighborhood as well as other surrounding areas. While the county-mandated boundaries of Budleigh do not include any schools or parks, Jaycee Park is just across Wade Avenue to the south, and the neighborhood is served by Lacy Elementary, Martin, and Daniels Middle Schools, and Broughton High School.
The residential architecture in Budleigh comprises many styles. Some of the most important modernist houses in Raleigh can be found here, including the historically registered Milton Small House and George Matsumoto House. In the mid-twentieth century, Matsumoto and Small were both associated with the highly influential School of Design (now the College of Design) at North Carolina State University.
