{ Modern, Roman, etc.}{ Iron Age, Celtic, bronze ornaments.} Fauna, asNeolithic{ Bronze weapons, Ivernian, flint} at present.{ tools.}{ Flint and pottery.}{ Flint and bone tools, cave-men.} Hyena,Palaeolithic{ Rudest flint tools, river-drift} cave-bear,{ men.} reindeer,} mammoth.
There are remains of a cliff castle at Long Quarry Point; from its name one may conjecture that a church stood in Celtic times on Kilmarie. Almost certainly this was a cliff castle, but the traces have disappeared.
The old church of Tor Mohun is dedicated to S. Petrock, as is shown by a Bartlett will in Somerset House, in 1517. Tor Abbey has been crowded into a narrow space by encroaching buildings. CockingtonHouse and church deserve a visit, as forming a charming group. Paignton Church contains a very fine but mutilated tomb with rich canopy and screenwork, showing that there must have been in the fifteenth century a native school of good figure sculptors. Marldon Church is also interesting, and in that parish is the curious Compton Castle, of which history has little to say. Haccombe, the seat of the Carews, has a church crowded with fine monumental effigies. The mansion is about the most hideous that could be conceived. It is said that a Carew pulled down his fine Elizabethan mansion and went to Italy, leaving instructions to an architect to build him a handsome house in the Georgian style.
When he returned and saw what had been erected: "Well," said he, "I believe that now I may take to myself the credit of possessing the very ugliest house in the county." The situation is of exquisite beauty. How lovely must have been the scene with a grave old Elizabethan manor-house, mottled with white and yellow lichen, embowered in trees, above which rose the hills, the evening sun glittering in its many mullioned windows, while the rooks wheeled and cawed about it.
The little combes that dip into the estuary of the Teign, rich with vegetation growing rank out of the red soil, are very lovely. Stoke-in-Teignhead not only has a good screen, but it is a parish that has never had a squire, but has been occupied from the sixteenth century by substantial yeomen, who have maintained themselves there against encroachingmen of many acres. Combe-in-Teignhead has a very fine screen and equally good old benches.
Wolborough has a good church occupying a site that was once a camp, and contains an excellent screen, well restored and glittering with gold and colour. East Ogwell has also a screen, and the old manor mill is a picturesque object for the pencil. Denbury is a strong camp.
Torbrian, situated in a lovely spot, has fine screenwork and monuments of the Petres. The three Wells, Coffinswell, Kingskerswell, and Abbotskerswell, lie together. At Kingskerswell are some old monumental effigies of the Prowse family. At Abbotskerswell are a screen, and a large statue of the Blessed Virgin in a niche of the window splay. This latter had been plastered over into one great bulk; when the plaster was removed the statue was revealed. The very fine Jacobean altar-rails were removed at the "restoration," to make place for something utterly uninteresting. Here there is an early and interesting church-house. The church-house was the building in which the parishioners from a distance spent a rainy time between morning service and vespers. The house was divided by a floor into two storeys, that above for women, that below for the men. Here were also held the church ales, that is to say, the ale brewed by the wardens and sold to defray church expenses. The ale was also supplied on Sundays by the clerk to those who tarried for evensong, and so, little by little, most of these old church-houses degenerated into taverns.
Abbotskerswell is the seat of the Aller potteryart manufacture, started by the late Mr. John Phillips, with the object of providing the village young men with remunerative work at their own homes. But about this presently. The story of the inception of the work is interesting.
Coffinswell still possesses its holy well, that is called the "Lady Well," used by young girls for fortune-telling.
At some little distance from this spring lies a nameless grave in unconsecrated ground, where is buried a lady banished holy ground for her sins. Every New Year's morn, after the stroke of midnight, she rises and takes "one cock's stride" towards the churchyard, which, when she reaches, she will find rest, and her hope is to be found therein—at the crack of doom.
The three well-parishes lie about the stream of the Aller (W.allwy, to pour forth, to stream), that flows into the Teign below Newton Abbot. But it was not always so. At some remote period, when the great Dartmoor peaks "stood up and took the morning," far higher than they do now, the mountain torrents that swept the detritus of quartz from Hey Tor and Rippon Tor not only filled the lake of Bovey with pure white china clay, till they had converted a basin into a plain, but they also poured between red sandstone and limestone cliffs into the sea at Torbay. Then came a convulsion of nature; these latter formations rose as a wall across the bed of the torrent, and the spill of the granite upland passed down the Teign valley. Then the little Aller was formed of the drainage of the combes ofthe upraised barrier, and, blushing at its insignificance, it stole through the ancient bottom, cutting its modest way through the beds of quartz clay left by the former occupant of the valley, and, of course, flowing in a direction precisely the reverse of the former flood. The deposits of the earlier stream remain in all the laps of the hills and folds of the valley. They consist of quartz clay, somewhat coloured by admixture of the later rocks that have been fretted by lateral streams.
The first to discover these beds were the gipsies. They were our early potters. These wandering people were wont to camp wherever there was clay, and wood suitable for baking the clay. They set their rude wheels to work, and erected their equally primitive kilns, and spent one half the year in making pots, and the other half in vending them from place to place. When the wood supply was exhausted, then the Bohemians set up their potteries on another spot that commended itself to them, to be again deserted when the wood supplies failed once more.
The reason why the potteries at Burslem and elsewhere in Staffordshire have become permanent is, that there the coal is ready at hand, and that there the native population has taken the trade out of the desultory hands of the gipsies, and has worked at it persistently, instead of intermittently. The old stations, the rude kilns, the heaps of broken and imperfectly baked crocks of the ancient potters, are often come upon in the woods of Aller vale, and among the heather and gorse brakes of Bovey Heathfield.
The Aller vale opens into the Teign, as already said, below Newton Abbot, and extends about four miles south to the village of Kingskerswell, that stands on the crest of the red rocky barrier which diverted the course of the flood from Dartmoor. A branch of the valley to the west terminates at a distance of two miles at the picturesque village of Abbotskerswell, and another branch to the east leads up to the village of Coffinswell. The deepest deposit of clay is at the point where the three parishes converge.
Just nineteen years ago the idea of an art school was mooted in the district. It was enthusiastically taken up by the village doctor at Kingskerswell, in association with an institute for the labourers and young men of the parish, and after a little difficulty he succeeded in getting hold of some premises for the purpose. This earnest-hearted and energetic man, Dr. Symons, did not live to see more than the initiation of his scheme. By many the idea of an art school among village bumpkins was viewed with mistrust, even with disfavour. It was argued, and with truth, that art schools had been started in country towns, and had failed to reach a class below the middle order. Sons and daughters of artisans and labourers would have none of it. Such had been the experience in Newton, such in Torquay. If the intelligent artisan of the town turned his back on the art school, was it likely that Hodge would favour it? When people have satisfied their minds that a certain venture is doomed to failure, they are very careful not to lend theirnames to it, nor to put out their finger-tips to help it in any way. It was so in this case.
The managers of the Board School, when asked to lend the room for the purpose, refused it. The promoters, failing in every other direction, turned to a poor widow left with two sons, struggling hard to keep soul and body together in a modest "cob" (clay-walled) cottage with thatched roof. She was asked the loan of her kitchen, a room measuring 21 feet by 18 feet, lighted by two small latticed windows, with low open-boarded and raftered ceiling of unhewn timber. Glad to earn a few pence, she consented, and the art classes were started on a career of unexpected success.
The school of art began with a few pupils. A Sunday-school teacher persuaded his class to go to the art school, and perhaps to humour him, rather than with any anticipation of profit, the boys accepted the invitation. The widow's kitchen was whitewashed and clean. On the hearth a log fire blazed. A few simple pictures hung on the walls, and a scarlet geranium glowed in a pot in the window. A couple of trestles supported a plank for a table, and a pair of forms served to seat the pupils. The ploughboy, with his stiff fingers, was set to draw straight lines, and wonderful were his productions. The lines danced, trembled, wriggled, halted, then rushed off the page. They were crackers in their gyrations at first, and then rockets. By degrees the lines became less random, more subdued and purposeful, and finally a crow of delight proclaimed to the whole class that the curly-headedploughboy had succeeded in producing a musical bar of five fairly parallel lines. Then, with both hands plunged into his pockets, young Hodge leaned back and went off into a roar of laughter. It had dawned on his mind that he could draw a line with a pencil on paper as true as he could with a ploughshare in a field. He had come to the school for a lark, and had found that the self-satisfaction acquired by the discovery of his powers was a lark better than he had expected. The question presented itself from the outset—How was the art school to be maintained? The fires must be kept in full glow, the lamps must be supplied with oil, the widow must be paid to clean her floor after the boys had brought over it the red mud from the lanes. As so much mistrust as to the advantage and prospect of success of the classes was entertained, it was from the first resolved by the promoters not to solicit subscriptions. The whole thing was to be self-supporting. This was represented to the pupils, and they readily accepted the situation. They undertook to organise and keep going through the winter a series of fortnightly entertainments; they would invite some outsiders, but for the most part they would do their best themselves to entertain. The evenings would be made lively with recitations, readings, and songs. Doubtful whether such performance would deserve a fixed charge for admission, the young fellows on putting their heads together determined to make none, but to hold a cap at the door when the "pleasant evening" was over, and let those whohad been entertained show their appreciation as they chose.
These fortnightly cottage entertainments became a recognised institution and a source of profit, besides serving as a means of interesting and occupying the pupils. A thing that begins in a small way on right principles, a thing that "hath the seed in itself," is bound to succeed.
Adjoining the widow's cottage was another untenanted, like it consisting of a single apartment on the ground floor. It became necessary to rent this, knock a door through the wall, and combine the cottages. The second room was turned into a workshop, with a carpenter's bench and a chest of tools.
Out of the first art school in the one well-parish grew two others, one in each of the other well-parishes. Coffinswell has but a population of a hundred souls, nevertheless its art school has been frequented by as many as twelve pupils. Sixty is the highest number reached by the three together, which are now combined to maintain an efficient art instructor.
It fell out that a stoneware pottery in the Aller vale was burnt down in 1881, and when reconstructed the proprietor, who had cordially promoted the art classes, resolved on converting what had been a factory of drain and ridge tiles into a terra-cotta manufactory, in which some of the more promising pupils might find employ, and in which the knowledge and dexterity acquired in the class might be turned to practical uses. A single experienced potterwas engaged, a gipsy, to start the affair, as there was no local tradition as to the manufacture of crocks upon which to go.
The classes were from the outset for boys and girls together, and though recently there has been a change in this arrangement, the young women coming in the afternoon, and the young men in the evening, this alteration has been made owing to increase of numbers, not in consequence of any rudeness or impropriety, for such there had not been in the ten years of the career of the school. In this case the experience has been precisely the same as that of the mixed schools and colleges of the United States.
There is one thing that a visitor to Torquay is certain to carry away with him if he has made excursions on foot about it—some of its red soil. The roads, in spite of the County Council, are bad, for the material of which they are made is soft. But what a soil it is for flowers and for fruit! Anything and everything will grow there and run wild. Stick a twig into the earth, and it is bound to grow. As for roses and violets, they run riot there. And, taken on the whole, the visitor who has been to Torquay is almost sure to carry away with him something beside the red mud, something quite as adhesive—pleasant memories of the place and its balmy air.
The legend of Brutus—Derivation of the name—Castle—The charter—Old houses—Piazzas—The church—The screen—Dartington Hall—Little Hempston Rectory—Old gate—Priory—Berry Pomeroy.
The legend of Brutus—Derivation of the name—Castle—The charter—Old houses—Piazzas—The church—The screen—Dartington Hall—Little Hempston Rectory—Old gate—Priory—Berry Pomeroy.
What a pity it is that the dear old legends that lie at the root of history have been dissipated! That we can no longer believe in Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf—no, not even when the Lupercale remains on the side of the Palatine Hill, after the palaces of Augustus, of Tiberius, of Caligula, of Septimius Severus, have been levelled with the dust.
How cruel, too, that the delightful story of Alfred and the cakes, that also of Edwin and Elgiva, are relegated to the region of fables; that we are told there never was such a person as King Arthur, and that S. George for Merry England never was a gallant knight, and certainly slew no dragon, nor delivered fair maid!
Dust we are, but is it absolutely necessary that all human history, and the history of nature, should spring out of dust? that the events of the childhood of our race should have been all orderly and unromantic, as if every nationality had been bred in trimness as a Board School scholar? Now, what if we couldbelieve that old gossiping—I am afraid I must add lying—historian, Geoffrey of Monmouth! Why, the transformation scene at a pantomime would be nothing to the blaze of wonders and romance in the midst of which the England of history steps on to the stage.
DARTON THE DART
ON THE DART
ON THE DART
Ah! if we could but believe old Geoffrey, or the British book which he saw and translated, why, then, Totnes would be the most revered spot in England, as that where the first man set his foot when he landed in an uncultivated, unpeopled island. Is there not on the Palatine the Lupercale, the very den in which the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus, to prove the tale? Are there not Arthur's Seats enough in Cornwall, Wales, Cumberland, Scotland, to show that there must have been an Arthur to sit in them? And is there not the stone in the high street of Totnes on which Brut, when he landed, set his foot to establish against all doubters the existence of Brut and the fact of his landing there?
The story is this.
As it fell upon a day there was a certain king called Sylvius in Italy, and when he was about to become a father he consulted a magician, who by the stars could tell all that was to be. Now this magician read that the child that was to be born to Sylvius would be the death of his father and mother.
In course of time the child was born, and at his birth his mother died. "He's a Brute," said King Sylvius, and so that was his name.
But King Sylvius did not have his child exposed to wild beasts; he gave it to be nursed by a good woman, who reared the "Brute" till he was fifteen.
Now it fell out that one day King Sylvius went a-hunting in the merry greenwood with horn and hounds, and the little "Brute," hearing the winding of the horn and the music of the hounds, picked up the bow he himself had made, and with the arrows he himself also had winged, forth he went to the chase. Alas! it so fell out that the first arrow he shot pierced his father's heart.
On this account Brute had to fly the country.
"And away he fared to the Grecian land,With a hey! with a ho! and a nonny O!And there he gathered a stalwart band,And the ships they sail on the blue sea O!"
"And away he fared to the Grecian land,With a hey! with a ho! and a nonny O!And there he gathered a stalwart band,And the ships they sail on the blue sea O!"
Now the mother of Brute had been a Trojan, so all the refugees, after the destruction of Troy, gathered about the young prince, and formed a large body of men. Brute took to wife Ignogne, daughter of Pandrasos, King of the Greeks, and resolved to sail away in quest of a new country. So the king, his father-in-law, gave him ships and lading, and he started. A fair wind swelled his sails, and he sailed over the deep blue sea till he reached a certain island called Loegria, which was all solitary, for it had been wasted by pirates. But Brute went on shore, and found an old deserted and ruinous temple, and there he lit three fires, and he sacrificed a white hart, and poured the blood mingled with wine on the broken altar, and he sang:—
"Sweet goddess above, in the light of love,That high through the blue doth sail,O tell me who rove in the woodland grove,O tell me, and do not fail,Where I shall rest—and thine altar dressed,Shall finish this wandering tale."
"Sweet goddess above, in the light of love,That high through the blue doth sail,O tell me who rove in the woodland grove,O tell me, and do not fail,Where I shall rest—and thine altar dressed,Shall finish this wandering tale."
These words he repeated nine times, after which he took four turns round the altar, and laid himself down on the skin of the white hart and fell asleep. About the third hour of the night he saw a beautiful form appear with the new moon in her hair, and a sceptre with the morning star shining on its point, and she said to him:—
"Far, far away in the ocean blue,There lieth an island fair,Which giants possessed, but of them are fewThat linger to haunt it there.O there shalt thou reign, in a pleasant plainShalt found thee a city rare,From thee shall a line of heroes divineCarry triumph everywhere."
"Far, far away in the ocean blue,There lieth an island fair,Which giants possessed, but of them are fewThat linger to haunt it there.O there shalt thou reign, in a pleasant plainShalt found thee a city rare,From thee shall a line of heroes divineCarry triumph everywhere."
When Brute woke he was much encouraged by the vision, and he returned to his ship, hoisted the mainsail, and away, away, before the wind the ship flew, throwing up foam from her bows, and leaving a track as milk in the sea behind. He passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and coasted up Aquitaine, and rounded the Cape of Finisterre, and at length, with a fair wind, crossed the sea, and came to the marble cliffs of Dunan Dyffnaint, the land of deep vales, and in the cliffs opened a great rift, down which flowed a beautiful river, and he sailed up it. And lo! on either side were green pastures spangled with buttercups, and forests of mighty oaks and beech, and over his head the white gulls screamed, and in the water the broad-winged herons dipped; and so he sailed, and before him rose a red cliff; and now the tide began to fall. So he ran his ship up against the cliff and leapt ashore, and where heleaped there his foot made its impress on the red rock, which remains even unto this day. Then, when Brute had landed, he sat himself down and said:—
"Here I sit, and here I rest,And this town shall be called Totnes."
"Here I sit, and here I rest,And this town shall be called Totnes."
Which shows that Brute had not much idea of rhyme, nor of measure in his rhyme.
It must be told that the very spot where Brute sprang ashore is half-way up the hill from the river Dart, up which he sailed; but then the river was much fuller in those days, or men's legs were longer.
Totnes, in fact, occupies a promontory of red sandstone rock, round which the river not only winds, but anciently swept up a creek that ran for two miles. In fact there was a labyrinth of creeks there; one between Totnes and the sea, another between Totnes and the mainland, so that the town was accessible on one side only, and that side was strongly fortified by castle and earthworks. The creek to the south still fills with water; its mouth is below Sharpham, and the tide now rises only as far as Bow Bridge. Formerly it ran quite a mile further up. The town of Totnes, in fact, occupies one point alone in a ness or promontory that was formerly, when the tide rose, flushed with water on the three sides. It has, however, been supposed that the term Totnes applies to the whole of that portion of South Devon to the coast; some even assert to the whole peninsula of Devon and Cornwall. The creeks have silted up with the rich red mud, and with the washings from the tin mines on Dartmoor, to such an extent thatthe true ness character of the little district of Totnes and the villages of Ashprington and Harberton has not been recognised. It is a hilly district, and the clefts which formerly filled with water are natural dykes fortifying it.
The Ikenild Street, which was a British trackway, passed through Totnes, which is the old Durium of the Itineraries. The river Dart is the Dour, that comes out as Durium in Latin, and is simply the Celtic word for water. We have it again in Dorovernia, Dover, and in Dorchester, the castle or camp on the water.
The name Totnes is probably Saxon, fromtot,toten, "to project," as in Tothill, Tottenham; and we have it again in a promontory on the coast, as Dodman's Nose, which is peculiar, for this is a combination of three languages.Dodis the Saxon,manis the Celticmaen, stone or rock, andnessis the Scandinavian nose or headland.
The railway station and line to Plymouth now occupy the old creek, up which barges, and undoubtedly smuggled spirits, went to Dartington. Anyone standing on the Dartington side and looking across at Totnes will see at once what was the old character of this headland. The town occupies a long ridge, which reached to the river by one street that ran its entire length. The magnificent church of red sandstone, with its grand tower and pinnacles, occupies the centre, and on the land side, the only side assailable, towered up the castle on a mound that was thrown up in prehistoric times.
The castle is now ruined; the circular "mote" remains,and a few crumbling walls and great elm trees full of rooks' nests rise in the place of towers and battlements. The grounds about the ruins have been nicely laid out, and what remains of the castle is saved from further disintegration. The character was very much that of other castles in the West, as Rougemont, Plympton, and Launceston. There was no square keep, but a circular drum, and a large yard surrounded by walls that stood on earlier earthworks. A picturesque gate gives access to the town near the castle. The town itself is quaint and full of interesting relics. A great number of the houses date from Elizabethan times, and belonged to the wealthy merchants of Totnes, which was a great place for the manufacture of woollen cloth. Indeed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was already famous.
Totnes is one of the oldest boroughs in the country. Its earliest charter dates from 1205, and I believe I am right in saying that at a dinner at the Mansion House given by a Lord Mayor of London within the last few years to the mayors of England, precedence was given to the representative of the borough of Totnes over all others.
The houses of the merchants of Totnes have been sadly tampered with. The requirements of modern trade exact large shop-fronts, and to satisfy the demand of the public to see at a glance what is to be sold within, the venerable houses have been transformed externally, at all events on the ground-floor. But let anyone interested in such things go within and ask to be shown the panelled rooms andplaster ceilings, and he will see much to interest and delight. A peculiarly fine piece of plaster-work is in the parlour of the local bookseller, and if the visitor desires to have his hair cut he can have it done in a chamber of the local barber, where the woodwork is of the sixteenth century.
Totnes preserves its old piazzas, or covered ways in High Street, very much like those of Berne or an Italian city, or, indeed, of thebastidesor free cities built by our Edward I. in his duchy of Guyenne, of which Montpazier, Beaumont, St. Foye are notable examples, and seem to show that piazzas were a common feature of English towns and of towns built under English influence in the thirteenth century. The same sort of thing is found at Chester, but not, that I am aware, in any other English towns. If in Italy these covered ways are an advantage, in that it allows those who walk along the streets to look in at the shop windows with comfort when the sun is shining, in Totnes it allows them the same advantage when the rain is falling;
"And the rain it raineth every day."
One unpardonable outrage has been committed at Totnes. There existed in front of the churchyard and in continuation of the piazza, a butter market, which consisted of an enlarged piazza, supported on granite pillars of the beginning of the seventeenth century. The vulgar craving to show off the parish church when so many pounds, shillings, and pence had been spent on its restoration; the fear lest visitors should fail to see that the shopkeepers ofTotnes had put their hands into their pockets to do up their church, made them destroy this picturesque and unique feature.
The church itself is a very fine building. It was originally a Norman structure of the eleventh century, but was rebuilt in the thirteenth, and is, as it now stands, a structure of Perpendicular work of the fifteenth century. It is of red sandstone, of a warm and pleasant colour. In the tower are niches containing figures of saints of lighter colour. The church has gone through a restoration more or less satisfactory, or unsatisfactory, at the hands of the late Sir G. Gilbert Scott, who had no feeling for Perpendicular work. It is a stately church; its chief glory is a superb rood-screen of carved stone, erected in 1460, and richly coloured and gilt. This supported a wide gallery that extended over half the chancel, and access to this gallery was obtained by a splendid carved and gilt newel staircase in the chancel. The top of the screen is delicately spread into fan-work, intended to sustain the beam of the gallery. In the so-called restoration of the church the entire gallery was removed, consequently the stair leads to vacancy and the screen supports nothing. Moreover, one of the most striking effects of the church was destroyed. A broad belt of shadow was designed to cross the chancel, behind the screen, throwing up, on one side, the gilded tracery of the screen, and on the other, the flood of light that bathed the sanctuary and altar. All this is gone, and the effect is now absolutely commonplace. There are screens near Totnes ofextraordinary richness—at Great Hempston, Ipplepen, Harberton, and Berry Pomeroy—covered with gold and adorned with paintings. But none are perfect. A screen consisted of three parts. The lower was the sustaining arcade, then came the fan-groining to support the gallery, above that, the most splendid feature of all, the gallery back, which consisted of a series of canopied compartments containing paintings representing the gospel story. This still exists in Exeter Cathedral; the uppermost member is also to be seen at Atherington, as has been already stated, but everywhere else it has disappeared.
Formerly there stood a reredos at the east end of the chancel of Grecian design, singularly out of character with the building, but hardly worse than the contemptible concern that has been erected in its place.
At the east end of the church, on the outside, the apprentices of Totnes were wont to sharpen their knives, and the stones are curiously rubbed away in the process.
The registers of Totnes are very early and of great interest, as containing much information concerning the old merchant families and the landed gentry of the neighbourhood with whom they married.
The nearest great manorial house is that of Dartington, which was a mansion of the Hollands, Dukes of Exeter, and now belongs to the Champernownes. It possesses ruins of the splendid hall, of the date of Richard II., whose device, a white hart chained, appears repeated several times. On the opposite side of the river is the most interesting and uniqueparsonage of Little Hempston, a perfectly untouched building of the fourteenth century, exactly the priest's house of the time of Chaucer. The house consists of a structure occupying four sides of a tiny quadrangle. It has a hall, buttery, kitchen, and solar. Every window, except that of the hall, looks into the little court, which is just twenty feet square, and the rooms accordingly are gloomy. The late John Keble, who was often a visitor at Dartington Parsonage, would, when missing, be found there, dreaming over the life of the parish priest in the Middle Ages.
A very singular circumstance is connected with the old Champernownes of Dartington. Gawaine Champernowne was married to the Lady Roberta, daughter of the Count de Montgomeri, leader of the Huguenots. On account of her misconduct she was divorced in 1582, by Act of Parliament passed for the purpose. However, oddly to relate, no sooner were they divorced than they patched up their quarrel and continued to live together as husband and wife, and had a large family. Happily the eldest son and heir was born before the Act was passed, or in all certainty he would have been illegitimate in the eye of the law. But the two younger sons and three daughters were the issue after the divorce.
The old south gate of Totnes still remains, and at one time the chamber over it was a public-house. It has since been converted into a reading-room, and contains some good wood-carving of the Tudor age and a fine plaster cornice.
On the north side of the church are the remains of the old priory of S. Mary, founded by Judael, Earlof Totnes, at the Conquest. These have been transformed into guildhall, prisons, and sexton's houses. The priory must have been a modest building. It stood just within the old town walls, which may be traced in fairly good preservation thence to the south gate. The church of Totnes is a vicarial church, as Judael granted it to the Benedictine Abbey of Saints Sergius and Bacchus at Angers.
The priors had the right of presentation to the parish church up to the time of the dissolution of the religious houses, except during the wars with France, when the Crown appointed, this being an alien priory.
In 1414 there was a quarrel in the church between the prior and one John Southam, what about we do not know. They seem to have punched each other's nose, so as to bring blood; whereupon the church was closed till the bishop could hold investigation whether the sacred edifice had been desecrated thereby. Bishop Stafford did hold inquiry, and in ecclesiastical language, and with proper gravity, pronounced that the case was "fudge," that the matter had been made a great deal more of than there was occasion, and that the vicar was to recommence services in the church.
Torbrian Church, picturesquely situated in a glen, has been already alluded to. This parish is the cradle of Lord Petre's family.
The splendid ruins of Berry Pomeroy Castle are within a walk or drive, and will repay a visit, not only from the interest of the remains, but also from the beauty of the situation on the brow of rock overhanging the water.
Below the town of Totnes is the quay, at which the steamboat may be entered for the beautiful descent of the Dart to Dartmouth.
On all sides, peeping out of woods, above smooth lawns, backed by orchards, appear numerous smiling villas. It would seem that many well-to-do people have come to the same conclusion as did Brute, and have made Totnes their seat, saying:—
"Here I sit—and here I rest."
And the visitor will think that old Brute was no fool when he said that, and will wish that he could do the same.
Note.—Books on Totnes:—Cotton(W.),Graphic and Historical Sketch of the Antiquities ofTotnes. London: Longman, 1850.Windeatt(E.), "An Historical Sketch of Totnes," in theTransactionsof the Devonshire Association, 1880.Dymond(R.), "Ancient Documents relating to the Civil History ofTotnes," in theTransactions of the Devonshire Association, 1880.
CASTLEDARTMOUTH CASTLE
DARTMOUTH CASTLE
DARTMOUTH CASTLE
A first visit to Dartmouth—Descent of the Dart—The Church of S.Saviour—John Hawley—The Butter Row—Slate-covered houses—TheShip Inn—Walk to the sea—Warfleet—S. Petrock's—TheCastle—Attacks on Dartmouth—The Golden Strand—Kingswear—Buryingunder foundations—Newcomen—Sir Walter Raleighand his pipe—Slapton Lea—Dame Juliana Hawkins—Visits to bemade—What not to be done.
I will tell you how I first saw Dartmouth before I proceed to say anything about it, and then the reader will perhaps understand the peculiar affection with which I write about it.
It happened early one June that I had made every arrangement to go with a friend a walking tour among the Dolomite Alps. We were to meet in town and cross the Channel together to Antwerp.
At the last moment some particularly vexatious business cropped up which detained me, and I had to wire to my friend that I could not be with him on the day fixed, but would, if possible, meet him in Cologne. In two days I saw it was all up with my Continental excursion, and I was obliged to telegraph to Cologne that my friend must go on his way by himself.
Now when a man has been slaving at his deskall winter, and has been planning out every stage of his tour, and has thought, talked, written, dreamed of it for months—then to see his hope blasted is enough to make him cross. Cross accordingly I was; so cross, that the best and most long-suffering of wives advised me to go somewhere. "Somewhere," thought I; "why, I have never been down the Dart, have never seen Dartmouth." So I took the advice given me and started.
What a day that was when I spun along the Great Western Railway from Plymouth to Totnes. The day was resplendent with sun, and yet not too hot. The orchards everywhere were a mass of flowers, from white to pink. I had hit precisely on the time and train whereby a number of English officers, just landed from the Soudan at Plymouth, were dispersing to their homes. In the same carriage with me was a young officer who had bought a number ofFunny Folksand was immersed in it. A brother officer came to the carriage-window, after we had reached a second station, and addressing my fellow-traveller through the window exclaimed, "I say, did you ever see the like of this, old chap? We are going through waves of colour, a sea of flowers. I never saw anything to equal it—and after the sands of Egypt, old boy!" The bell rang and he had to run back to his carriage. "Yes; all right," was the response of the man in my compartment, and down went his head and thoughts amongFunny Folks.
At the next station the second officer was again at our window, and again addressing the reader ofthe periodical, "I say, Jones! talk of Araby the Blessed, it isn't worth mention in the same day with ten thousand times more lovely, blessed, dear old England. By George! old chap, I want to look out of both windows at once. I can't see enough of it. I feel as if I could cry, it is so beautiful!"
"Ah! indeed," responded the reader, and down went his head into his paper, and did not look off it again. "Truly," I thought, "what a blessing to publishers that all men have not the sense of beauty; and what a blessing it is to men like myself that we are not addicted to the grotesque."
The descent of the Dart should be made as I made it then, on an early summer evening when the sun is in decline, and the lawns are yellow with buttercups, when the mighty oaks and beeches are casting long shadows, and the reaches of the river are alternately sheets of quivering gold and of purple ink.
As I went down the river, all dissatisfaction at my lot passed away, and by the time Dartmouth came in view I could no longer refrain myself, but threw my cap into the air, and barely caught it from falling overboard as I shouted, "Hurrah for merry England! Verily it has scenes that are unrivalled in the whole world."
Indeed now, in gravity, as I write this, I cannot think that I have ever seen any sight lovelier than Dartmouth on an evening in early summer, with Kingswear opposite, the one bathed in soft sweet shadow, and the other glittering and golden in the sun's declining rays.
The sea is not visible from Dartmouth, which is hemmed in by hills that rise to a great height on every side, shutting in the basin of water that is the port of Dartmouth, and shutting out all winds. The town itself is full of picturesque bits. The church, dedicated to S. Saviour, is really a chapelry in the parish of Townstal, the church of which, set as a beacon on a hill, is two miles distant, and reached by a scramble. The church of Dartmouth was built at the end of the fourteenth century, and has happily escaped the reckless restoration which has befallen Totnes. What has been done has been reparative, and all in the best taste. The church contains a magnificent painted and gilt wood screen, and a pulpit of the same character, with the royal badges of later date on its sides. A gallery runs round three sides of the church, over the aisles; that is of Elizabethan date, and the panels in front are emblazoned with the arms of the merchant princes of the town at the time of its prosperity. A curious door, covered with iron-work of very rich description, representing lions impaled on an oak tree, bears the date 1631, but this merely represents the restoration of the woodwork of the door. In the floor of the church is the brass of John Hawley, merchant, who died in 1408, and his two wives, Joan, who died in 1394, and Alice, who died in 1403; there can be little doubt as to which of the wives he loved best, for he is represented holding the hand of the first. This is the Hawley, merchant of Dartmouth, mentioned by old Stow in hisAnnals, who, in 1390, "waged thenavie of shippes of the ports of his own charges, and took 34 shippes laden with wyne to the sum of fifteen hundred tunnes." The visitor may compare the costume worn by the ladies on the brass with the description given by Stow of the fashion that then set in: "This time was used exceeding pride in garments, gownes with deepe and broad sleeves, commonly called peake sleeves, whereof some hung downe to their feete, and at least to the knees, ful of cuts and jagges."
Among the old houses in the town, unhappily fast disappearing, must be noted those in Butter Row, a short piazza like that at Totnes, and in one of these is a very fine carved oak chimney-piece, that merits examination.
Other old houses are in Fosse Street and the Shambles. A peculiarity of the old Dartmouth houses is that they are covered with small slates, cut into various devices, and forming elegant patterns, that cover them as a coat of mail against the rain. Forty years ago there were many of these picturesque old houses, they are now woefully reduced in numbers.
The "Ship Inn" is an old-fashioned hostel, very comfortable, and though modernised externally, yet has much that is characteristic of an old inn in the inside. I was dining there one evening when the train from town had arrived, and launched its passengers into Dartmouth. Among these happened to be a German, who was on his way by the Donald Currie boat to the Cape. He came into the dining-room of the "Ship," seated himself at a table at alittle distance from me, and signed that he wanted something to eat.
The courteous, elderly waiter bowed and said, "What will you have, sir, soup?"
"Yesh! yesh!"
"There is vermicelli."
"Yesh! yesh!"
"And Julienne."
"Yesh! yesh!"
"And ox-tail."
"Yesh! yesh!"
"And mulligatawny."
"Yesh! yesh!"
"And fish, sir. Would you like some?"
"Oh, yesh! yesh!"
"There is some turbot."
"Yesh! yesh!"
"And a nice pair of soles."
"Yesh! yesh!"
"And some brill."
"Oh, yesh! yesh!"
"And perhaps you would like, sir, a mayonnaise of lobster?"
"Oh, yesh! yesh!"
It was time for me to interfere. I jumped up and hastened to the assistance of the poor German, and said in his own tongue: "I beg your pardon for my interference, sir, butareyou ordering dinner for yourself or for the entire crew? You will, I know, excuse me, but I thought it advisable to speak before it came to the wine list."
"Ach, du lieber Herr!" gasped the German. "Iknow but one English word, and that is Yesh. Will you be so merciful as to order dinner for me?"
I at once entered into consultation with the waiter, and settled all matters agreeably.
A charming walk may—no, must, be taken from Dartmouth to the sea; the street, very narrow, runs between houses for a long way, giving glimpses of the water, of old bastions and towers, of gardens hanging on the steep slopes, of fuchsias and pelargoniums running riot in the warm, damp air, of red rock and green foliage, jumbled together in the wildest picturesqueness, of the blue, still water below, with gulls, living foam-flakes swaying, chattering over the surface. Then the road has to bend round Warfleet, a lovely bay bowered in woods, with an old mill and a limekiln, and barges lying by, waiting for lime or for flour. When this has been passed, and, alas! a very ugly modern house that disfigures one of the loveliest scenes in South Devon, a headland is reached by a walk under trees, and all at once a corner is turned, and a venerable church and a castle are revealed, occupying the rocky points that command the entrance of Dartmouth Harbour.
The church undoubtedly served as chapel to the castle, but is far older in dedication than any portion of the castle, for it is dedicated to the purely British Saint Petrock, who lived in the sixth century.
The church is small, much mutilated, and contains a number of old monuments, and some brasses to the Roope and Plumleigh families. On the opposite side of the estuary is another castle.
The castle that adjoins is supposed to date fromthe reign of Henry VII., but one existed in the same spot at an earlier date. Edward IV., in 1481, covenanted with the men of Dartmouth to pay them annually £30 from the customs of Exeter and Dartmouth, on condition of their building a "stronge and myghtye and defensyve new tower," and of their protecting the harbour with a chain. Certainly, the men of Dartmouth earned their money cheaply, for "the myghtye tower" is a very small affair.
For their own interest one would have supposed they would have erected a greater fortress, as Dartmouth suffered severely at times from pirates and French fleets. In 1377 it was plundered by the French, who in the same year swept our shores from Rye to Plymouth. In 1403 it returned the visit of the French; in 1404 a French fleet succeeded in putting into Black Pool, a little to the right of the entrance to the Dart, but the Dartmouth men armed and came down the steep sides of the bay upon the French, killed their leader, and forced them to regain their vessels and put off to sea. The French lost four hundred men and two hundred prisoners in the engagement.
On the attempted invasion by the Spanish Armada, in 1588, two vessels, theCrescentand theHaste, were fitted out, and the former is said to have been engaged with one of the Spanish vessels. In 1592, theMadre de Dios, one of the great Indian "carracks" or plate ships, was taken on her way to Spain, and was brought into Dartmouth. She was a floating castle of seven decks, and was laden with silver, spices, rare woods, and tapestries. Theneighbouring gentry and townsmen of Dartmouth began to clear the prize for the adornment of their own houses, and commissioners were sent from London to recover as much of the spoil as was possible.
There is a bay near Black Pool which goes by the name of the Golden Strand, because a vessel was wrecked there laden with treasure, and to this day gold coins are occasionally picked up on the beach. In the basement of the tower of Dartmouth Castle are still the traces of where the iron chain or boom was fastened that could be stretched across the entrance to the harbour in time of war.
That smuggling was carried on to a very large extent on this coast in former times cannot be doubted. Indeed, the caves artificially constructed for the purpose of holding "run" goods still exist in several places; and many capital stories are told of the good old smuggling days, and the way in which the revenue officers were cheated.
Immediately opposite Dartmouth is Kingswear, situated on the steep slope of rock that runs precipitously to the sea. There is a curious circumstance connected with the church. In 1845, the church was pulled down, when under the foundation was discovered a cavity cut in the rock filled with infant bones and quicklime. There is but too much reason to believe that we have here one of the many instances that remain of the old heathen belief that no building would stand unless a man or child were buried under the foundation. A few years ago, when the parish church of Wickersley, Lincolnshire, wasrebuilt by Sir G. Gilbert Scott, on raising the foundations the complete skeleton of a man was found laid lengthwise under the masonry. At Holsworthy, North Devon, in the same way, a skeleton was discovered with much lime about it in the wall, as if to hasten decomposition. The custom still exists in the East. In 1860, the King of Burmah (father of Theebaw) rebuilt Mandalay. On that occasion fifty-three individuals were buried alive, three under each of the twelve gates, one under each of the palace gates, and four under the throne itself. In 1880 the virtue was supposed to have evaporated, and Theebaw proposed to repeat the ceremony with one hundred victims, but I believe the actual number sacrificed was about twenty-five. The Burmans believe that the nals or spirits of the persons buried guard the gates and attack persons approaching with hostile intentions. Precisely similar convictions were common all over Europe.
In S. Saviour's, Dartmouth, in the chancel, is buried the skull of Sir Charles McCarthy, who was for a while Governor of Sierra Leone, and was killed at Accra, in an encounter with the Ashantees, January 21st, 1824; the skull was greatly prized by the Ashantees, who had possessed themselves of it, and with it they decorated the war-drum of the king. The skull was happily recovered in 1829, and was brought to Dartmouth, where it was buried with some ceremony.
Dartmouth was the birthplace of Newcomen, who introduced a notable improvement in steam engines. According to the first form of his discovery, thesteam was condensed by sending a current of cold water on the outside of the cylinder, an arrangement that required a boy to be always at hand with a bucket of water. Watt's improvement of employing steam to drive down the piston was invented whilst he was repairing one of Newcomen's engines. Newcomen was baptised at Dartmouth in 1663; he died in 1729. His house was removed in 1864, but some of the old carved oak has been utilised in Newcomen Cottage, Townstal, as well as the "clovel" or wooden lintel over the fireplace at which Newcomen sat watching the steam puffing from his mother's kettle, and first conceived the idea of employing steam as a force for propelling engines. A chimney-piece of plaster, representing Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego before Nebuchadnezzar, is at Brookhill House, on the Kingswear side of the river. This same handsome chimney-piece, of oak, came from Greenway, up the Dart, where lived Sir Walter Raleigh, and it is said that it was before the fire kindled under this chimney-piece that the great navigator indulged in the first pipe of tobacco he ever smoked in England. There is a story told of Sir Walter being called in with his pipe for a very novel purpose at Littleham. There lived there a gentleman of Dutch or German extraction, named Creveldt, who had been at deadly feud with a neighbour, Sir Roger de Wheelingham, and the latter died without any reconciliation. Thenceforth, Creveldt was tormented from sunset to sunrise by the ghost of his enemy. He could not rest; he could not eat, and, worst of all, he could not drink. The days forexorcising ghosts were over. He called in the parson, but the parson could do nothing. Matters were in this condition when an Exeter trading vessel, commanded by Captain Izaaks, anchored near Exmouth. The captain heard of Creveldt's trouble; he was under some obligation to him, and he at once visited him. He heard his piteous tale, and said: "In ancient times I have been told that incense was used against stubborn ghosts. I have heard that now Sir Walter Raleigh has introduced a novel sort of incense much more efficacious. Let us send for him."
Accordingly, Sir Walter was invited. He instructed Creveldt how to smoke tobacco; and the fumes of the pipe proved too much for the ghost The spirit departed, coughing and sneezing, to the tobaccoless world.
No visitor should fail to visit Slapton Lea—a bar of pebble and sand tossed up by the sea, over which runs the coach-road to Kingsbridge—an excursion well meriting being made. The streams descending from the land are held back from entering the sea by this ridge, and form a lake that not only abounds in fish, and attracts water birds, but also contains water plants.
At Slapton lived Sir Richard and Dame Juliana Hawkins, in a house called Pool.
Dame Juliana was a haughty woman, and the story is told that she would not go to church except on a carpet. Accordingly, when she went to Slapton Church to pay her devotions, a couple of negro servants proceeded before her unrolling a carpet of red velvet.
On the river is Dittisham, and how the salmon do congregate in the pool there! It is a great place for figs and plums, and should be seen when the plum trees are in flower. The view from the parsonage garden, commanding two reaches of the river, is exquisite. But for loveliness of situation, Stoke Gabriel in a lap or creek, facing the sun, shut away from every wind, is the most perfect.
A good picturesque modern house has been erected at a point commanding Dartmouth, on the opposite side at Maypool (F. C. Simpson, Esq.), that is a real feature of beauty in the landscape.
At Stoke Fleming is a fine brass.
The time when Dartmouth may be seen to advantage—I am not speaking now of the river—is at the autumn regatta. Then the quaint old place isen fête. The little square that opens on to the quay is devoted to dancing. Lights flare, flags wave, music peals forth, and the Mayor opens the ball in the open air. It is a sight not to be seen elsewhere in England—when viewed from the river it is like a scene on the stage.
There is one thing you must do at Dartmouth, because you cannot help doing so—enjoy yourself. But there is one thing you must on no account do—offend a single, though the most insignificant, member of the town. If you do, the whole population is out on you like a hive of angry bees—for in a place so shut in by hills and water everyone is related.
Sir Charles McCarthy, as already related, has left his head at Dartmouth. As the visitor leaves bythe little steamer to remount the Dart, and looks at the lovely estuary, the hills embowered in trees, the picturesque old town—he feels, perhaps, like myself, as if he had left his heart there.
Note.—Works on Dartmouth:—Karkeek(P. Q.), "Notes on the Early History of Dartmouth," in theTransactions of the Devonshire Association, 1880.Karkeek(P. Q.), "The Shipping and Commerce of Dartmouth in the Reign of Richard II.,"ibid., 1881.Newman(Dr.), "On the Antiquity of Dartmouth,"ibid., 1869.
Note.—Works on Dartmouth:—
Karkeek(P. Q.), "Notes on the Early History of Dartmouth," in theTransactions of the Devonshire Association, 1880.
Karkeek(P. Q.), "The Shipping and Commerce of Dartmouth in the Reign of Richard II.,"ibid., 1881.
Newman(Dr.), "On the Antiquity of Dartmouth,"ibid., 1869.
Kingsbridge a misnomer—The estuary—The church—"Farewell to Kingsbridge"—Numerous screens in the neighbourhood—Portlemouth—S. Onolaus—Master John Schorn—Old houses—The Fortescues—Defence of Salcombe Castle—Lea Priory—Stokenham—Slapton—Bolt Head—The Avon—Oldaport on the Erme—Modbury—The Champernownes—Bigbury—The Owl—S. Anne's Well—Parson Lane—Aveton Gifford—Bishop Stapledon—His murder—Fishing.
Kingsbridge a misnomer—The estuary—The church—"Farewell to Kingsbridge"—Numerous screens in the neighbourhood—Portlemouth—S. Onolaus—Master John Schorn—Old houses—The Fortescues—Defence of Salcombe Castle—Lea Priory—Stokenham—Slapton—Bolt Head—The Avon—Oldaport on the Erme—Modbury—The Champernownes—Bigbury—The Owl—S. Anne's Well—Parson Lane—Aveton Gifford—Bishop Stapledon—His murder—Fishing.
Kingsbridge is a curious town, having a name that is a misnomer, for it possesses no bridge, there being no river. The estuary that runs some five to six miles in, at the head of which Kingsbridge stands, is a creek into which no river discharges, only brooks. It has several lateral branches—to Gerston, Frogmore, and South Pool, and at the mouth is Salcombe, a flourishing place, much in resort on account of the mildness of the climate, surpassing Torquay in this respect, and nearly as warm as Falmouth. The drawback to Salcombe is its distance from a railway.
In Kingsbridge itself there is not much to be seen. The church is interesting, with a central tower and spire, and is curious as having been enlarged at various times, making the interior very inconvenient for the hearing of the preacher.
Kingsbridge is actually in Churchstow. The town has drifted down from the high ground where was the fortified "stoke" to the quay, the "brig." The church in the town is a chapelry, and the erection took place in 1310. It is dedicated to S. Edmund the king and martyr, but why in the world they should have gone to the East Saxons for a patron I am at a loss to know. Churchstow belonged to the Abbey of Buckfast.
One half of Kingsbridge is in the parish of Dodbrooke, where there is a good church with a fine old screen.
There is a local ballad preserved relative to the departure of some troops for America quartered in the place in 1778-80, and there are old men in Kingsbridge who can recall the time when a detachment of military was there. The ballad runs:—