COMBEMARTIN, AND ITS OLD SILVER MINES--THE CHURCH---WATERMOUTH
CASTLE--HELE
Combemartin, Combmartin, or Combe Martin, for it is written in all
these ways, according to individual fancy--derives the proprietary
part of its name from the “Sieur Martin de Turon,” who came over with
the Conqueror and obtained the grant of these lands, together with
Martinhoe. Local story tells how the last of the Martins of Combemartin
lived in a moated manor-house off the lane near the church, and had an
only son. One day the son went off hunting, and as he had not returned
by nightfall, the drawbridge across the moat was raised as usual. It
was thought he had stayed late, enjoying the hospitality of friends,
and would not return until next day; but at midnight he came home and
fell, with his horse, into the moat; both being drowned. Unable to
endure the place afterwards, the last of the Martins dismantled the
manor-house and left Combemartin, never to return.
The manor has come, in turn, to a number of families, among them the
Leys, one of whom built the extraordinary house, long since converted
into an inn, known as the “King’s Arms,” which, after the parish
church, is the principal sight in the place. According to local legend,
“Squire Ley” won a fortune at cards, and so built his residence with
fifty-two windows, the number of cards in a pack. Hence the alternative
name of the house in the mouths of the people of Combemartin, “The Pack
of Cards.” The interior discloses some panelled rooms, with beautifully
decorated plaster ceilings of Renaissance character; but the exterior,
covered with whitewashed rough-cast plaster, and designed in a freakish
manner, is more curious than beautiful. No one can see the house
without wondering and remarking about it. A sundial, inscribed “C. L.
1752,” on the south wall, was apparently placed there by one of the
bygone Leys.
Combemartin is a long, long village, one mile and a quarter--length
without breadth--lining the road that runs down to the sea at the
bottom of a deep valley, and the inhabitants call it “Kuhmart’n.”
Charles Kingsley in his time called it something else, something
derogatory; nothing less offensive, if you please, than “mile-long
man-stye.” They do not think much of Charles Kingsley at Combemartin.
[Illustration: THE “PACK OF CARDS,” COMBEMARTIN.]
Perhaps it is not so squalid as in his day; at any rate, although the
long-drawn street is not even now a pattern of neatness, it does not
in these times merit quite so savage a description, even although the
large population is made up chiefly of poor market-gardening folk.
For Combemartin is the place whence come most of the early fruit and
vegetables for the supply of the neighbouring towns. The hotels, not
only of Ilfracombe, but also of Lynton and Lynmouth, depend largely
upon Combemartin for their choicest supply, and the gardens round
about are quite celebrated for their strawberries and gooseberries.
No one in the strawberry season, passing through Combemartin, has
the least excuse for remaining ignorant of the staple product of the
neighbourhood, for numerous pertinacious women, girls, and small boys
pervade that long street; offering bags of what is, perhaps, the most
delicious fruit these isles produce. To purchase a basketful, you
think, at one end of the street, is sufficient to pass you through
its length without further challenge; but that is a vain thought. The
Combemartin strawberry-vendors have the most generous conception of
your capacity for their wares, and appear to think that every bagful
purchased is an excuse for another. They are apt not to be cheap,
but they are undeniably fresh, and undoubtedly refreshing under the
sweltering sun that scorches the blazing street.
There was a time when Combemartin was busy in a far different way. The
silver mines of this rugged valley were famous so far back as the time
of Edward I., and with varying fortunes they continued at intervals
to the early years of the nineteenth century. Not until 1848 was the
last heard of them. At the beginning of these things, it is recorded,
337 miners were brought from the Peak district of Derbyshire, to work
the silver, tin, and lead. In 1296 “was brought to London, in finest
silver, in wedges, 704 lb. 3 dwt.; and the next year 260 miners were
pressed out of the Peak and Wales--and great was the profit on silver
and lead.” According to Camden, the silver mines here in the reigns
of Edward III. and Henry V. were found very useful in defraying the
costs of the wars in France; but for more than a century and a half
afterwards the industry declined, to be revived in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth. This revival was due to the enterprise of Adrian Gilbert and
Sir Beavois Bulmer, who provided the working expenses and agreed with
the landowner, one Richard Roberts, for half-profits. They realised
£10,000 each; the fortunate Roberts therefore appears to have sat still
and twiddled his thumbs, and received £20,000. Out of this unearned
increment he provided what is described as a “rich and rare” cup of
Combemartin silver, which he presented to William Bourchier, Earl of
Bath, the Bourchiers being at that time great and powerful personages
in these parts. It bore this whimsical inscription:
“In Martin’s Comb long lay I hiyd,
Obscur’d, deprest w^{th} grossest soyle,
Debaséd much w^{th} mixéd lead,
Till Bulmer came, whoes skill and toyle
Refinéd me so pure and cleen,
As rycher no wheer els is seene.
“And adding yet a farder grace,
By fashion he did inable
Me worthy for to take a place
To serve at any Prince’s table;
Comb Martyn gave the Oare alone,
Bulmer fyning and fashion.”
The mines were greatly troubled with the inrush of water; difficulties
referred to in the verses inscribed upon a cup presented, like the
other, in 1593, to Sir Richard Martin, Master of the Mint, and Lord
Mayor of London. This weighed 137 ounces:
“When water workes in broaken wharfe
At first erected were,
And Beavis Bulmer w^{th} his Art
The waters ’gan to reare,
Dispercéd I in earth did lye
Since all beginnings old,
In place cal’d Comb, wher Martin longe
Had hydd me in his molde,
I did no service on the earth,
Nor no man set me free,
Till Bulmer by his skill and charge
Did frame me this to be.”
Floods again drowned the works, and although a report was presented
to Parliament in 1659, and other timid attempts made, nothing was
accomplished until 1796. Operations were continued for six years, and
over nine thousand tons of ore sent to South Wales, for smelting. In
1813, and on to 1817, more ore was mined, but the cost exceeding the
value of the silver obtained, the enterprise was again discontinued.
In 1833 a company was formed, with a capital of £30,000, and the works
were once more reopened. About half this sum was spent in sinking new
shafts, and in machinery, but some very good lodes were discovered, and
three dividends were paid out of profits. But eventually the shares
were rigged up to a high premium on the Stock Exchange, and those who
were well informed of the likelihood that the lode would not prove
a lasting one got out at a profit, while credulous purchasers were
left to witness the prosperity of the undertaking speedily melt away.
By 1850, the last chapter of silver-mining at Combemartin was ended.
The miners’ rubbish-heaps still remain, and even at the present day
the urchins paddling in the bay at low-water occasionally discover
fragments of ore.
Hemp-growing and the manufacture of shoe-makers’ thread were also
industries carried on very extensively in the reign of Queen Elizabeth;
but Combemartin has long been looked down upon as an abjectly poor
place, and only its great church and the surrounding scenery save
it from being passed by in contempt by the writers of guide-books.
Combemartin church tower, indeed, finds mention in a North Devon
folk-rhyme, in which it is placed, for due admiration, with those of
Berrynarbor and Hartland:
“Hartland for length,
Berrynarbor for strength,
And Combemartin for beauty.”
[Illustration: COMBEMARTIN CHURCH.]
It is a tall grey tower, in four stages, rising with some considerable
impressiveness over an Early English and Perpendicular building that
has long been but ill cared for. The interior discloses chancel with
nave and north aisle only, the roofs of that waggon-headed type usual
in the West of England; the walls daubed with a light blue wash. A fine
fifteenth-century carved wooden rood-screen, in a much worn condition,
has been shamefully used in the past, the frieze having been filled
in with plaster in 1727, according to the date inscribed on the work.
The initials, “J. P., T. H.,” probably those of the churchwardens who
perpetrated the outrage, prove that, so far from being ashamed of
themselves they even took pride in their work. A number of interesting
bench-ends remain, among them a delightfully carved little lizard, who,
unfortunately, has lost his head.
Some queer inscriptions in the churchyard, whose like, now that
education penetrates every nook and corner, will no longer be
perpetrated, arouse a passing smile: among them this extraordinary
effort:--
HERE LYETH
IOHAN ASH, SHE DIED IN SEPTEMBER
J668
loe here I slepe in dust till christ my deare
And Sweet Redeemer in the clouds Appeare
HERE LYETH THE BODY OF HnmphTy shE WHO
diEd y 19 day OF NOVEmbER 1681.
Bacon-Shakespeare fanatics have made cryptograms out of less eccentric
lettering than this.
In these latter days Combemartin is making a strenuous effort to be
regarded as a “literary landmark.” It is all on account of Miss Marie
Corelli’s novel, “The Mighty Atom,” and a certain class of visitors
sometimes come over from Ilfracombe attracted by vague rumours of
it. They are the kind of people who, content to remain below and
idly examine the ever-open gates of the rood-screen, supposed on
insufficient grounds to be symbolic of the heavenly gates, which “shall
not be shut at all by day, for there shall be no night there,” say to
their younger companions, desirous of climbing the tower: “I’ll stop
down ’ere, while you go hup.”
The local photographer makes a brave display of picture-postcards of
the village and of the sexton who appears in the book as “Reuben Dale,”
but the thing seems to hang fire. James Norman was the original of
“Reuben Dale,” and the present sexton is alert to show you his grave,
whether you be interested or not. Norman died, aged 54, in 1898, and,
it seems, the rector refused to allow the pseudonym to be placed on the
epitaph, by way of advertising the novelist. You are told he declared
that he “buried a man, not a miff” (?myth). Apparently the rector did
not approve of “The Mighty Atom.”
Local gossip tells how Miss Corelli informed Norman he was to be made
a prominent character in the story, and that the circumstance would
make his fortune, as sexton. It proved the ruin of him, instead; for
imagining himself a public character, he took himself and the increased
tips he obtained from curious visitors, off to the “King’s Arms,” or,
maybe, the “Castle”; and, what with too much drink and a consumptive
tendency, he did not long remain to pose for the inquisitive. His
knowledge of ancient ecclesiastical arrangements and the uses and
purport of things, does not appear--judging from the novel, which is
understood to report him “as nearly as possible” in his own words--to
have been more reliable than that of the average sexton, or verger, and
we all know what broken reeds they are, to rely upon for information.
According to his tale, sufficient for the many simple folk who are
ready for any legend, the “altar gates”--he meant the doors in the
rood-screen--“Do what ye will wi’ ’em, they won’t shut, see. That shows
they was made ’fore the days o’ Cromwell. For in they times all the
gates o’ th’ altars was copied arter the pattern o’ Scripture which
sez: ‘An’ the gates o’ Heaven shall never be shut, either by day or by
night.’” So now we know!
[Illustration: GREAT HANGMAN HILL, AND ENTRANCE TO COMBEMARTIN HARBOUR.
[_After W. Daniell, R.A._
]
The road to Ilfracombe winds round Combemartin Bay, and, rising and
falling abruptly, comes down to Watermouth. Here an almost land-locked
bay, with a little strand, and hills on either side, partly wooded,
forms a haven, where it is almost always calm, even when storms are
raging and a heavy sea running outside Widemouth Head and Burrow Nose,
the two enclosing points. The headlands are honeycombed with caves,
prominent among them Smallmouth and Briary caves. Like most things
in the neighbourhood of Ilfracombe, they are to be visited only
by payment. In every respect the best way to reach them is by taking
one of the rowing-boats that, with competitive boatmen, are always to
be found here in summer. Watermouth Castle, looking grandly out from
its sloping lawns upon the sea, should have a story. The ivy-clad,
romantic-looking, turreted pile wears as genuine an air of antiquity as
Lee “Abbey” itself, but candour--we must all be candid when the local
guide-books are so explicit--obliges me to confess it was built in
1826, when feudal castellans were things of a remote past.
[Illustration: WIDEMOUTH BAY.]
But stay, there _is_ something of a story belonging to Watermouth
Castle, for it was here that one of Miss Marie Corelli’s funny
villains, the “Sir Charles Lascelles, Baronet,” of “The Mighty Atom,”
stayed, as one of a house-party. You know at once, on being introduced
to him in those pages, that he is a bad Bart. We must not blame him for
that; the baronets of fiction are always bad: they can’t help it; it
has to be. Moreover, he drawls, and acknowledges his “doosid habits of
caprice”: so it is at once perceived that he is bad after the ancient
formula of fifty years ago. Any modern wicked baronet would in the like
circumstances describe himself, in up-to-date style, as an “erratic
rotter.” Which is the better phrase, I will not pretend to say.
In between Widemouth Head and the succeeding headland of Rillage Point
lies Samson’s Bay, followed by Hele Bay, enclosed on the side nearest
Ilfracombe by Hillsborough, _i.e._, “Helesborough” Hill. Hele beach and
its hamlet are now practically part of Ilfracombe town.
There is not, as a rule, much entertainment in local guide-books, but
occasionally some precious ore may be mined, out of the extravagant
but barren language they commonly employ. There are, however, very few
pennyweights of amusement to be extracted from such tons of boredom.
But here, for once in a way, is a little nugget, taken sparkling from
an otherwise very empty vein, descriptive of Hele: “Hele, with its
picturesque limekiln and cottages, almost hugging one another around
the village school, deep down in a dell and surrounded by flourishing
trees.” It is a pleasing picture, this, of the love of the amorous,
but coy, limekiln, for the equally ardent but bashful cottages, and it
moves me to lyrically celebrate the neglect of opportunities suggested:
Behind the school and trees they stood,
And almost hugged--the scene was so secluded;
Just as, in ferny grot, or flow’ry wood
(When we were younger, be it understood,
And ardent), sometimes I and you did.
The kiln was hot and eager, and
The cottages themselves were rather forward;
And, you must now most clearly understand,
It was a quiet, most secluded strand,
With none in sight, or land or shoreward.
When love and I roamed far away,
In quiet dell, I’d fondly kiss and squeeze her.
Did I refrain those tributes. Well-a-day!
There was the very deuce to pay:
I found my conversation failed to please her.
* * * * *
And yet I hear, with shoulders sharply shrugged,
_They_ only--“_almost_ hugged!”