PILTON--BARNSTAPLE BRIDGE--OLD COUNTRY WAYS--BARUM--HISTORY AND
COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE--OLD HOUSES--“SEVEN BRETHREN BANK”--FREMINGTON--
INSTOW AND THE LOVELY TORRIDGE
Barnstaple is heralded by its suburb, Pilton, on a creek (or “pill”
as the word is here) of the river Yeo. The people of Pilton, who were
among the earliest to manufacture cotton fabrics in a district that
made only woollens, were in the early part of the seventeenth century
looked upon in much the same way as the makers of base coin are
regarded. “Woe unto ye, Piltonians,” exclaimed Westcote (1620), “who
make cloth without wool!”
The churchyard of Pilton is entered in a singular manner, under an
archway between almshouses. Here stood Pilton Priory, said to have been
founded by Athelstan so early as the tenth century. Of that, however,
there are no traces. The church, a very fine and interesting building,
is largely Perpendicular. A curious and well-preserved grinning head
with jester’s cap forms a stop to one of the window hood-mouldings,
and a tablet over the south porch, now somewhat illegible, refers to
“... late unhappy wars. ANNO DOM. 1646,” and proceeds to record that
it, or the tower, was rebuilt in 1696. The church, in fact, was injured
during the operations attending the various takings and retakings of
Barnstaple by Roundheads and Royalists. A long metrical epitaph will
be observed in the churchyard, to John Hayne, _d._ 1797, aged forty,
huntsman and servant for twenty-five years to William Barber, of
Fremington.
[Illustration: THE JESTER’S HEAD.]
The interior of the church is very beautiful. A fine fourteenth-century
oak screen divides nave and chancel, and the font is surmounted by
a sixteenth-century canopy, said to have formerly been the canopy
of the Prior of Pilton’s chair. On one side is the staple to which
the Bible was once chained. Among the relics in the church is an old
pitch-pipe for the choir. But the most singular thing is the Jacobean
hour-glass for the pulpit, held out by a projecting arm fashioned in
sheet-iron and painted white. This fantastic object has acquired a very
considerable celebrity in these days when every other tourist carries a
photographic camera and hunts diligently for pictorial curiosities. The
vicar and churchwardens of Pilton are also up-to-date, for they charge
sixpence for the privilege of photographing the hour-glass and Pulpit:
and see they get it.
Barnstaple is built along the north bank of the Taw estuary, at a point
where it suddenly contracts, and where the river Yeo falls into it.
In the tremendous language of the briefs sent out broadcast in the
reign of Henry the Eighth, soliciting alms for the repair of Barnstaple
bridge, crossing the estuary, the river is described as a “great, hugy,
mighty perylous and dreadfull water, whereas salte water doth ebbe and
flow foure tymes in the day and night.” This was “piling on the agony”
with a vengeance: a prodigious swashing about with sounding adjectives
that seems to the modern traveller singularly overdone.
Barnstaple, it is quite evident by this appeal for aid, had not yet
arrived upon the threshold of that era of abounding prosperity which
was so soon to come. In a few years more the town was well able to
maintain its bridge, but in the meanwhile had to beg through the land!
It was a very old bridge, even then, and incorporated portions built so
early as the thirteenth century. There were then thirteen arches, three
being added later; but even so late as 1796 it remained so narrow that
the roadway was scarcely practicable for wheeled traffic. It was, in
short, little other than a pack-horse bridge in all those centuries.
There was then no space left for foot-passengers when the pack-horses
were crossing, and all such were fain to take refuge in the V-shaped
sanctuaries that opened out on either side on the piers of the arches,
and to wait there until the long, laden pack-horse trains had passed.
But it must be recollected that the roads leading up to the bridge
were of the like complexion and were roads only by courtesy. Wheels
were out of place on them, too; and pack-horses and that peculiar old
Devonshire contrivance known as a “truckamuck” were almost the only
ways of conveying goods. The truckamuck was just a rough cart without
wheels, dragged by a horse along those uneven ways--a kind of larger
and clumsier sleigh-like affair, combining the maximum of weight and
friction with a minimum of convenience.
[Illustration: PULPIT AND HOUR-GLASS, PILTON.]
In 1796 the bridge was widened, and again in 1832, and it still remains
a very composite structure. It is associated in old country lore with
the exploit of Tom Faggus and his “strawberry horse.”
Blackmore, in “Lorna Doone,” laid hands upon the old Faggus legends, as
upon many others, and worked them into his story; but the redoubtable
Tom was a real person, although more than a mere touch of the
marvellous has been given in folk-lore to his career; so that he seems
a creature compact of Dick Turpin and Robin Hood, in equal parts. He
was a native of North Molton, and a blacksmith by trade. Ruined in a
vindictive lawsuit brought against him by Sir Richard Bampfylde, he was
obliged to leave his home, and then turned “gentleman robber.” That
odd description would appear in his case both to mean that he robbed
gentlemen only and that his own status was that of a gentleman. It is a
quaint rustic valuation, and seems to have been based upon the belief
that he was a champion of the poor against the rich; that he doubled,
as it were, the parts of highwayman and relieving officer. His exploits
long ago became, by dint of much oral repetition around the old cottage
inglenooks, quite Homeric, and his enchanted “strawberry horse” figures
as fiendishly intelligent, trampling the enemies of Faggus with hoofs
and savaging them with teeth, like a devil incarnate. On one occasion
Faggus was recognised in Barnstaple and pursued to the bridge, whereon
he and his strawberry horse were cleverly caught by the watch posted at
either end. But the highwayman was still more clever. He put his steed
to the parapet, cleared it and swam off safely downstream.
Faggus was at last captured at Porlock and his famous horse shot;
himself finally being hanged at Taunton.
There will be no more Fagguses in North Devon and no more Doones; for
the conditions that produced them are dead, and legends such as those
that were told and retold of them around the farmhouse inglenooks on
winter evenings--and that with every re-telling gained some fresh
marvel--no longer form the entertainment of the farmers’ men. All
the rustics can read now: the maids burning the midnight candle over
novelettes, the men addling their brains over the rag-bag weeklies,
whose success with the million you perceive exemplified in the pioneer
instance writ large at Lynton. So the old stories that were handed
down from one generation to another have come to an end with the last
surviving of the illiterates, and the only people who remember the
simple folk songs are the occasional old men who may now and then be
induced to sing them, in a quavering voice, for collectors of such
things to write down before their final disappearance. Such a song was
the following record of some feckless person, whose every bargain was a
bad one, finally bringing disaster. Where and when it originated, who
shall say? With slight variations, and with different choruses, the
identical song is found in all parts of rustic England; a kind of rural
classic:
“My grandfather died, I can’t tell ye how,
An’ lef’ me six oxen and likewise a plough;
I zold aff my oxen, and bought myzelf a cow.
Thinks I to myzelf, I shall have a dairy now.
I zold aff my cow, and bought myzelf a caaf.
Thinks I to myzelf, I have lost myzelf haaf.
I zold aff my caaf, an’ bought myzelf a cat,
An’ down in the carner the lill’ thing did squat.
I zold aff my cat, an’ bought myzelf a rat;
With vire tu his taal, he barnt my old hat.
I zold aff my rat, an’ bought myzelf a mouse,
An’ with vire tu his taal, he barnt down my house.”
Chorus:
“Whim-wham-jam-stram stram along, boys, down along the room.”
Barnstaple is in local speech, “Barum,” after that fashion which makes
Salisbury and Shrewsbury figure on the milestones round about as
“Sarum” and “Salop.” The name thus locally current has given a chance
to those modern rhymesters whose activity bids fair to presently fit
every place in the gazetteer with its more or less appropriate verse:
“There was a young lady of Barum,
Who said ‘Oh! bother skirts, I don’t wear ’em.
In knickers it’s easier
To walk in the breeze here
And, in climbing the cliffs, you don’t tear ’em’.”
It matters little, or nothing, that there are not any cliffs at
Barnstaple, and that you would not seek at this precise spot for the
most boisterous breezes.
The town is alike the oldest and the most important on this coast.
Long before that usual starting point, the coming of the Normans, it
figured prominently as Beardanstapol. Although it was once the site
of a castle, and was for many centuries a walled town with defensible
gates, its inhabitants were essentially, from the beginning, a trading
community, as the “staple” in the place name indicates. It was also
one of the oldest Parliamentary boroughs, having sent representatives
from 1295 until 1885, when ruthless redistribution, utterly without
sentiment, merged it in a county division. Then the ancient local
passion for bribery and corruption ceased automatically to be satisfied
at intervals by competitive candidates for the honour of representing
the “free and independent” burgesses, who greatly liked the free-handed
and rejected with scant ceremony those who were not prepared to dive
deeply into their pockets. Thus, when in 1865 Mr. Henry Hawkins,
afterwards Lord Brampton, was invited to stand in the Liberal interest,
the invitation was issued quite as much in the local interest and in
the expectation that he would be as liberal with his money as in his
political opinions. But the eagerly expectant people of Barnstaple
received a nasty shock, for the rising barrister refused to spend a
penny in bribery. The indignant electors, mindful of the glorious
election of 1841, when £80 was paid for one vote, had their feelings
outraged in the tenderest place, and rejected him with remarkable
completeness.
From A.D. 928, when Athelstan is said to have conferred a charter
upon the town, and 938, when he is supposed to have repaired the
walls, already old and decayed, Barnstaple fully took advantage of its
favourable situation in a sheltered estuary, and the port was large
enough to be represented by ships at the siege of Calais in 1346.
In 1588 it sent five ships to Liverpool’s one, in the levy raised
to combat the Spanish Armada; among them vessels with the proud,
high-sounding names, _Tiger_, _God Save Her_, and _Galleon Dudley_.
After thus serving their country, the Barnstaple merchants served
themselves well, by equipping numerous privateers that successfully
preyed upon the Spanish mercantile marine, and brought home to the old
port on the Taw great store of treasure in gold, silver, and goods
brought by Spanish sail from the Spanish main, and intended for Cadiz
rather than for North Devon.
It was the Golden Age of Barnstaple. The burgesses manufactured woollen
goods and baize and sold them in good markets, and the bold seamen
sallied forth and patriotically scoured the ocean, and took by force
of arms anything they liked. Sometimes they ran up against what a
modern American would style a “tough proposition,” in the form of an
innocent-looking Spanish merchantman better armed and more courageously
manned than they suspected, and the results were not so fortunate:
but, naturally enough, records of these misfortunes are not given so
prominent a place in the history of these things; and you are invited
rather to picture the returned sea-captains, bursting with riches,
carousing in the taverns of Boutport Street, and paying for their
entertainment with moidores, doubloons, “pieces of eight” (whatever
_they_ were), and other outlandish coin. Coin of foreign mintage was
more common than the pieces of Queen Elizabeth (“God Save Her”), and
passed current as readily.
To those times of unparalleled prosperity, which continued until well
into the third quarter of the eighteenth century, belong many of those
existing architectural remains of old Barnstaple that are becoming
increasingly difficult to find in the rebuildings and other changes of
our own times. Out of the abundance of his riches old Penrose in 1627
founded the almshouses that still remain very much as he left them;
and in that era the quays and Castle Street were occupied, not only
with the warehouses, but the residences also, of the merchants who
traded with distant countries or levied private war upon the foreigner,
with equal readiness. A complete change has, indeed, come upon that
quarter, for the Barnstaple Town railway station, a brewery, and some
entirely modern houses stand upon the spot where the merchants did not
disdain to live over their counting-houses, looking upon the river,
where the weather-beaten vessels, at last come home from alien seas,
were warped to shore. Of that old time there is a very fine old doorway
left in Castle Street; and in Cross Street, near by, over a tailor’s
shop, there is the first-floor front room of a late sixteenth-century
house with a most elaborate Renaissance plaster ceiling and frieze,
probably executed for some enriched merchant, fully conscious of what
was due, in the way of display, to his wealth. The design is curious,
the workmanship rough, the feeling of it imbued with a religious cast;
characteristics, all of them, common to much work of the kind executed
at that period in North Somerset and North Devon, from Minehead to
Bideford. The Renaissance had come very slowly down this way, on its
long journey from Italy, and had lost on the way the fine touch of its
native land. It had lost also much of the somewhat pagan character it
exhibited there, and became greatly concerned in the more prominent
narratives of the Old Testament. Vague legends tell of wandering
Italian craftsmen executing the plaster ceilings and elaborate
chimney-piece designs often found in old houses of the better class in
these districts, but they were probably Englishmen, who had picked up
something of the trick of the new style, without very much of foreign
dexterity, but had imported their own thought into the work. At any
rate the numerous examples met with have so striking a general likeness
of treatment that the conclusion of their being the work of a distinct
school becomes inevitable.
[Illustration: AN OLD DOOR, BARNSTAPLE.]
Here, in this Cross Street example, the subject is Adam and Eve; Eve
(with her arms ending in a trefoil instead of hands) about to pluck
a very large apple off a very small tree, and Adam looking greatly
alarmed. The Trevelyan Hotel has several decorated ceilings and a
dark little back room--now merely a receptacle for lumber, and sadly
injured--with a very elaborate chimney-piece in high relief, bearing
a central medallion representing the Nativity, bordered by typical
Renaissance scroll-work and flanked with two armour-clad figures, minus
a limb or two each. The “Golden Lion” inn, however, has the finest
display, to which, indeed, it has every right, the building having
formerly been the town-house of the Bourchiers, Earls of Bath.
It is a fine old house, dating from early in the seventeenth century,
with many oak-panelled rooms and passages, and several with ceilings
intricately decorated in plaster reliefs. The large upstairs
sitting-room is the gem of the house, displaying, as it does, a coved
ceiling dated 1625, with pendants and the arms of the Bourchiers,
together with scenes representing Adam and Eve, the Annunciation, the
Nativity, and the Sacrifice of Esau, disposed at intervals amid a large
mixed assemblage of horses, pheasants, and storks.
[Illustration: OLD ROOM IN THE “TREVELYAN ARMS.”]
But most significant of all amid these signs of Barnstaple’s prosperous
old days, when all goods were sea-borne, and when its importance as
capital of North Devon was impossible to be questioned by undue ease
of communication with distant cities, is the curious old loggia, or
covered way, known as “Queen Anne’s Walk.” Not Queen Anne, but the
Barnstaple merchants, walked here, and it was really built in the reign
of Charles the Second. It was the merchants’ Exchange, their Rialto,
where all news was discussed, bargains made, and debts paid. All those
uses are past and done with, but the curious flat-topped pedestal
remains in front, on which those old traders paid their debts. Exactly
such things are still to be seen, for example, outside the Exchange
at Bristol. There they are called “nails”; and from them and this own
brother to them derived the expression of paying for anything “on the
nail.” Nowadays the saying is a synonym for paying ready money, but it
would no doubt be incorrect to deduce from it the lack of long credit
in times of old. The only association this building has with Queen Anne
is found in the statue of her, surmounting it, dated 1708, the gift of
Robert Rolle of Stevenstone.
[Illustration: “QUEEN ANNE’S WALK.”]
Barnstaple Friday market, held every week, is to this day an
astonishing revelation to the stranger of the amount of business done
in the great market buildings. On any other day he will find the town
so quiet that the excellent shops and the many strikingly expensive
new buildings seem to require some explanation. Friday, however, when
every street is thronged, removes any such necessity. And the annual
occasion of Barnstaple Fair, opened with some ceremony on September
19th by the Mayor, is still a great event in North Devon. On that
momentous day the Mayor and Corporation regale a select company at
lunch, after an old custom, with spiced ale and toast; and still the
stuffed white glove, old-time symbol to debtors that they may adventure
into the town during the continuance of the fair without fear of
arrest, is displayed outside the Town Hall, although its significance
is not now of much moment to either debtor or creditor.
[Illustration: BARNSTAPLE CHURCH AND GRAMMAR SCHOOL.]
In 1642 there burst upon the quiet Barnstaple folk, only too anxious
to be let alone to manufacture woollens, and to import foreign wines,
and so grow rich in trade, the great Civil War. The town was very
comfortable then; still rich with the privateering of years before,
but by force of circumstances, more respectable, for England had been
for awhile at peace with Spain, and throat-cutting, treasure-grabbing
expeditions, once patriotic, would then have been sheer piracy on
the high seas. In this highly proper mood, and with their commercial
instincts outraged by King Charles’ illegal demands for Ship Money,
and the like exactions, it is not surprising that Barnstaple people
declared for the Parliament. But the vindictiveness with which they
took that side is surprising. Not content to remain splendidly
defensive of their rights and their money-bags, they detailed a force
to go and attack the small Royalist force holding Torrington. They were
successful, and drove out 500 men, killed 10, took 40 prisoners and 200
stand of arms. The Royalists were further worsted at Sourton Down, on
the borders of Dartmoor, but regained their position in the West at the
battle of Stratton, where Sir Bevil Grenville most severely defeated
the Roundheads, and subsequently demonstrating against Bideford,
planted a Royalist garrison in a fort at Appledore commanding the sea
approaches to Bideford and Barnstaple; with the looked-for result
attending that last strategical disposition. Barnstaple surrendered,
September 2nd, 1643, and the Royalists took possession. And here they
remained, in fancied security, until the townsfolk revolted and retook
possession. Appledore fort, however, held out, and within the month
another force of King’s men, marching upon Barum, again reduced it.
The Royalist position here then became so secure, that the Prince of
Wales (afterwards Charles the Second) was sent here for safety, with
his tutor, and remained until July 1645, when it was thought safer,
in the waning fortunes of the Royalists, to remove him further West.
Meanwhile, the Parliamentary forces under Fairfax were coming, beating
down Royalist resistance as they came. At length, in April 1646, they
besieged Barum, and, nearly all else being lost to them in the West,
the Royalists in five weeks finally laid down their arms.
Barnstaple old parish church is a great roomy building, its walls
plentifully furnished with monuments of the old merchants. It stands
in an alley known as Paternoster Row; its wooden, lead-sheathed spire,
like that of Braunton, warped on one side, and in like manner. A plain
white tablet on the exterior wall reads:
Beneath
lie the Remains of John Wheatly
a Native of Salisbury who died
an unprofitable Servant the
21 Day of September 1774 aged
82 Years
This hints mysteriously of a misspent life, but no one knows anything
of the circumstances.
Almost adjoining the church stands what was formerly St. Anne’s
Chapel. At the Reformation, it became the Grammar School, and so
remains. Between 1686 and 1761 it was also used, by permission of the
Corporation, as a chapel, by the French Protestant refugees who had
fled from the persecution of the Huguenots. A tablet facing Paternoster
Row is to the memory of Thomas Lee, architect, drowned at Morthoe, 1834.
The River Taw is now bordered up-stream with leafy promenades, and by
the Rock Park, another of the modern innovations upon the old order of
things. To those who--seeing no rocks, but only smooth lawns and much
landscape-gardening in the park--object that this pleasance belies
its name, it is a sufficient reply to state that it was the gift of
Mr. W. F. Rock, a native of Barum, and a member of the London firm of
wholesale stationers, Rock Brothers.
And the river Taw runs past, over its broad bed of sand, or swirls
fiercely up at the flood tide from the sea, bringing up seaweed and
driftwood, and sometimes a fragment of wreck from the channel.
The wisdom of not retrieving all and every description of “wreck of the
sea” seems to be pointed out by the sad seventeenth-century story of
the four (not seven) brother fishermen who, fishing, after their daily
custom, in the estuary of the Taw long ago, hauled ashore a bundle of
rugs and bedding, floating up on the tide. It would appear that these
articles had been flung overboard from some ship afflicted with the
plague, for the fishermen themselves died of it and were buried up
river, off Tawstock, at a point still known, by an odd confusion of
ideas, as “Seven Brethren Bank”; the spot having originally been marked
by seven elms. A tombstone, long since vanished, was erected by Thomas
and Agnes Ley, parents of the unhappy fishermen, with the inscription:
“To the memory of our four sweet sons, John, Joseph, Thomas,
and Richard, who, immaturely taken from us altogether by Divine
Providence, are Hear inter’d, the 17 August, Anno 1646.
“Good and great God, to Thee we do resigne
Our four dear sons, for they were duly Thine,
And, Lord, we were not worthy of the name
To be the sonnes of faithful Abrahame,
Had we not learnt for Thy just pleasure’ sake
To yield our all, as he his Isaack.
Reader, perhaps thou knewest this field, but ah!
’Tis now become another Macpelah.
What then? This honour, it doth boast the more,
Never such seeds were sowne therein before,
W^{ch} shall revive, and Christ His angells warne
To beare with triumphe to the heavenly Barne.”
It was in the same year of this tragical trover that Barnstaple was
stricken with the plague, probably by the agency of the same ship:
a cargo of wool having then been landed at Bideford quays from the
Levant. Bideford suffered first, and then Barnstaple.
A hilly road takes you up, out of Barnstaple, on the way to
Bideford, out of sight of the river. Past Bickington it goes, and
Fremington--Fremington that was once a borough town and port, returning
two members to Parliament in the reign of Edward the Third. Fremington
finds mention in Blackmore’s “Maid of Sker,” where its creek is styled
“Deadman’s Pill”; but there is little, otherwise, to remark about
it. Pretty, and overhung with trees where the road runs past the
old church; but otherwise, no place to demand much attention. It is
different with Instow, down the road, where the rivers Taw and Torridge
join forces with the sea.
Instow is in two parts; the somewhat inland village and the waterside
fringe of houses known as Instow Quay. The first of these two is
old enough to find mention in Domesday Book, where it is called
Johannestow; and from that to “Johnstow” and the present form was only
the inevitable action of the centuries. The church gave it that name,
having been dedicated to St. John Baptist.
The Quay, looking straight across to Appledore and out to the west,
commands magnificent sunsets over the sea, with lovely views up the
river Torridge and its heavily-wooded banks; the famous bridge of
Bideford and the white houses of that town clearly to be seen, three
miles away; or, lovelier still, and mysterious in the twilight--“the
dimpsey,” as they call it in North Devon.
The river Taw is fine, but the lovely Torridge is its much more
beautiful sister. Those familiar with South Devon will readily find
a remarkable resemblance between the estuaries of the Exe and the
Torridge, and in the upper reaches will not fail to note an equal
likeness to the Teign, just below Newton Abbot. And, to clinch the
resemblance, Instow Quay is not unlike Starcross, with the further
similarity of a railway running by. Here is the same waterside line
of houses, chiefly of the Regency and Early Victorian white-faced
sort, just on the verge of becoming romantic, by mere effluxion of
time. Little plaster-faced villas with green-painted verandahs and
hairpin railings enclosing close-cropped hedges of privet or euonymus,
approached by neat pebble-pitched pathways, sometimes, for greater
effect of decoration, done in white pebbles, with a pattern of brown. I
can imagine our great-grandmothers, as pretty girls of sweet seventeen,
in book-muslin, taking holiday here and reading Jane Austen and Mrs.
Gaskell.
Opposite lies Appledore, with the tall tower of what looks like a
church on its scarred hillside, and is really a look-out tower known as
“Chanter’s Folly”; and sometimes you may see the grey mass of Lundy, on
the horizon. Lonely Lundy, to which His Majesty’s mails go only once
weekly from Instow Quay, per sailing-skiff _Gannet_. For those who
like tumbling on the ocean wave, the cruise there and back in the day
on those weekly sailings is enjoyable; but for those who do not happen
to be good sailors, the return fare of five shillings only admits to
five shillings’ worth of sheer misery. So Lundy generally remains to
unseaworthy visitors to Instow a great unknown quantity.
The road runs close beside the estuary, all the way from Instow to
Bideford, passing the nobly wooded hillsides of Tapeley Park, with its
tall obelisk to the memory of one of the Cleveland family who fell at
Inkerman. Bideford, on the opposite shore, becomes revealed, not only
as a waterside town, but as very much of a hillside town as well, and
with a not inconsiderable suburb on the hither side of the river: a
suburb known as “East-the-Water.” Here we come to the heart of that
district of North Devon so intimately associated with Kingsley and
his “Westward Ho!” that it is very generally known as the “Kingsley
Country.”