THE KINGSLEY STATUE--NORTHAM--“BLOODY CORNER”--APPLEDORE--WESTWARD HO!
AND THE PEBBLE RIDGE
The traveller setting out by road from Bideford to Appledore has a
haunting feeling that he is making for some unconsidered part of the
world: a loose end ravelling out to ineffectiveness. The map will
help him in this impression, for it show’s a tongue of land that is
to all intents a dead end, leading nowhere. Nor will the railway
journey to Westward Ho!, now made possible by the Bideford and Westward
Ho! Railway--an undertaking which belongs to the “light railway”
order--help him to revise this opinion. You may see the terminus
of it on Bideford quay. There the rails run on to the roadway, and
end without the formalities of a station, platforms, signals, or
anything of the kind. And the weird-looking engine when it goes off,
dragging the one or two carriages after it, glides away with the air
of to-morrow being plenty of time to do the work of to-day. The road
keeps well out of sight of the river Torridge, and is both hilly and
uninteresting, coming at last to Northam. This is the very heart of
what has been styled the “Kingsley Country,” rich in the scenes of his
“Westward Ho!”, and it is therefore of peculiar appropriateness that a
white marble statue of him should have been erected in 1906 on Bideford
quay, whence this expedition starts. It is an aggressive-looking
Kingsley--and therefore true to the appearance of the original--that
stands there in clerical robes, with quill pen poised in hand, ready,
as in life, with more honesty than discretion, to do battle for any
cause he had at heart. “The most generous-minded man I ever knew,” said
Maurice of him: with the fervour of a schoolboy and qualities of heart
better than those of head, as the unfortunate controversy with Newman,
in which that crafty dialectician had the better of him in argument,
sufficiently proved. But although worsted in sheer tactical marshalling
of his forces, Kingsley was instinctively right, and the sympathy of
honest men went with him, and continues.
Northam is a dusty, gritty village, standing on a ridge that looks one
way towards the Torridge, and the other across to the great waste of
Northam Burrows, that repeat, on this side of the twin Taw and Torridge
estuaries, the features of Braunton Burrows. On the north side of the
churchyard is a knoll, known as “Bone Hill,” where a flagstaff has
been planted on a cairn of sixty boulders, brought by willing hands
from the famed Pebble Ridge. The whole thing forms a homemade loyal
and patriotic memorial of the second Jubilee of Queen Victoria, with
additions suggested by later events, together with an aspiration that
“these shores may never be without brave and pious mariners, who will
count their lives as worthless in the cause of their country, their
Bible, and their Queen.” But other people beside the mariners must do
their part also.
[Illustration: “BLOODY CORNER.”]
There is little deserving notice in the neighbouring church, except
the quaint inscription on the interior wall of the north aisle: “This
yele was made anno 1593.” Let us, then, press on to Appledore, passing
Bloody Corner, so-called by reason of the defeat of the Danes here in
A.D. 882 by King Alfred the Great, when the Danish chieftain, Hubba,
was numbered among the slain. Hubba’s Stone, where the landing of the
invaders was effected, lies near the shore of the estuary. A recently
erected memorial by the wayside marks the Corner, and a row of even
more recently erected cheap cottages, opposite, serves effectually to
dilute any feelings of romance.
Appledore (whose name has really nothing to do with apples, but derives
from two words meaning “water-pool”) stands at the very entrance to the
Torridge estuary. On the opposite side is Instow.
Appledore is a decayed port; a fishing village long past its prime.
Time was when its ship-owners waxed rich in what the natives still
call the “Noofunlan’ Trade,” but that was long ago, and it is scarce
possible even the hoariest inhabitant recollects those times. But the
buildings, the quays are reminiscent; the whole place mumbles, quite
plainly in the imaginative ear, “Has Been.”
This is, however, by no means to hint that Appledore is poor, or
moribund. Vessels are repaired in its docks, a quarry is in full blast
on the hillside, and the fishermen fare out to sea in pursuit of the
salmon and cod. The less adventurous gather the edible seaweed known
to epicures as “laver,” or at low water ravish the tenacious cockle
and mussel from their lairs.
But, in general, Appledore has resignedly stood still since the
“Noofunlan’” trade ceased, and remains very much what it was at the
time of its ceasing: only something the worse for wear. Bideford may
exchange cobbles for macadam, and even, in choice spots, wood-pavement,
but Appledore’s lanes, which are of the dirtiest, the steepest and most
rugged description, still retain their ancient knobbly character. In
short Appledore is a curiosity, and one not in any immediate likelihood
of being reformed out of that status, for it is at the very end of
things. So its whitewashed cottages will long, no doubt, continue to
give a specious and illusory character for cleanliness to it, as seen
across the river from Instow; and “Factory Ope,” “Drang,” and other
queerly named lanes will survive for generations yet to come.
Returning to Northam on the way to Westward Ho! I meet with a sad
disillusion: nothing less than a group of angelic-looking little girls
belying their looks by shouting ribald things, of which no one, and
least of all Charles Kingsley, could find it possible to approve. And
this in the “Kingsley Country,” too!
Westward Ho! is all too soon disclosed to the disillusioned eye. You
see it, as you come along the ridge road, occupying the flat lands and
the sandy wastes beside the sea, with the famed Pebble Ridge extending
towards the Burrows. The scene is a beautiful display of colour: the
dark-blue sea, light-blue sky, yellow sands, blue-grey line of pebbles
and green salt-marshes, with the Braunton lighthouse a dab of white on
a distant shore.
But Westward Ho! is chiefly a sad collection of forlorn houses, dressed
in penitential grey plaster. Kingsley wrote a romantic novel compact
of patriotic fervour, love of Devon, of England, and of Elizabethan
seafaring derring-do. He placed one of the most dramatic of his
scenes--the interrupted duel--here, on “Bideford Sands.” You recollect
the incident: Grenville intervening between the combatants, and his
“Hold! Mr. Cary,” a fine moment; but it is Failure, not Romance that
here meets the eye to-day.
The fame of the novel, “Westward Ho!” brought thousands of pilgrims
into these parts, and aroused great enthusiasm. At that time these
sands were lonely in the extreme. Not a single house stood upon
them. But the astonishing success of that book led to the spot being
“discovered” and duly exploited. Enterprising persons, finding that
Bideford town was, after all, not a seaside resort, conceived the idea
of founding a place which, with its sea-bathing advantages, should
become in time as popular as, say, Weston-super-Mare. But they forget
the fact--an enormous factor in the fortunes of such places--that,
being on the way to nowhither, there was no railway here, and that
there, consequently, never could be, by any chance, an easy and
convenient approach from any large town whence holiday-makers come.
Thus forgetful “Westward Ho!” was founded. A hotel designed on a
scale large enough for the considerable town expected to develop
was the first care, but the place has never prospered, and failure
is everywhere insistent. Three-fourths of the houses are empty and
the others are chiefly occupied by people who wonder why they ever
came--and wish they hadn’t. These are those who by some cruel fate
of necessity--choice or pleasure are surely out of the question--are
anchored here.
But no thought of this fate crossed the minds of those projectors.
They saw a brilliant future awaiting Westward Ho! and impressed others
with their confidence. A “Kingsley Memorial College” was built, and a
“United Services College” followed. Both are now closed and add their
own note of melancholy to the otherwise sufficiently dismal place.
The United Services College was founded in 1874 by the exertions of
General Sir H. C. B. Daubeney and a number of officers of the services.
The idea was to provide a public-school education for the children of
officers in Army, Navy, and Civil Services, at a lower cost than usual.
“Fear God and honour the King” was its motto, and mural and naval
crowns, surmounting crossed swords and anchor, were its badges. Mr.
Rudyard Kipling was educated here, and the College therefore figures in
that story of peculiarly nasty schoolboys, “Stalky & Co.”
The “Pebble Ridge” is a good deal better to look at than to walk on.
Conceive a raised beach, flung up out of the sea in the course of
countless seasons, and forming, as it were, a natural embankment,
fashioned by the waves against their own encroachment upon the
salt-marshes. But do not imagine a ridge of pebbles like those that
rattle up and down to the scour of the tides at Brighton. Those are
like the stones found in gravel; but what is in North Devon conceived
to be a pebble is a monstrous thing, rather larger than a dinner-plate,
and weighing anything from five to seven pounds. In the times before
the wretched settlement of Westward Ho! arose, and when the rustics
still talked broad Devon, these were “popples.”