MOUTH MILL AND BLACK CHURCH ROCK--THE COAST TO HARTLAND--HARTLAND
POINT--HARTLAND ABBEY--HARTLAND QUAY
Wild scrambling is the portion of him who would explore the coast-line
between Clovelly and Hartland, and those who undertake the task, or
the pleasure--and it is both--are few. The way lies by the church and
Clovelly Court, adjoining: that church where Kingsley’s father was
rector, and whence the novelist of “Westward Ho!” himself drew so much
inspiration. Quaint epitaphs are found, notably:
“Think not that youth will keep you free,
For Death at twenty-seven months called off me.”
To visit the cliff-top of Gallantry Bower, in Clovelly Park, a fee is
demanded, as also to see Mouth Mill; the receipts, in common with those
paid for entrance to the Hobby Drive, being devoted, it is announced,
“to local charities.” Now Clovelly is a small place, and prosperous,
the receipts large, and the demands for charity necessarily small:
it seems to an unprejudiced observer that the statement needs to be
amplified. Moreover, it is not altogether fair that visitors should
be taxed by the owners of Clovelly Court, who receive an excellent
rent-roll from Clovelly village, and should thus relieve themselves of
a natural obligation to return in charity a percentage of the tribute
they are paid.
[Illustration: CLOVELLY, FROM THE SEA.]
But now for Mouth Mill. Disregarding all notices with such flapdoodle
as “Private,” and “Trespassers will be prosecuted,” generally known
among lawyers as “wooden liars,” you turn from Clovelly churchyard into
a farmyard, then left and then right, along some park-like paths; soon
finding yourself on a rough upland in company with a rude signpost
pointing a wizened finger “To Hartland.” On the right is a gate marked
“Private,” leading into a woodland drive. Taking no notice of that
impudent attempt to warn the inoffensive stranger off a remarkably
pretty coast scene, you descend through the woods by a well-defined
road, and come at last to Mouth Mill; one of the typical gullies of
this coast, with a stream losing itself on a beach composed of giant
pebbles and strange, contorted rocks. A lonely cottage, the usual
limekiln, and a landing-place, obviously where the Clovelly Court coals
are landed, are the items completing the scene. A pyramidal rock of
almost coal-black hue discloses itself as you scramble down to the sea.
This is Black Church Rock: a huge mass with a hole in the middle of it,
and all its strata on end.
[Illustration: CLOVELLY CHURCH.]
The unimpeded cliff-path scrambler can find a way from this beach up
Windbury Head. Arrived there, in absolute solitude, down dives the path
again, and up to the gigantic mass of Exmansworthy Cliff. Here the
going is extremely difficult, but the scenery is sufficient reward,
even for these exertions. Fatacott Cliff, the loftiest of all these
ramparted outlooks, midway between Clovelly and Hartland, is the scene
of many a shipwreck. Few winters pass without some unfortunate vessel
ending here.
[Illustration: BLACK CHURCH ROCK.]
A long succession of cliffs leads at last to Eldern Point and thence
into the wild inlet of Shipload Bay, whose shore, like most of these
nooks, is paved with dark ribs of rock. Finally, West Titchberry
Cliffs and Barley Bay, lead to Hartland Point itself; noblest in
outline of all; with its coastguard station on the windy ridge, and the
lighthouse, built so recently as 1874, on a rocky platform, two-thirds
of the way down to the sea.
Here and onwards to Upright Cliff and Hartland Quay, the furious
wash of the Atlantic is supremely noticeable, and has carved out the
face of the land in fantastic manner. Pillared rocks, styled by some
imaginative geographer the “Cow and Calf,” astonish by their bold
aspect, and still more by their want of resemblance to Calf or Cow.
Follows then the hollow of Smoothlands, with Damehole Point; on the
very verge, as it would seem, of becoming an island, through the
violence of the sea eating away the softer parts of the rock. Beyond
this, the hollow of Black Mouth, well named from its inky rock ledges,
opens, with an enchanting view inland, up a wooded valley, where a
noble mansion may be seen in the distance.
That is “Hartland Abbey,” the country residence so-called. Here, in the
beautiful valley that, with its broad, level bottom, is more than a
“combe,” Gytha, wife of Earl Godwin and mother of the unfortunate King
Harold, who lost life and kingdom at the Battle of Hastings, founded a
college of secular canons, as a thank-offering to God and St. Nectan
for the preservation of her husband from shipwreck. In the reign of
Henry the Second, this establishment was re-founded by Geoffry de
Dynham as a monastery under Augustine rule; and through the centuries
it prospered in this remote valley progressively enriched by the pious
and the wicked alike: by the pious out of their piety, and by the
wicked by way of compounding for their sins. And at last it ended in
the usual confiscating way which makes the story of the monasteries
in the time of Henry the Eighth seem to some so unmerited a tragedy,
and to others a tardy, but well-earned retribution. From the Abbot
who surrendered Hartland Abbey and its lands to Henry the Eighth, the
property went by royal gift to one whose own name was, curiously
enough, Abbott. From him it descended in turn to the Luttrells, the
Orchards, and the Bucks, who in 1858 changed their name to Stucley. It
was an Orchard who in 1779 built the existing mansion, that is seated
so comfortably in the sheltered green strath, away from the winds
rioting on those exposed uplands from which we have just now descended.
He built in that allusive architectural style for which one may coin
the word “ecclesiesque”; a midway halting between church architecture
and domestic. Strange to say, he retained the Early English cloisters
of the old Abbey, and here they are to this day.
[Illustration: HARTLAND POINT.]
It really is strange that he should--or that his architect, for him,
should--have kept the cloisters, for the spirit of the age--it was the
age of Horace Walpole, you know--was remarkably addicted to a kind of
wry-necked appreciation of Gothic architecture, and given to destroy
genuine antiquities, only to erect on the site of them imitative Gothic
with eighteenth-century frills and embellishments. The “men of taste”
who flourished towards the close of the eighteenth century were quite
convinced that they could have taught the men who built in earlier ages
something new in the way of Gothic: and they were, in a way, right. But
what a way it was!
There were some queer characters in these districts of old, and none
more striking than an ancient scion of the Stucley family--Thomas
Stucley, who was born in, or about, 1525 and died fighting the Moors,
at the Battle of Alcazar, _ex parte_ the King of Portugal, in 1578.
There can be little doubt that, when he ended thus, Queen Elizabeth and
her Ministers of State, like Dogberry, thanked God they were rid of a
knave; for Thomas Stucley was adventurer, pirate, renegade, and traitor
to his country, and the cause of innumerable alarms and embarrassments.
One of the five sons of Sir Hugh Stucley, of Affeton, near Ilfracombe,
he formed something of a mystery: vague rumours that he was really
an illegitimate son of Henry the Eighth following all his escapades.
These were strengthened by the lenient treatment with which his most
serious and inexcusable doings were visited by Queen Elizabeth. Always
of an adventurous and reckless nature, and perhaps not a little tainted
with madness, he proposed, when scarce more than a youth, to colonise
Florida, and in 1563 set out with six ships and three hundred men, for
the purpose. There must have been something unusual in the relations
between himself and Queen Elizabeth, for him to have interviewed her,
before he set out, in the terms ascribed to him. “He blushed not,” we
read, “to tell Elizabeth to her face that he preferred rather to be
sovereign of a molehill than the highest subject to the greatest king
in Christendom, and that he was assured he should be a prince before
his death.”
Humouring this extravagant language, Elizabeth replied, “I hope I shall
hear from you when you are settled in your principality.”
“I will write unto you,” quoth Stucley.
“In what language?” asked the Queen.
“In the style of princes,” returned he; “to our dear sister.”
Fine language, this, to employ to one of those imperious Tudors,
whose idea of the most effective repartee was the capital one of the
headsman’s axe!
Stucley, however, appears to have been allowed the most extraordinary
licence. Instead of colonising Florida and entering the family circle
of princes, he roved the seas for two years, occupying his formidable
fleet in piracy. Not even in the age of Elizabeth, when the Armada
incident was so fresh, could the nation afford to allow piratical
attacks upon foreigners to be conducted on this scale. The English
Ambassador to the Court of Madrid “hung his head for shame” when the
doings of Stucley were brought to his notice, and that irresponsible
person was disavowed. A squadron was even fitted out to arrest him, and
did so at Cork in 1565; but he was merely, in effect, told not to do it
again, and released. Afterwards he was employed by the Government in
Ireland; but, with the passion for intrigue and an absolute inability
to act in a straightforward manner that possessed him, he became a
Roman Catholic, and, resorting to Spain, endeavoured to bring about a
Spanish invasion of Ireland. In anticipation of the success of this
project, the King of Spain created him Duke of Ireland, but the plan
failed. At length, busy in all quarters in seeking trouble, he aided
the Portuguese in Morocco, and was slain in the fighting there.
The exploits of this restless person were made much of in a book of his
adventures published not long after his death, and in it he appears
something of a hero; but a detailed and intimate account of his career
shows him to have been as mean and sordid a scoundrel in domestic
affairs as he was bold and grasping in adventure.
A spot up the valley, whence a beautiful near view of Hartland Abbey is
obtained, is known as Bow Bridge, and from it a road climbs steeply,
bringing up at the village of Stoke, dwarfed by the great body and tall
massive tower of its church, generally called Hartland church, although
that town is situated out of sight, a mile further inland. The church
is dedicated to Saint Nectan, who was a very popular saint in the West,
as those travelling into Cornwall will find, to this day. A gigantic
effigy of Nectan still remains on the eastern wall of the tower, and
the high-church bias of the neighbourhood may be readily assumed from
the restored churchyard cross, with its Calvary, its sculptured scenes
from the life of Nectan and of Gytha, and its inscription, “Nos salva
rex cruce xte tua.”
This great church of St. Nectan has often been styled “the Cathedral
of North Devon.” Rebuilt in the fourteenth century, it is, of course,
wholly in the Perpendicular style, and equally of course, presents a
thoroughly well-balanced and symmetrical mass, without any of those
additions from time to time, or those changes of plan, that render
churches built by degrees throughout the centuries so picturesque. St.
Nectan’s exhibits regularity and preciseness to the last degree. The
tall tower, over a hundred and forty feet high, was doubtless built
especially as a landmark for sailors.
The fine lofty nave is divided from the chancel by a magnificently
carved fifteenth-century oaken rood-screen, which, if not actually
finer than those of Pilton, Atherington, and Swimbridge, all in North
Devon, is at any rate on the same level of craftsmanship. In the
chancel remains a stone slab with epitaph of Thomas Docton:
“Here lie I at the chancel door,
Here lie I, because I’m poor.
The further in, the more you pay;
Here lie I, as warm as they.”
Word for word this is the same as the epitaph upon one “Bone Phillip,”
at Kingsbridge, South Devon.
Many curious details survive the restoration of 1850 and the fire of
1901 that destroyed the roof and narrowly missed wrecking the entire
church. Among them is the “Guard Chamber,” over the porch; the “Pope’s
Chamber,” as it is here styled. In the stone stairs to it is a hollow
space, perhaps made for the purpose of holding holy water, wherewith
to exorcise demons. The parish stocks, retired from active service in
the cause of law and order, are kept in this room, which, with its
fireplace, is, or might easily be made, comfortable enough. Remains
of the old wooden pulpit, inscribed “God Save Kinge James Fines,” have
puzzled many. The wood-carver probably meant “Finis”; but that does not
help us much to understand his further meaning; and we must leave it at
that.
The “Account Book of Church Expenses,” from 1597 to 1706, still
surviving, affords many an interesting glimpse into old days at
Hartland; proving, among other things, how lonely was the situation and
wild the life here. The church appears to have been fully armed against
aggression, whether by sea or land; for we read how the churchwardens
paid for “three bullett bagges for the churche musquettes”; and “Paid
for lace to fasten the lyninge of the morians belonging to the churche
corselettes, and for priming irons for the churche musquettes, ii_d._”
Furthermore: “Paid for a hilt and handle and a scabert for a sworde,
and for mendinge a dagger of the churche, ii_s._”
Roger Syncocke is down for one penny, “for mending a churche pike.”
Altogether, this seems a cheap lot for these bloody-minded Hartlanders;
but a further entry of six pounds ten shillings, “for arms,” seems to
indicate that they were really dangerous people, best left alone. And
that appears to have been the general healthy impression; for we do not
read anywhere of battle, murder, and sudden death in these purlieus.
“If you would have peace prepare for war,” was doubtless the axiom
acted upon here; and the truth of it was duly proven.
[Illustration: HARTLAND QUAY.]
Hartland Quay, half a mile down the road, is an example of the
overweening confidence of man in his ability to battle successfully
with the forces of nature. You see, as you come down the road over the
down, a tumultuous ocean, no longer the Bristol Channel, sometimes
dun-coloured with the outpourings of the Severn, and not, except under
extreme provocation, to be stirred to great waves, but the Atlantic
Ocean itself, dark blue with great crested waves rolling inshore,
whether it be calm weather or boisterous. Only, in the last case, the
always majestic sight becomes not a little terrifying here.
Where the down curves to the sea and the road dips steeply, in a
hairpin corner, a rugged point, all bristling with black, jagged rocks,
runs out, and in between them is a little flat space--the Quay. On
one side is an isolated conical hill, capped with a flagstaff, and
on the other a formidable reef, black as ink, with the rock-strata
tipped perpendicularly in some convulsion that attended the world’s
birth. Between these extremes lies the opening for the entrance of
small craft, and a sorry haven it must be for any distressed mariner
in severe weather. The place is lonely, save for the “Hartland Quay
Hotel” and a few coastguard cottages; and the stone pier built out to
sea, by which it was proposed to make Hartland Quay in some small way
a harbour, has been battered utterly out of existence by the waves.
Watching the enormous walls of water, curving and advancing with an
imperious unhasting grandeur, you do not wonder that anything less
solid than the living rock should go down before them.
The breaking rollers fill the scene with briny particles that hang in
air like frost and taste salt on the lips, and the wind blows strong
and invigorating from its journey of thousands of miles across the open
sea.
An easy path leads from this point around Catherine Tor and its
waterfall, into a wide moor-like valley where a little stream, fussing
noisily in its peaty bed among occasional boulders, hurries along to
join the sea. The scene where this rivulet, arriving abruptly at the
cliff’s edge, falls sheer over it, in a long spout of about a hundred
feet, is the most dramatic thing on the coast of North Devon. Imagine
the lonely valley, not in itself very remarkable, suddenly shorn off in
a clean cut, disclosing a smooth face of rock as black as coal, ending
in a little beach--and there you have Speke’s Mouth, as it is called.
[Illustration: SPEKE’S MOUTH.]
From here it is possible to follow the cliffs to Welcombe Mouth:
a fatiguing journey. The quicker way, and also perhaps the more
beautiful, is up the valley and into the road; coming down into the
wooded vale of Welcombe Mouth by a zigzag route, amid a tangle of
undergrowth. The village of Welcombe, which takes its name from a holy
well dedicated to St. Nectan, is marked by its church-tower a mile
inland; the valley itself being solitary, except for one very new and
blatant farmstead. Here, as in all these other vales dipping to the
sea, a little stream goes swirling down through the tangled brakes of
the combe, to end ineffectively on the beach.
Welcombe Mouth is associated with the exploits of “Cruel Coppinger,”
supposed to have been a Danish sea-captain, wrecked off Hartland.
Thrown ashore in dramatic fashion, and narrowly escaping death at the
hands of the half-savage Welcombe people of over a century ago, who
nursed odd prejudices against allowing wrecked sailors to survive,
he settled awhile in the district, and himself became a wrecker and
smuggler. He and his exploits are now part of local folk-lore, and the
novelists have got hold of him too; but it would seem that, cast ashore
with clothes all torn from him by the fury of the waves, he recovered
consciousness only in time to prevent his being knocked on the head.
Jumping up, seizing a cutlass, and vaulting, naked as he was, on to
the back of a horse, he galloped up the combe to the sheltering house
of some people named Hamlyn, parents of the Dinah Hamlyn whom he
subsequently married.
The exploits of Coppinger the Cruel, as they survive in legend, verge
upon the incredible. How he beheaded a gauger with his own cutlass on
the gunwale of a boat, how he thrashed the parson at the dinner-table,
and how he was wafted away by a mysterious ship, from off the
romantic-looking Gull Rock, that looms darkly off the coast; are they
not all enshrined in the folk-lore of the West, and particularly in the
verses of which here is a sample?
“Would you know of Cruel Coppinger?
He came from a foreign land;
He was brought to us by the salt water
And carried away by the wind.”
And now, over the steep hill dividing Welcombe Mouth from Marsland
Mouth, we come to the conclusion of the coast of North Devon. Marsland
Mouth is a fit ending: the very culmination of loneliness. If the
scenery of its seaward end is not so rugged as that of many of these
“mouths,” the extraordinary exuberance of the close-grown thorn,
oak, and hazel thickets that have entirely overgrown the valley is
unparalleled anywhere else in all these miles. Only a rugged footpath,
closely beset with bushes, leads down to the shore. It must be
admitted, however, that evidence of Marsland Mouth being within touch
of modern life is not lacking--is only too evident, indeed--in two
huge, outrageously ugly, plaster-faced houses, of the very worst type
of Ladbroke Grove “architecture,” that look down from a ridge into the
romantic cleft. The atrocity of their being placed here is beyond words.
I have styled Marsland Mouth “romantic,” and not without due warrant;
for does it not appear, early in the pages of “Westward Ho!” as the
scene of Rose Salterne’s adventure with the “white witch,” Lucy
Passmore?
White witch or black, her beliefs were sufficiently dark, and the
mystic rites she practised were as uncanny as any of those in common
usage by the more inimical kind of witches--the kind who “overlooked”
you, played the very deuce and all with your sheep and cattle, and
generally harboured a “familiar” in the shape of a black tom cat.
And really, as you read of her in Kingsley’s pages, she was a person
to be feared, on more than supernatural grounds, being as brawny and
muscular as a man: a good deal more so than her husband. It must be no
sinecure, to be the husband of a witch, and a muscular one at that.
A stranger, tracing his hazardous way that night down the tangled glen,
to the sea, would have had any stray beliefs he may have harboured as
to the existence of mermaids presently confirmed; for we read that
Rose, wishing to see who would be her future husband, by direction
of the witch, undressed on the midnight beach, in the cold light of
the full moon, waded waist-deep, into the sea with her mirror, and
performed the incantation. Except that Kingsley speaks of the “blaze”
of the midnight moon, it is a magnificent scene. Ordinary observers
are at one with the poets--and at odds with Kingsley--in thinking of
moonlight as a cold flood, rather than as a “blaze.”
A ring of flame, from the phosphorescence she stirred as she waded
into the water, encircled her waist, and, as she looked down into the
waves, every shell that crawled on the white sand was visible under the
moonbeams, while the seaweeds waved like banners. Almost determined to
turn and flee she, with an effort, dipped her head three times in the
water, hurried out of the waves, and, looking through the strands of
her wet hair into the mirror she carried, repeated the verse the white
witch had taught her:
A maiden pure, lo! here I stand,
Neither on sea, nor yet on land;
Angels watch me on either hand.
If you be landsman, come down the strand;
If you be sailor, come up the sand;
If you be angel, come from the sky,
Look in my glass, and pass me by.
Look in my glass, and go from the shore;
Leave me, but love me for evermore.
It was with a not unnatural superstitious fear, under these magical
moonlit circumstances that, even as she was gazing into the mirror and
repeating those lines, hurried footsteps were heard descending to the
Mouth. They were not, however, angelic or demoniac apparitions nor even
earthly lovers: merely fugitive Jesuits and traitors.
It is sad to find this scene overlooked by those hideous stuccoed
houses on the ridge, but, at any rate, as I straddle the little
summer-time trickle of the stream in the bottom, dividing Devon and
Cornwall, I cannot but admire the fine note of picturesqueness and high
romance on which this coast-line ends.
[Illustration: AT MARSLAND MOUTH.]
INDEX
Abbotsham, 205
Appledore, 86, 140, 170, 174, 197, 200
Armada guns, 189
_Artavia_, Barnstaple, 208
Baggy Point, 140
Barle, River, 5
Barley Bay, 227
Barnstaple, 27, 29, 30, 86, 113, 115, 154–72, 208
Barricane Beach, 138
Barum, _i.e._ Barnstaple, 161
Benson, Thomas, 115
Berrynarbor, 77, 95, 128–30
Bickington, 174
Bideford, 86, 115, 170, 173, 176–97, 205
---- and Westward Ho! Railway, 197
Black Church Rock, 226
---- Mouth, 228
Blackstone Point, 68
Bloody Corner, 199
“Blue Ball” inn, Countisbury, 36
Bone Hill, 198
Bonhill Top, 52
Brannock, Saint, 141, 142, 144, 145
Braunton, 142, 144–9, 194
---- Burrows, 2, 143, 149–54, 198
Brendon Two Gates, 6
Briary Caves, 80
Bridge Ball, 6, 31
Buck’s Cross, 206
---- Mill, 206
Bull Point, 132
Burrow Nose, 80
Caen, River, 149
Capern, Edward, 193–6
Capstone Hill, 84, 92, 97
---- Parade, 85, 94, 97
Cary family, 211
Castle Rock, 45, 50, 51
Catherine Tor, 238
Chain Beach, 85
Chambercombe, 97, 123–8
Champernowne family, 89, 128
“Chanter’s Folly,” 175
Chapman Barrows, 5
_Clausa Vallis_, (?) Clovelly, 208
Cliff Railway, Lynmouth, 22–40
Clovelly, 2, 90, 99, 100, 113, 190, 205–26
Combemartin, 68, 69, 71–80, 88, 95
Compass Hill, 84
Countisbury, 28, 31, 35, 36
---- Foreland, 37–45
“Cow and Calf” Rocks, 227
Crock Point, 52
Croyde, 141
“Cruel Coppinger,” 239
Damehole Point, 228
“Devil’s Cheese-wring,” 50
“---- Chimney,” 121
“---- Limekiln,” 120
“Duty Point,” 26, 45
East-the-Water, 176, 189
Eldern Point, 227
Exe Head, 5
Exmansworthy Cliff, 226
Exmoor, 4
Faggus, Tom, 158
Fairy Cross, 206
Farley, 31, 32
---- Water, 6
Fatacott Cliff, 226
Fremington, 28, 174
Freshwater Cascade, 210
Gallantry Bower, 224
Georgeham, 140
Glen Lyn, 15
Glenthorne, 2, 35, 38, 39, 41, 42
“Golden Lion,” Barnstaple, 166
Great Hangman Point, 66, 67, 68
Grenville family, 182–9
Gull Rock, 240
Halliday, Rev. W. S., 42
Hamlyn family, 211
Hangman Hills, 66–8
“Hangman Stone,” 66
Hannington, Bishop, 59
Hartland, 77, 224, 227
---- Abbey, 228–31, 234
---- Point, 116, 133, 208, 227
---- Quay, 227, 237
Havergal, Rev. W. H., 14
Heanton Court, 154
---- Punchardon, 194
Heddon, River, 63
Heddon’s Mouth, 2, 44, 58, 62–4
Hele Bay, 82, 97
High Veer, 63
Hillsborough, 82, 97
Hoar Oak Stone, 6
Hobby Drive, 207, 210, 223, 224
Holdstone Down, 65
“Hoops Inn,” 206
Horns Cross, 206
Hubba’s Stone, 200
“Hunter’s Inn,” 64
Ilfracombe, 31, 80, 82, 84–106
“Inkerman Bridge,” 57
Instow, 174, 190, 200
“Jennifrid’s Leap,” 33, 52
Jennings, Louis, 22
Kingsley, Charles, 72, 96, 138, 176–8, 181, 189, 190, 198, 201, 202,
224, 241
Lamator, 107, 108
Lantern Hill, 84, 88, 89, 97
Lee “Abbey,” 29, 51–3
---- Bay (near Lynton), 52–6
---- ---- (near Ilfracombe), 131
Lundy, 106–22, 175
Lyn, River, 5–7, 10, 14, 17, 37
Lynmouth, 2–21, 31, 32, 90, 99, 100
Lynton, 3, 21–5, 28, 34, 95, 99, 160
---- and Barnstaple Railway, 22–4, 57
Marisco Castle, 108
Marsland Mouth, 240–45
Martinhoe, 57
_Montagu_, H.M.S., 116–19
Morte Point, 133
---- Stone, 133
Morthoe, 132–7
Mouth Mill, 224–6
Nectan, St., 234, 239
“New Inn,” Clovelly, 210–14, 216, 217
North Walk, Lynmouth, 44
Northam, 197–201
---- Burrows, 143
“Pack of Cards” (“King’s Arms”), Combemartin, 72, 73, 80
Pebble Ridge, The, 198, 201 204
Peppercombe, 206
Pilton, 154–7, 235
Point Desolation, 41
Portledge, 190, 205
Putsborough, 141
“Queen Anne’s Walk,” Barnstaple, 167
“Ragged Jack,” 50, 51
Rapparee Cove, 87
Rat Island, 107
Rawdon, General, 11
“Red Lion,” Clovelly, 211, 220, 221
Rillage Point, 82
“Rodney,” 41
Rone, Earl of, 88
“Royal Hotel,” Bideford, 177
Runnacleaves, The, 84
Samson’s Bay, 82
Saunton, 142–4
Schorne, Master John, 145
“Seven Brethren Bank,” 173
Sherracombe, 68
Shipload Bay, 227
Shutter Rock, 116, 120
Sillery Sands, 35
Simonsbath, 35
Smallmouth, 80
Smoothlands, 228
Speke’s Mouth, 238
Stoke, 234–7
Stucley family, 231–4
Tapeley Park, 176, 190
Taw, River, 149, 152, 156, 172, 174, 198
Templar Rock, 122
“Temple Bar,” 219
Torridge, River, 174, 198
Tors, The, Ilfracombe, 84, 94, 97, 131
“Tors Hotel,” Lynmouth, 3, 9, 13, 19, 37
Tracy family, 134–6
Trentishoe, 57, 65
“Trevelyan Hotel,” Barnstaple, 167
Upright Cliff, 227
Valley of Rocks, 44, 47–51
Watermouth, 28, 80
---- Castle, 81
Watersmeet, 6
Welcombe Mouth, 239
West Challacombe Farm, 69
West Titchberry Cliffs, 227
Westward Ho! 143, 190, 201–4
Wichehalse family, Story of, 25–33
Widemouth, 80
---- Head, 82
Wildersmouth, 85, 97
Windbury Head, 226
Wooda Bay, 44, 52, 56–7
Woolacombe Bay, 134, 137–40, 142
Woolfardisworthy, 206
Wringapeak, 58
Wringcliff Bay, 51
Yeo, River, 157
PRINTED AND BOUND BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of
inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.
Some entries in the original List of Illustrations indicated that
the illustration was “facing” a page. Those indications have been
removed here, as all illustrations have been positioned between nearby
paragraph breaks.
The illustration on page 14 contains a few bars of music.
Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.
Page 114: The year “1860” was printed that way, but in context, seems to
be a misprint.
End of Project Gutenberg's The North Devon Coast, by Charles G. Harper