agriculturalists are prepared for the very great changes that the
railways will make.” But those great changes never came, as the
agriculturalists never grasped the situation. So long as transport was
difficult, each district had to grow nearly everything that it required.
When transport was made easy, each district should have grown what it
grew best. Here in the South Hams there was quite the best cream in
England, and about the best cider, and also excellent mutton. Had people
kept to things like these, and laid down all their arable land to grass,
they would have saved far more on agricultural buildings, implements and
horses, than they would have spent in getting arable products from a
distance. And they would hardly have felt the depression that began in
1878, as that scarcely touched these things.
Being short-sighted, they neglected their orchards, and grew careless of
their cider-making, till Devonshire cider was outclassed by Hereford.
And now they are ruining the cream by using separators. Of course, it is
cream made in Devonshire, but it is not what was known as Devonshire
cream. The stuff is not worth eating; but I suppose people will go on
eating it as Devonshire cream, just as they go on drinking the wines of
well-known growers, whose vineyards were exhausted years ago.
There is also a machine now to prepare wheat straw for thatching; and
this bruises the reed, and renders it less durable than when it was
prepared by hand. And now they never sow wheat early enough for the
straw to gather strength. The result is that the thatch decays, and
landlords and farmers both get tired of patching it, and put up slate or
iron instead, thereby helping to destroy the market for one of their own
products. I have known a field of wheat pay rent and rates and every
outlay with the straw for thatching, and the grain was all clear profit.
Nobody who has lived under a thatched roof would willingly live under
any other--the comfort is so great. The thatch keeps out the cold in
winter, and keeps out the heat in summer. This house has about 4000
square feet of roof, and my other buildings in Wreyland have about
12,000 altogether; and the whole of this is thatched. Thatching costs
about three pence a square foot, and lasts about five-and-twenty years;
the period varying a little with the shape of the roof and its aspect,
exposure, and so on. And really it is not inflammable. Just as paper
will burn and books will not, so also straw will burn and thatch will
not: at least, thatch will only burn quite slowly like a book. I have
twice seen a fire stopped by cutting away a strip of thatch, and so
making a gap that the fire could not cross; and the fire burnt so very
slowly that there was ample time for this.
In insurance against fire a higher rate is charged on thatch than on the
other kinds of roofing; and I presume the higher rate is needed, though
possibly for other reasons than the nature of the roof. Writing to my
father about a small estate that was for sale, my grandfather remarks
quite placidly, 13 June 1864:--“The premises are all but new, for *****
took care to burn down the whole at different times--so all new and well
built and slated. No office would continue the insurance for him, but
being all slated it did not much require it.” I have heard the same
thing said of other small estates.
There were many fires in Moreton about seventy or eighty years ago. In
those times the insurance companies had fire-engines of their own, and
people trusted to these engines. After a fire there, 11 September 1838,
my father writes in his diary:--“The Moreton engine poured on the thatch
in front of Mrs Heyward’s house, and kept the fire in the back premises.
But, as the fire was extending towards the White Hart, which was insured
in the ‘West of England,’ the engine (which belonged to that office) was
removed there to endeavour to preserve the inn. As soon as the engine
was removed, the fire came into the front of Mrs Heyward’s house, and
extended on in Pound Street.... There ought to be two engines in the
place; and, as the ‘Sun’ lost so much, perhaps they will send one
there.” After another fire there, 12 September 1845, my grandfather
writes to him:--“Many houses not insured: their owners dropt it at
Ladyday last, when the advance took place on thatched houses.” This fire
was a notable event. My father writes in his diary, Coblence, 21
September 1845:--“Read in the Galignani newspaper an account of the
recent fire at Moreton, which has destroyed so much of the town.”
Cob walls are as good as a thatched roof for resisting heat and cold;
and the houses that have both, are far the best to live in, when the
temperature out-doors is either high or low. The cob is made of clay and
gravel kneaded together with straw, and is put up in a mass, like
concrete. It is very durable, if kept dry, but soon goes to pieces, if
the wet gets into it, especially from above. The roof must therefore be
kept quite watertight, and the outside of the walls may be protected by
a coat of plaster or cement with rough-cast.
Good bricks are made on Bovey Heathfield at the other end of this
parish. And nine inches of brickwork, laid in cement, is as strong as
eighteen inches of cob, and looks the same, if covered with cement and
rough-cast. But the eighteen inches of cob keeps a house much warmer
than eighteen of brick.
In rough-casting the wall receives two coats of plaster or cement; and,
before the second coat is dry, a mixture of fine gravel and hot lime is
thrown hard at it with a trowel, and sticks on to the second coat. It
was the custom here to rough-cast the south and west sides of a
building, but not the north and east, as these are less exposed to wet.
Down here the building-stone is either granite or elvan; and rough-cast
is desirable, as both sorts take damp, especially the granite. Moreover,
if the walls are built of unsquared stone, the rain will sometimes find
its way between the joints and down into the wall, wherever the bedding
of the stones slopes downwards from the outside.
Some of the older buildings have squared stones from three to five feet
long and two or three feet high. But generally these do not go beyond
the first few courses, and then comes unsquared stone, and very often
cob on top. In most of the old buildings here the walls are constructed
with an inner and an outer face of unsquared stone and a core of mortar
or cement. If the core decays, the stones get loose; and, if a stone
falls out, others may
[Illustration: THE PIXEY GARDEN (_pp. 35, 36_)]
go after it, the edges being unsquared, and then the whole structure may
come tumbling down.
At the inn at Manaton I once heard a group of old inhabitants talking
over various buildings that had fallen down, and quarrelling as to which
of them had made the greatest noise in falling. Here at Wreyland the end
wall of the Tallet--some 40 tons--fell out into the orchard in the
twilight of a Sunday evening as people were on their way to church. “And
Miss Mary *****, her were a-passin’ at the time; and, when her come in
afterward, her said in all her born days her never beheld such a noise.”
* * * * *
People talk as though there was no jerry-building in the olden times. I
believe the jerry-builder was as busy then as now, but his buildings
have all tumbled down and been forgotten long ago. Only the best of the
old buildings have lasted until now; and these are constantly in need of
structural repair. I have overhauled a good many of these buildings; and
by the time I have underpinned the walls, and grouted them, and done all
the other necessary things, I always find I could have got a better
result by taking them right down, and setting them up again on fresh
foundations. And no one would have known the difference. At the lower
end of Souther Wreyland there is a chimney-stack that looks as venerable
as anything here. I built it new in 1906 from its foundation to its
summit: there was nothing there before.
If one had merely to repair a building as an ancient monument, there
would be comparatively little trouble. But there is serious trouble,
when one wishes to retain the characteristics of a building, and yet
meet modern needs with bath-rooms and the like. Bed-rooms used to open
into one another, and you had to pass through other rooms to reach your
own; but people now object to that. If the roof slopes down towards the
outer walls, one cannot always get height enough for a passage without
encroaching too much upon the rooms; and one does better then by putting
in more staircases, each giving access to a group of rooms. This house
has three main staircases, and no passages upstairs, except a short one
that I built in 1899. Others have as many staircases, and passages as
well; and people say that they are like the countryside--all lanes and
hills.
In dealing with the Hall House, I decided not to sacrifice the
Seventeenth Century work in order to restore the Fourteenth, though the
restoration would have been of interest. There was originally a hall,
with a screen across it, and a gallery projecting out beyond the screen
on corbels. Subsequently the floor of the gallery was carried on across
the hall, and the front of the gallery was carried up to the roof, thus
making two rooms upstairs, and two down below, divided by the screen.
These four rooms are useful, and the hall would have been very useless,
as no courts are held for Wreyland manor now.
My great-great-grandfather Nelson Beveridge Gribble was lord of Wreyland
manor, but always lived in this house--Yonder Wreyland--and never at the
Hall House. I believe he held Court Baron and Court Leet and View of
Frankpledge in the Lower Parlour here; and it must have been
unpleasantly crowded, if the Homage and the Tithing came here in full
force.
* * * * *
The last sitting of the court was held on 14 February 1871. I have
printed the record of the sittings from 1437 to 1441, from 1479 to 1501,
and from 1696 to 1727, _Wreyland Documents_, pp. 1-88, and have said
there (pp. i-c) all I have to say about the history of this manor.
In 1898 I became a tenant of a manor in which admission is “by the
verge.” The verge is a wooden staff or rod; and the steward of the manor
holds one end, and the tenant holds the other, while they say the
operative words. I thought the ceremony would be interesting, and might
be picturesque; so I went myself, instead of doing it by deputy. The
scene was a solicitor’s office of the most prosaic kind with
type-writers and telephones. The steward was seated at an American desk;
and, when I looked round for the verge, he said, “I haven’t got a stick,
but this ’ll do.” And he took up a pencil (made in Austria) and held it
out to me.
There was a pleasant old house at Becky Fall, burnt down on 18 April
1875, and rebuilt as one sees it now; and I have a full-length portrait
of my great-great-great-grandfather, John Langworthy, sitting in the
porch there. He has been described as “reading his bible, and looking as
if he didn’t believe a word of it,” but it really is a law-book. The
painter was Thomas Rennell. There are many pictures of his in
Devonshire, mostly labelled Reynolds by mistake for Rennell. Sir Joshua
and he were fellow-pupils in Hudson’s studio in London, but had not much
in common afterwards.
Becky was a lonesome place till the new Manaton road was made, but now
lies open to excursionists, and has lost something of its charm. While
the old house remained, I coveted it more than this. It passed from John
Langworthy to his daughter Honor, the wife of Nelson Beveridge Gribble,
and then to their eldest son John Gribble, and to his eldest surviving
son John Beveridge Gribble, who very soon got rid of it. He claimed
Wreyland also as the heir, but found there was a settlement. He died
here in this house on 18 August 1891, just ninety years after the death
of his elder brother.
His father did not live here after he grew up, and this house was let to
Captain Thomas Moore for several years. Moore was on the Genoa at the
battle of Navarino, 20 October 1827, and ten days afterwards he died of
wounds.
John Beveridge Gribble had an amateur knowledge of architecture, and
also a little practical knowledge, picked up from a cousin who was an
architect. A barn was being built upon some sloping ground near here;
and, on seeing the foundations and the beginning of the walls, he told
the builders that the whole thing would slip down, when they had reached
a certain height. When they reached that height, it slipped down as he
said; and they all marvelled at the prophecy. There were many false
prophets here, when the railway was being made. They had never seen a
skew-arch before, or even heard of such a thing; and they said these
arches would come down as soon as the frames were taken out.
One of the old masons here would never condescend to use a plumb-line on
his work. He said that he could tell if a wall was straight by just
puttin’ his leg ag’in’n. Another said that he could do it with his eye.
They, and others like them, are commemorated in the contour of the
walls.
On many of the older houses round about here, one sees a board with the
word “dairy” fixed up above a door or window. These boards are relics of
the window-tax, as exemption could be claimed for the window of a dairy
or a cheese-room, if “dairy” or “cheese-room” was painted up outside.
There is a board with “dairy” at the back of this house. It seems to
cover two windows now; but these are really the ends of one wide window.
I had to block the centre up with walling, to support the bath-room that
I built in 1904 above the former dairy.
Many of these houses also have windows that were stopped up, when the
window-tax was heavy, and were not brought into use again, when it was
abolished. I have opened up quite a dozen of them in my buildings. A
window was not freed from the tax, unless it was stopped up with stone
or brick or plaster; but usually the frame was left, and only needed
glazing, when the stopping was removed.
The window-tax goes back to 1695, but many of these windows are of later
date than that. The tax did not become oppressive until after 1784. In
that year the tax on a house of ten windows was raised from 11_s._ 4_d._
to £1. 4_s._ 4_d._, to £1. 12_s._ 0_d._ in 1802, and to £2. 16_s._ 0_d._
in 1808. On a house of twenty windows it was raised from £1. 14_s._
8_d._ to £4. 9_s._ 8_d._ in 1784, to £7. 10_s._ 0_d._ in 1802, and to
£11. 4_s._ 6_d._ in 1808. And on a house of thirty windows from £3.
3_s._ 0_d._ to £7. 13_s._ 0_d._ in 1784, to £13. 0_s._ 0_d._ in 1802,
and to £19. 12_s._ 6_d._ in 1808. It thus became worth while to block up
windows; and this, I believe, was the period when most of these windows
were blocked up. Window-tax had been imposed in place of hearth-money,
the notion being that the number of the windows would indicate the value
of the house. But it played havoc with the health of the community, as
people were willing to live and sleep in rooms with neither light nor
air, in order to escape the tax.
The same thing happened with ships. Dues were levied on tonnage; and
formerly the tonnage of a ship was calculated from her length and
breadth, the depth being reckoned as half the breadth, which was about
the usual ratio when the rule was made. If the depth was more than half
the breadth, the ship carried more cargo without any increase in the
tonnage or the dues. And the result was that ships were built deeper and
deeper, until the depth came to be about three-quarters of the breadth,
and they became unsafe and foundered.
Then came the Act of 1854, which put tonnage on the basis of a ton for
every hundred cubic feet of space inside the ship, excepting space
required for engines, crew, coal, etc. But space was reckoned in a way
that led to unforeseen results. If a screw-steamer of 3000 tons had an
engine-space of 380 tons, or 38,000 cubic feet, she was allowed a
further 285 tons as coal-space; but, if her engine-space was brought up
to 400 tons, the allowance was 560 tons. And in powerful tugs the
deductions often came to more than the total from which they were to be
deducted. Their nett tonnage being registered as 0, these vessels had no
dues to pay.
In going through old books that had been packed away here, I found the
first edition of Lloyd’s _Register of British and Foreign Shipping_. It
is dated in October 1834; and, including the supplement, it gives
particulars of about 13,850 ships. On looking through them, I cannot
find more than forty ships of above a thousand tons. The largest is of
1515 tons, the next of 1488 and the next of 1469; then come eleven of
1440 to 1403, eighteen of 1380 to 1311, three of 1286 to 1256, one of
1175, and four of 1068 to 1013. All forty are of the Port of London.
Below the thousand tons, there is one of 993 and one of 987, then nine
of 894 to 802, fifteen of 773 to 701, forty-three of 695 to 602, and a
hundred and ten of 600 to 501. Thus (unless I have overlooked some) the
ships of above 500 tons number 219 altogether, which is only about a
sixty-third part of the total number on the Register.
In the Register for 1841, which I found here also, there are only
eighteen ships of above a thousand tons. It gives only fifteen of the
forty that were given in 1834: eight built of teak in the East Indies in
1798 to 1816, and seven built on the Thames in 1817 to 1827. And there
are only three new ships of that tonnage, one of 1070, built at
Amsterdam, and one of 1064 and one of 1267, both built in Canada.
In the 1834 edition the abbreviations Sr. and St. stand for schooner and
schoot, not for steamer, as one might surmise; and the rules are framed
for sailing-ships, with a few additional rules “for ships navigated by
steam.” There are inquiries for the diameter of the paddle-wheels, and
the length and breadth of the paddles, but no inquiries as to screws.
I can remember the Channel Fleet lying in Torbay with one of the old
“seventy-fours” carrying the admiral’s flag. She was the Edgar, a wooden
two-decker of 3094 tons, fitted with a funnel and a screw, but otherwise
not unlike the ships of Nelson’s time. That was on 2 September 1864. One
day in November 1916 I noticed an unusual number of steamers lying in
Torbay, and found that they were sheltering from an enemy submarine
outside. I felt that times had changed.
* * * * *
In the old letters and diaries here I find many words and phrases that
have now gone out of use. The garden was ‘very rude,’ when it was
untidy. A man was ‘thoughtful,’ when he was cunning, and ‘high-minded,’
when he was pretentious; and was a ‘patriot,’ when he was a profiteer.
People were ‘confined,’ when they were kept indoors by any kind of
illness; and some invalid old ladies had three or four ‘confinements’
every year. They all ‘used’ exercise, and did not take it; nor did they
ever take tea. “We drank tea with Mrs ***** at Moreton, and Jane was on
the carpet all the while: she has been to Exeter without a bonnet.” I do
not know why people drag in scraps of French like ‘chaperon’ and ‘sur le
tapis,’ nor why they follow Anglo-Indians in saying ‘pucka’ for
‘proper.’
Hearing a good deal of laughter in the lane, I inquired what was going
on. And the answer was brought back:--“Please, zir, it be little Freddie
***** a-tryin’ to say swear-words, and he cannot form’n proper.”
I once said a swear-word here--at least, they thought I did. A bee was
pestering me persistently one afternoon, while I was sitting in the
garden; and at last in a moment of irritation I called it a coleopterous
creature. Someone heard me, and afterwards I heard him telling someone
else:--“He were a-swearin’ fine: called ’n bally-wopserous.”
A few years ago there was a child in the village, who was so absurdly
like the Flora in the _Primavera_ that we always called her the little
Botticelli. But this disquieted her mother; and she sent up to say that
she would like to know the meaning of that word.
Being of opinion that some fields near here would never yield enough to
cover their rent, the farmer’s wife approached the landlord in this
way:--“‘But, maister,’ saith I, ‘us cannot pluck feathers from a toad.’
And he saith, ‘so I’ve heard tell afore now, and I believe ’t be true’.”
It is just the metaphor they use in France:--“Il est chargé d’argent
comme un crapaud de plumes.” And when someone did a work of
supererogation here, the comment was strangely like “le Bon Dieu rit
énormément.”
* * * * *
Devonshire speech is not capricious, but has a syntax of its own. The
classic phrase is ‘her told she.’ A pious person told me that ‘us didn’t
love He, ’twas Him loved we.’ They never say ‘we are,’ but ‘us be’ or
else ‘we am,’ contracted into ‘we’m.’ They say ‘I be’ as well as ‘I’m,’
but never ‘me’m’ or ‘me be,’ though invariably ‘me and Jarge be,’ or ‘me
and Urn,’ or whatever the name is, and never ‘Ernest and I’ or ‘George
and I.’ They say ‘to’ for ‘at’--‘her liveth to Moreton’--and formerly
said ‘at’ for ‘to’--‘I be goin’ at Bovey’--but now it is the fashion to
say ‘as far as’ Bovey.--A complete Grammar might be compiled.
Happily, the school has not taught them English that is truly up to
date. They have not learned to say:--“The weather conditions being
favourable, the psychological moment was indulged in.” They still
say:--“As ’twere fine, us did’n.” And their pronunciation is unchanged:
beetles are bittles, beans are banes, and Torquay is Tarkay.
Down here the Education Act of 1870 was not altogether a success. There
had been a school in Lustleigh since 1825, maintained by a small
endowment and the fees. Only the brightest children went there, and the
others did not go to school at all. Had it gone on after 1870 as a
higher-grade school, it might have done much service here; but the
trustees shut it--by a breach of trust, so far as I can see. The bright
children had to go to the board-school with the others who were not so
bright; and their progress was retarded by these others, as the staff
was never large enough to take them separately. As it is, I think more
progress might be made, if the classes were only half the size, and the
children were only half the time in school, some going in the morning
and others in the afternoon.
In most of the parishes round here there are cottages too far away for
young children to attend school in all weathers. As a rule, the
able-bodied men have always got young children--families are long, and
spread over many years. There is thus a difficulty in getting suitable
tenants for these cottages; and many of them have been allowed to go to
ruin, after being unoccupied for some long time. Families move down into
villages, which now have many of the defects of a town, without its
merits; and real country life is dying out--an unforeseen result of
Education Acts.
Agriculture has suffered from a cause that seems equally
remote--“farm-house lodgings.” People say that farms are let at so much
per acre, but all farms have a house, and the house will often pay the
rent; and, when the house does that, the farmer is less careful of his
land. The profit is not only from the letting of the rooms, but from
selling butter, eggs, fowls, etc., without the trouble and expense of
going to market, and often (I am told) at more than market prices.
People crowd down here in summer, and will put up with any kind of
lodging, as they mean to be out-doors all day. I have heard of rooms
with “Wash in the Blood of the Lamb” in illuminated letters, where there
should be a wash-stand. But this craze for rustic lodgings is
comparatively new. My grandfather writes to my father, 16 January
1862:--“Tremlett they say will leave Lustleigh at Ladyday, and Hurston
of Way has taken Harton and will leave Way, even Crideford (who used to
let one room) will leave on Ladyday for Torquay: so no lodgers will come
to Lustleigh. Perhaps when the railway comes, there may be
accommodation.”
Like many other country places, Lustleigh started a flower-show, which
soon became a show of vegetables and poultry, with fewer prizes for
flowers than for such things as cream and honey, needlework and cookery.
There were athletic sports as well, and kiss-in-the-ring and dancing on
the grass to the strains of a brass band, the church bells ringing
changes while the brass band played--a proper old Pandy Romy Un, as some
one called it, meaning Pandemonium, I think. People came to it from a
distance, as it was held on the bank-holiday in August, and they could
spend their morning on the Cleave and finish off with this.