SALTASH--SALTASH BRIDGE--TREMATON CASTLE--ST.
GERMANS--ANTONY--RAME--MOUNT EDGCUMBE--MILLBROOK
The name "Saltash" simply means "salt water"--the "ash" having
originally been the Celtic "esc." Salt water is found, as a matter of
fact, as far up river as Calstock, but here it is, by all manner of
authorities, that the river Tamar, the "taw mawr," or "great water,"
joins that broad and often extremely rough and choppy estuary, the
Hamoaze: "Hem-uisc," the border water.
[Illustration: PLYMOUTH SOUND, THE HAMOAZE, AND THE TAMAR.]
Saltash is a borough-town of an antiquity transcending that of
Plymouth, and the rhyme
"Saltash wer' a borough town,
When Plymouth wer' a vuzzy down,"
is equally proud and true. It was once also a Parliamentary borough,
but that glory has faded away. Yet once more, it is in Cornwall, and
that, according to any true Cornishman, is far better than being in
Devonshire. So Saltash is amply blest. And if to these dignities we
add the material advantage of possessing jurisdiction over Hamoaze,
down even to Plymouth Sound, and over all its creeks, we shall
see that Saltash does right to be proud. It was by virtue of the
borough authority over those waterways that Saltash was enabled to
be so splendidly patriotic in the time of good Queen Bess. At that
period the harbour dues were one shilling for an English ship, and
two shillings for a foreigner. After the Armada Saltash levied an
extra discriminatory five shillings upon Spanish vessels. Among the
Corporation regalia is a silver oar, typifying this jurisdiction.
[Illustration: SALTASH BRIDGE.]
It is perhaps a little grievous, after all these noble and impressive
things, to learn that Saltash church, which crests the hill on whose
steep sides the town is built, is really, although very ancient, not a
church, but a chapelry of St. Stephen's, a quite humble village inland,
on the way to Trematon. And there is one other thing: Saltash cannot
see its own picturesqueness, any more than one can see the crown of
one's head, except for artificial aid. The mirror by which Saltash is
enabled to see itself is the Devonshire shore, and across the quarter
of a mile to it the steam-ferry, that plies every half-hour or less,
will take you for one penny. From that point of view, not only Saltash,
but also the best picture of Saltash Bridge is to be had: that giant
viaduct which carries the Great Western Railway across from Devon to
Cornwall in single track, at a height of 100 feet above the water.
Saltash Bridge--no one calls it by its official name, the "Royal Albert
Bridge"--has in all nineteen spans, and is 2,240 feet long; but its
great spectacular feature is provided by the two central spans of 455
feet each. Twelve years were occupied in building, and it was opened
in 1859. The name of I. K. Brunel, the daring engineer, is boldly
inscribed on it. There is a story told of some one asking Brunel how
long it would last.
"A hundred years," said he.
"And then?"
"Then it will no longer be needed."
There is a good deal more work in Saltash Bridge than is visible to the
eye, the stone base of the central pier going down through seventy feet
of water and a further twenty feet of sand and gravel, to the solid
rock. The cost of the bridge is said to have been £230,000.
Great ships may easily pass under the giant building, and old wooden
men-o'-war lie near at hand, giving scale to it, including the _Mount
Edgcumbe_ training-ship, the _Implacable_, and an old French hulk.
This way came the Romans into Cornwall, their post, _Statio Tamara_,
established on the Devonshire side at what is now King's Tamerton. And
this way came the Normans, building a strong fortress nearly two miles
west of Saltash, at Trematon, on a creek of the Lynher river. They are
"proper rough roads" and steep that lead to Trematon Castle. You come
to it by way of the hamlet of Burraton Combe and the village of St.
Stephen's-by-Saltash. At Burraton some old cottages are seen with a
half-defaced tablet on them, once covered over with plaster. Most of
the plaster has now fallen off, revealing this inscription, which some
one, long ago, was evidently at some pains to conceal:
"This almshouse is the gift of James Buller of Shillingham, Esq.,
deceased, whose glorious memory as well as illustrious honours ought
not to be forgotten but kept, as 'tis to be hoped they will, in
euerlasting remembrance, decem^r. y^e 6 in y^e yeare of our Lord 1726."
A shield, displaying four spread eagles, surmounts these praises to the
illustrious Buller, whose honours and glorious memory are indeed clean
forgot.
Trematon Castle stands on the summit of a mighty steep hill, rising
from a creek branching out of a creek. At the head of this remote
tongue of water, where the salt tide idly laps, stands the hamlet of
Forder. Turner painted Trematon Castle, and in his day the crenellated
walls of that amazing strong place could easily be seen from the creek.
In these latter days the trees of the Castle hill have grown so tall
and dense that little of the ancient stronghold can be glimpsed. A
carriage-road winds up the hill, for a residence--not in the least
pretending to be a castle, one is happy to say--stands in midst of the
fortress precincts.
[Illustration: TREMATON CASTLE.]
It is a peculiar castle, the "keep" crowning a lofty mound, difficult
of access, heaped upon the highest point of the hill, resembling that
of Totnes and some two or three others in the West country, which
exhibit vast circular battlemented walls, evidently never roofed nor
intended to be roofed. Below this keep is a wide grassy space now
occupied by the mansion and its beautiful rose and other gardens.
Entrance to this court was formerly obtained by a strong gateway tower
still remaining, but not now forming the approach; and around this
court ran another massive battlemented wall, most of it existing to
this day, and enclosed the castle. Such was the ancient hold of the
Valletorts, afterwards the property of the Duchy of Cornwall. Carew
finely describes the "ivy-tapissed walls"--it is a pretty expression,
thus likening the ivy to tapestry--and tells us how the Cornish rebels
of 1549, standing out for the old religion, treacherously invited the
governor, Sir Richard Grenville, outside, on pretence of a parley,
and then captured the castle and plundered at will. Then "the seely
gentlewomen, without regard of sex or shame, were stripped from their
apparel to their very smocks, and some of their fingers broken, to
pluck away their rings."
Just below Trematon Castle, passing under a viaduct of the Great
Western Railway, the creek opens out upon the broad and placid Lynher
river, exactly resembling a lake, as its name implies. Here are the
four or five cottages of Antony Passage, including a primitive inn.
Antony is nearly half a mile across the ferry, but the Lynher, or
"St. Germans River," as it is sometimes called, should certainly be
explored by boat for its length of four miles to St. Germans, the
prettily situated village where the ancient bishopric of Cornwall
was seated from its beginning in A.D. 909 until its transference to
Exeter in 1046; and where Port Eliot, the park and mansion of the
Earl of St. Germans, is placed. Ince Castle, a curious brick-built
sixteenth-century building, peers from the wooded shores on the way.
An Earl of Devon built it, and the Killigrews held it for a time. The
house has a tower at each of its four corners, and according to legend,
one of the Killigrews, a kind of double-barrelled bigamist, kept a wife
in each tower, ignorant of the others' existence.
[Illustration: ST. GERMANS.]
St. Germans, from being a borough, has declined to the condition of
a village, and a very beautiful and aristocratic-looking village it
is. The parish church stands on the site of the cathedral of the
ancient See of Cornwall, and, although practically nothing is left
of the original building, the great size and the unusual design
of the existing church in a great degree carry on the traditional
importance of the place. You perceive, glancing even casually at the
weird exterior, with its two strange western towers, square as to
their lower stages and octagonal above, that this has a story more
important than that of a mere parish church. The dedication is to St.
Germanus of Auxerre, a missionary to Britain in the fifth century. The
importance of the building is due to its having been collegiate. The
noble, if strange, west front is largely Norman, the upper stages of
the towers Early English and Perpendicular. The interior is Norman and
Perpendicular. It will at once be noticed that there is no north aisle.
It was demolished towards the close of the eighteenth century, in the
usual wanton eighteenth-century way. The only remaining fragment of the
ancient collegiate stalls is a mutilated miserere seat worked up into
the form of a chair. It is carved with a hunting-scene; a sportsman
carrying a hare over his shoulder, with animals resembling a singular
compromise between pigs and dogs, in front, and huge hell-hounds with
eyes like hard-boiled eggs, following.
St. Germans church is practically a mortuary chapel of the Eliot
family, and it stands, too, in the grounds of their seat, Port Eliot,
with the mansion adjoining.
[Illustration: MISERERE, ST. GERMANS.]
It was in 1565 that the Eliots first settled here. The Augustinian
Priory and its lands had been granted at the Dissolution to the
Champernownes, who exchanged it with the Eliots, who came from
Coteland, in Devon. The greatest of the Eliot race, Sir John,
Vice-Admiral in the West, and patriot Member of Parliament in
resistance to the arbitrary rule of Charles the First, paid the penalty
of his patriotism by death in the Tower of London in 1632, after
four-and-a-half years' captivity. His body does not lie here. "Let him
be buried in the parish in which he died," wrote the implacable king;
and he lies in the church of St. Peter-ad-Vincula, on Tower Green,
instead of at St. Germans, where his own people would have laid him.
Many monuments to Eliots stud the walls, and hatchments gloom in black
and heraldic colours, bearing their inspiring motto, _Præcedentibus
insta_, _i.e._, "Urge your way among the leaders," suggested, no doubt,
by the career of their great ancestor; but the inspiration has never
been keen enough to produce another great man from among them, and
since the Earldom of St. Germans was conferred in 1815 the Eliots have
been respectably obscured.
The Lynher river ends just beyond St. Germans at the village of
Polbathick. Other creeks branch out on either hand, like fingers;
beautifully wooded hillsides running down to them. At low water they
are mostly mud flats, with the gulls busily feasting in the ooze, but
when the tide flows they become still lakes, solitary except for a few
"farm-places" along their course. On a knoll, high above the Lynher,
the spire of Sheviock church peeps out. It is simply bathed in stucco.
Carew gives an amusing legend relating to the building of the church,
and tells how one of the Dawney family built it, while at the same
time his wife was engaged in building a barn. The cost of the barn was
supposed to have exceeded that of the church by three-halfpence; "and
so it might well fall out, for it is a great barn and a very little
church." It is a quaint legend, but there is no satisfaction to be got
in visiting the church, for it is not a "very little church," and the
barn with which it was compared is not now in existence.
Below Sheviock comes Antony, sometimes called "Antony-in-the-East," to
distinguish it from the two other Antonys, or Anthonys, in Cornwall.
Antony village stands high up on the hillside, and the park and mansion
of the same name, seat of the Pole-Carew family, are nearly two miles
away, down by Antony Passage, where the Lynher makes ready to join
Hamoaze. The park of Thanckes adjoins.
Antony church is approached by long flights of steps. It contains
a monument to Richard Carew, of Antony, author of the "Survey of
Cornwall," published in 1602, a work of mingled quaintness and grace.
He died in 1620, as his epitaph shows. The part of it in Latin was
written by his friend, Camden; the English verses are his own.
Antony lies directly upon the old coach road from Plymouth to Liskeard
and Falmouth, three miles from Torpoint, to which a steam-ferry, plying
every half-hour, brings the traveller from Devonport. Turner is said to
have greatly admired the view from the churchyard, but it is greatly
obscured in our own times by trees. The grandest of all views is the
astonishingly noble panoramic view of Plymouth and the Hamoaze, from
the summit of the road to Tregantle Fort. There the whole geography
of the district is seen unfolded, mile upon mile, with the three
towns of Plymouth, Devonport, and Stonehouse--to say nothing of Stoke
Damerel, Ford, Morice Town, and St. Budeaux--looking like some city
of the Blest, which we know not to be the case, and the great railway
bridge of Saltash resembling an airy gossamer. It is a view of views.
Incidentally, the panorama explains the existence here of Tregantle
Fort, and of that of Scraesdon, down by Antony. This elevated neck of
land commands Plymouth, which, with the arsenals and dockyards of
Devonport and Keyham, could be either taken in the rear or bombarded by
an enemy who could effect a landing in Whitesand Bay. Tregantle Fort,
mounting many heavy guns, therefore stands on the ridge, to prevent
such a landing, and a fine military road runs between it and Rame, a
distance of three miles, skirting the cliffs of Whitesand Bay. From the
hillsides you see the soldiers firing at targets in the sea--and never
hitting them. The way to Rame, along this military road, crosses lonely
downs, with the tempting sands of Whitesand Bay down below. The dangers
of this treacherous shore, often pointed out by guide-books, are made
manifest by an obelisk beside the road, on the brink of the low cliffs,
bearing an inscription to "Reginald Spender, aged 44, and his sons
Reginald and Sidney, aged 13 and 11, who were drowned while bathing,
Whit Sunday, June 9th, 1878."
At the end of the military road and its numerous five-barred gates,
the village of Rame, consisting of a small cluster of a church and
some farms screened by elms, stands in a sheltered fold of the hills.
The church, with needle spire, is an almost exact replica of that of
Sheviock, and, like it, has been covered with rough-cast plaster,
as thoroughly as a twelfth-cake is faced with sugar. It contains a
poor-box pillar, dated 1633. The lighting arrangements are in the
primitive form of paraffin candles on wooden staves. Rame Head,
almost islanded from the mainland, is the western point of the bold
promontory that encloses the Cornish side of Plymouth Sound. Penlee
Point is the eastern. "When Rame and Dodman meet" is a West-country
way of mentioning the impossible. The two headlands are twenty-seven
miles apart, in a straight line. Fuller, who dearly loved a conceit of
this kind, tells us that the meeting did actually come to pass when Sir
Piers Edgcumbe, who owned Rame, married a lady who brought him the land
including the Dodman. The small chapel of St. Michael on Rame Head,
long in ruins, has been restored by Lord Mount Edgcumbe.
Penlee Point looks directly upon the Sound: an inspiring sight in the
Imperial sort. It is indeed an epic of Empire, that broad waterway,
three miles across, with the great Breakwater straddling in its midst,
and shipping busily coming and going, and forts on land and battleships
on sea. And I wish the walking were not so rough, and the near contact
with the forts a little more martial and not so domestic. It resembles
tricks upon travellers to find that the signals flying from Picklecombe
Fort are not really, you know, signals when seen close at hand, but
shirts hung out to dry.
And so presently round to Cawsand Bay. First you come to Cawsand
and then Kingsand, villages not easily to be distinguished from one
another. Notorious in the eighteenth century for being a nest of daring
smugglers, these places nowadays form excursion resorts for afternoon
trippers from Plymouth, and almost every house supplies teas and
refreshments. But in spite of the crowds that resort to Cawsand and
Kingsand, they are sorry places, with a slipshod, poverty-stricken air.
Only the splendid views make them at all endurable.
Mount Edgcumbe is one of the great attractions for the people of
Plymouth. It is, of course, the private park of the Earl of Mount
Edgcumbe, but the Plymouth people have by long use come to look upon
the usual free access to it very much as a right, and the excursion
steamers from Plymouth to Cremyll would receive a severe blow if
the permission to wander here at large were withdrawn. The Duke of
Medina-Sidonia, Admiral commanding the Spanish Armada, is said to have
selected Mount Edgcumbe as his share of the spoil, when England should
be conquered. Contrary from all reasonable expectations, there was no
conquest, and consequently no spoils.
Maker church, on the heights above Mount Edgcumbe, commands panoramic
views over Hamoaze, and its tower was used in the old semaphore
signalling days, in connection with Mount Wise at Devonport and the
fleets at sea.
The proper local pronunciation of "Hamoaze" is shown in the ode written
by a parish clerk of Maker:
"Mount Edgcumbe is a pleasant place,
It looketh on Hamoaze,
And on it are some batteries
To guard us from our foes."
Equally fine, and more pictorially manageable views are those from the
"ruined chapel" down below. The "ruin" is indeed a sham ruin, and was
simply built for effect, but a fine effective foreground it makes,
with all Plymouth massed over yonder, and the Hoe with Smeaton's old
Eddystone tower prominent, and in the middle distance the fortified
rock of Drake's Island.
[Illustration: PLYMOUTH AND DRAKE'S ISLAND, FROM MOUNT EDGCUMBE.]
A deep inlet runs inland past Cremyll to Southdown and Millbrook,
whither frequent ferries also ply, at astonishing penny fares. At
Millbrook, too, every other house supplies teas to hungry and thirsty
crowds. You would not say the waters of Millbrook creek were altogether
salubrious, and the steamers' paddles stir them up sometimes with
desolating effect upon the nose, but the mackerel do not seem to be
adversely affected. Indeed, they appear rather to affect these turbid
and odorous waters, and may often be seen from the steamers leaping up
into the air. There are few more beautiful sights than those on the
return from Millbrook to Plymouth on a summer evening, when the moon
peers over the wooded shores and the mackerel leap and glitter in her
silver light.