DOWNDERRY--LOOE--TALLAND--POLPERRO--LANTEGLOS-JUXTA-FOWEY
The country of this Mount Edgcumbe peninsula is beautifully wooded.
Inland from Millbrook towards Antony again, you come to St. John's,
a pretty village, with an old church and plenteous elms. And then,
having explored the peninsula, the way out to the coast line on to
Looe is up again to Tregantle, whence a coastwise road leads past
Crafthole and Portwrinkle to Downderry. Those places may easily be
dismissed, together with the coast on which they stand. They are quite
recent collections of houses, mostly of an extremely commonplace
plastered type, devoted to letting lodgings for the summer months.
Their situation has nothing to recommend it, for the coastline here is
quite bald and uninteresting, and the country immediately in the rear
is for the most part treeless downs. Downderry is the largest of these
settlements. Those who merely follow the coast-road through Downderry
will never appreciate the exquisite appropriateness of that name. The
gradients that way are not steep. But let Downderry be approached
from the direction of St. Germans, and the steep two-miles' descent
shall prove there to be something in a name. At the same time, it is
but fair to add that the name did not derive from the hills, but from
_Dun-derru_, _i.e._ "Oak Bank."
Beyond Downderry the road descends to a marshy valley crossed by a
small stone bridge, at the point where a stream hesitates between
percolating through the sands and running back upon itself to convert
the marshy vale into a lake. This is marked on the maps "Seaton,"
but for town or village, or even hamlet, the stranger will look in
vain. From this point it is a long four miles into Looe, and I can
honestly say that, whichever way you go, by the road leading inland,
and incidentally as steep as the roof of a house, or by the cliffs,
in places considerably steeper, you will wish you had gone the other
way. For indeed both ways are deadly dull. Coming on a first occasion
by road the reverse way, from Looe, an old man, indicating the way,
remarked that it would be a very good road "ef 'twadden for th' yills.
Ye goo up th' yill, and ye tarn" (I forget where you turn), "an' then
ye goo straight down th' yill to Satan."
As one had not at that time heard of Seaton, this final descent had a
certain awful speculative interest.
Even the cliff route into Looe ends at last. There, almost hanging
over the brink of Looe, as it were, you realise for the first time, in
all the way from Rame, that you are really in Cornwall, for the coast
has hitherto lacked the rugged beauty that is found almost everywhere
else. But Looe makes an honourable amende. It might not unfittingly
typify Cornwall. Conceive two closely-packed little towns down there
(for there are two Looes, East and West), fringing the banks of an
extremely narrow and rocky estuary, widening as it goes inland; and
imagine just offshore on the further side a craggy island, and there
you have the seaward aspect of the place. Looe has been considerably
altered during the last few years, but it can never be a typical
seaside place; its physical peculiarities forbid that. It has no
sea-front, and possesses only the most microscopic of beaches, just
large enough to hold a few boats and to launch the lifeboat. The life
of the Looes, East or West, is all along the streets and quay beside
the estuary. The place is, as it were, a smaller Dartmouth, but with
the added convenience of a bridge crossing the Looe River, half a mile
from the sea.
The Looe River is partly an actual river, but very much more of a
creek: a lakelike creek at high water, dividing above the bridge into
two creeks, into which freshwater streams trickle from Liskeard and
the Bodmin moors. Looe, in fact, takes its name from these lakelike
estuaries. It signifies "lake," and has a common ancestry in the Welsh
"llwch" and the Gaelic "loch." Thus in speaking of Looe River "we
admit not only a redundancy but actually a contradiction. There are
two Looes, or lakes, the East and the West, just as there are the two
towns so-called. Between these two waters, three miles inland, is the
rustic village of Duloe, whose name is supposed to have originally
been "Dew Looe," _i.e._, the Two Looes. "But there has always been
great variety of opinion about this, and old writers on Cornwall have
variously considered it to be "Du Looe," or "God's Lake," or "Du Looe"
(spelled the same way), "Black Lake." A resourceful antiquary has, in
addition, pointed out the difficulties of finding the true origin of
place-names by advancing no fewer than six other possible origins:--
Dehou-lo = south pool.
Dour-looe = water lake.
Dewedh-looe = boundary lake.
Du-low = black barrow.
Dewolow = the devils.
Du (or tu) looe = Lake-side.
[Illustration: LOOE.]
The "black-barrow" or "devils" derivations, it is said, might come from
the remains of a prehistoric stone circle still existing at Duloe,
where eight stones from four to ten feet high, are still standing. They
may have once formed an awe-inspiring sight to the early peoples who
gave names to places.
The foregoing is, however, only an exercise in possibilities, intended
as a warning to those who make certain of meanings; the probabilities
rest with "Dew Looe."
East Looe, formerly called Portuan, as its old borough seal shows,
is the larger of the twin towns. It has a Town Hall, retaining the
porch of an older building with the old pillory; and a church whose
only old part is a singularly sturdy and clumsy tower. It is equally
puzzling to find the church and the tiny beach of Looe in the maze of
narrow alleys. West Looe has also its church, very much of a curiosity,
in a humble way. Its slender campanile tower, properly introduced
into a view, makes a picture of the brother town across the water.
Years ago, this church was desecrated in many ways. Among other uses
it was made to do duty for a town hall and as a room for theatrical
entertainments.
Along the West Looe water is the lovely inlet of Trelawne Mill, just
above the bridge, with dense woods clothing the hillsides and mirrored
in the still waters. Here is Trelawne, seat of the Trelawny family
since the time of Sir Jonathan Trelawny, Bishop of Bristol, and
afterwards successively of Exeter and Winchester, one of the Seven
Bishops sent to imprisonment in the Tower of London by James the Second
in 1688. The "Song of the Western Men," written by Hawker, using the
old refrain, "And shall Trelawny die?" refers to that occasion:--
"A good sword and a trusty hand!
A merry heart and true!
King James's men shall understand
What Cornish lads can do.
And have they fixed the where and when?
And shall Trelawny die?
Here's twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why."
The "Jolly Sailor" Inn at West Looe is perhaps the most picturesque
building in the little town, whose long steep street goes staggering
up towards Talland, and its toppling chimney is a familiar object.
It is not so much an accidental as an intentional slant, designed to
counteract the down-draught of the winds.
[Illustration: THE "JOLLY SAILOR," LOOE.]
Talland, situated on the hill overlooking the solitary bight of
Talland Bay, is just a church, a vicarage, and the old manor-house
of Killigarth. The church is one of the six in Cornwall which have
detached towers. The others are St. Feock, Gunwalloe, Mylor, Lamorran,
and Gwennap. Part of Talland church is Early English, the rest
Perpendicular. It contains, among other memorials, a monument to "John
Bevyll of Kyllygath," 1570, with an effigy of him carved in relief on
slate, and a long metrical epitaph, full of curious obsolete heraldic
terms. If you seek to know anything of the marryings and intermarriages
of the Bevill family, be sure that this monument sets them forth in
full detail; and the fine bench-ends take up the story, and tell it
abundantly in shields of many quarterings.
[Illustration: TALLAND CHURCH.]
Talland was in the old smuggling days exceptionally notorious for
the frequent landings of contraband on the lonely little beach below
the church, and "Parson Dodge" was a famous devil-queller and layer
of spirits, far and near. But he could not, or would not, lay the
mischievous sprites who haunted his own churchyard, and were, in fact,
not supernatural beings at all, but smugglers in disguise, whose
interests lay in making Talland a place to be shunned at nights. There
is a great deal of smuggling history connected with Talland, and among
the grotesque epitaphs in the churchyard there is even one to the
memory of a smuggler, who was shot in an encounter with the Preventive
Service.[A]
The cliffs between Talland and Polperro are in places fast crumbling
away, and no one seems in the least concerned to do anything; perhaps
because anything that might be done would presently be undone again by
the sea. "Ye med so well throw money in the sea as spend et on mending
they cliffs," is the local opinion. At Polperro itself the cliffs are
of dark slate, and seem almost as hard as iron.
I suppose no one will deny Polperro the dignity of being the most
picturesque village on the south coast of Cornwall. The place-name
means "Peter's Pool," and the sea does indeed exactly form a pool
in the little harbour at high water, retreating entirely from it at
the ebb. The entrance from the open sea is a narrow passage between
headlands of dark slate, whose characteristic stratification produces
weird spiny outlines and needle-like points, inclined at an angle to
the horizon. On the western of these two headlands formerly stood
a chapel dedicated to St. Peter, the peculiar patron of fishermen.
Instead of anything in that sort, the cliffs now exhibit a monster
black and white lattice hoarding, as though a mad Napoleon of
advertising had proposed to celebrate some one's pills and soap, and
had been hauled off to a lunatic asylum before he could complete his
project. A similarly hideous affair infests the cliffs by Talland, a
mile away. They are, however, not advertising freaks, but structures
placed by the Admiralty to mark a measured mile for the steam-trials
of new vessels. The artist-colony at Polperro, a large community, is
rightly indignant at this uglification, but fortunately it is not seen
all over Polperro.
The little town is in every way a surprise and a curiosity, and in
most ways a delight. The stone piers that project from either side of
the entrance to the harbour leave a space for entrance so narrow that
it is commonly closed in stormy weather by dropping stout baulks of
timber into grooves let into the pier-heads. The chief industries of
Polperro are the pilchard-fishery and the painting of pictures, and
it is because of the commercial, as well as the æsthetic, interest of
the artistic community, in preserving the old-world picturesqueness
of Polperro, that the wonderful old place remains so wonderful and
retains its appearance of age. The rough cobble-stones that have mostly
disappeared from other fisher villages are left in their wonted places,
and when the local authority a little while ago removed some, in the
innovating way that local authorities have, the loud cries of protest
that were made speedily caused the replacement of them. I do not think
there is any other place, even in Cornwall, which is situated in so
sudden and cup-like a hollow as Polperro, and with houses so closely
packed together and staged so astonishingly above one another. Port Loe
nearly approaches it, but that place is much smaller.
[Illustration: OLD BRIDGE, POLPERRO.]
The time for sketching and seeing Polperro at its best is in the
sweet of the morning, before the tender light of the sun's uprising
has given place to the fierce sunshine of the advancing forenoon. A
pearly opalescent haze then pervades the scene, in which the shadows
are luminous. Then the smoke from the clustered chimneys of Polperro
ascends lazily from the sheltered hollow: breakfast is preparing.
Polperro is unquestionably in many ways old England of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, surviving vigorously into the twentieth. The
artist, sketching here, is startled at frequent intervals by glissades
of slops, flung by housewives, adopting the "line of least resistance,"
over the rocks into the harbour. It is a custom that makes him nervous
at first, but he gets used to it. At Polperro, it is always well, in
seeking a picturesque corner, say half-way down, below any houses, to
make quite sure (if in any way possible to make sure), that one is
not in the line of discharge of any liquids or solids that in more
conventional places are deposited in the ash-bin or thrown into the
sink.
Many odd old cottages remain here, some of them with outside
staircases, and most roughly built of granite and slate, and
whitewashed. The chief industry of Polperro is evident, not only in
the fishy smells, or in the fishing-boats and the appearance of the
people; but its specialised character is hinted at by the sign of the
humble "Three Pilchards" inn on the quay, near the old weigh-beam.
Good catches of pilchards or bad make all the difference here, where
these peculiarly Cornish fish are largely prepared and packed for
export to Italy. An Italian packing-house has indeed an establishment
on the quay. The salted pilchards, long since known among the Cornish
as "Fair maids" from the Italian "fumadoes"--the original method of
preserving them having been by drying in smoke--are the chief source of
the Polperro fishermen's livelihood. Thus the time-honoured toast of
these otherwise sturdy Protestants:
"Here's a health to the Pope; may he never know sorrow,
With pilchards to-day and pilchards to-morrow.
Good luck to His Holiness; may he repent,
And add just six months to the length of his Lent;
And tell all his vassals from Rome to the Poles,
There's nothing like pilchards for saving their souls."
[Illustration: POLPERRO.]
Others beside the fisherfolk rejoice when the fishery is good. I refer
to the gulls. Nowhere is the seagull happier than in Cornwall, if
immunity from attack and the certainty of plenty to eat constitute
happiness in the scheme of existence as it is unfolded to gulls. The
Wild Birds' Protection Act is scarcely necessary for the protection
of gulls in Cornwall, and the birds are so used to this affectionate
tolerance that it might almost be denied that they are wild, except
technically. I am afraid the gull presumes not a little upon all this.
He seems to know that the fishermen dare not punish him, if sometimes
they feel inclined, for to ill-treat a gull is notoriously the way in
Cornwall to bring bad luck; and although they are incredibly ravenous
eaters of fish, it is one of the fisher-folk's most deeply rooted
convictions that the boats are lucky in proportion to the numbers
of gulls that accompany them. There is, of course, a good reason
at bottom for this, because the gulls are the first to note the
whereabouts of the fish, and scream and swoop down upon the shoals long
before any human eye can detect their existence. The gulls go out with
the boats and come back with them, and often they are the first to
return; the winged couriers who awaken the little port with news of the
home-coming of its men.
When the boats are in harbour, the gulls are at home, too. Every
roof-ridge is alive with them, and they even take an intelligent
interest in the domestic cooking. It is one of the most ridiculous
sights to observe a gull perched on the edge of a chimney-pot smelling
the odours that come up from cottage chimneys. When the tide is out,
the gulls quest diligently in the ooze and scavenge all the offal that
is plentifully flung into the harbour, for there is nothing nice in the
feeding of a gull. Dead kittens and dogs come as handy and as tasty
morsels as potatoes and cabbage-stalks. I have even seen a gull steal
and bolt a pudding-cloth; but what happened to him afterwards I don't
know. There are, indeed, few things a gull will not steal. The dogs
and cats in Polperro have even developed a way of furtively glancing
up at the roofs, for the gulls swoop down like lightning when the
cats' dinners are put outside, and their food is gone on the instant.
Thus you will notice the cats run to cover with their meal, while the
dogs do the like, or are careful to place one paw on their bone, lest
it be snatched away in a twinkling. Nay, worse; the gull ashore will
kill rabbits, rob nests, steal chickens, and poach young pheasants;
and the "jowster" who hawks fish through the villages not infrequently
finds his stock depleted through the same agency. And yet the gull is
suffered gladly. He is the most privileged and the hungriest thief in
existence.
A valley road leads inland from Polperro to the hamlet of Crumplehorn,
a pretty spot whose name originated I know not how. The coastwise road
goes through Lansallos to Fowey.
"A bit of a nip" they call the sharp road on the way to Lansallos, by
which you see that the old word "knap," for a hill, is degenerating.
Lansallos church tower, in rather a crazy condition, is a prominent
landmark. The coast-line beyond Lansallos juts out at Pencarrow Head,
a "cliff-castle" promontory, whose name comes from "Pen-caerau," the
fortified headland. There are several shades of meaning in "caer," of
which "caerau" is the plural form. It may indicate a town, a castle,
a dwelling, or a camp, just as a dwelling in remote times was of
necessity fortified against attack.
Lanteglos, inland from Pencarrow, is like Lansallos, lonely,
but it is tenderly cared for, after long neglect. The full name
of it, "Lanteglos-juxta-Fowey," sounds urban. The tall granite,
fifteenth-century canopied cross, standing by the south porch, was
discovered some eighty years ago, buried in the churchyard. Among the
brasses in the church is one for John Mohun and his wife, who died in
1508 of the "sweating sickness."
Polruan, the "Pool of St. Ruan," at the foot of the steep road leading
down from Lanteglos, is a sort of poor relation of the prosperous town
and port of Fowey over there, across the so-called "Fowey River," which
here and for five miles up inland is a salt estuary, with smaller
divergent creeks. The beauty of Fowey and its river unfolds with new
delights at every stroke of the oars, as the ferry-boat, gliding
through the translucent green sea-water, brings one across to the town
quay.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] See "The Smugglers," pp. 143-147.