NOOKS AND CORNERS FROM WIDEMOUTH BAY TO ST. TEATH
THE HEADLANDS
The cliffs from Marsland Mouth to Trevose Head are fine, much finer than
those on the better known south coast. The seas also are wilder, these
shores seeming to suffer from fiercer onslaughts of the Atlantic. On a
blustery day it is nothing to see the tortured waves break into a spray
that is flung full forty feet into the air, while except in sheltered
dips and coves--of which there are none too many in this part--neither
tree nor shrub can live. This gives the headlands a barren look, the
bold outlines are of grey boulders rather than vegetation, and behind
them on the windy downs crouch the grey hamlets and solitary farms. For
sheer beauty of crag and precipice, of mighty seas and broken slipped
sea-front, there is nothing in the duchy that can compare with this
piece of coast. Upon the great cliffs of Widemouth Bay, of which the
name is sufficiently descriptive, follow Dizzard Point (500 ft.) with
its landslip, Castle Point, so called from the circular earthwork on its
summit, Pencarrow Head (400 ft.), between which and Cambeak (500 ft.) at
the mouth of a wooded valley lies the lovely Crackington Cove and which
brings us to the High Cliff with its sheer drop of 735 ft. This last is
the highest in Cornwall, nearly double the height of the Dodman, that
glory of the southern coast, while it is far higher than the Land's End
and the Lizard. A little inland is yet higher ground, for Tresparret
Down, a barren and desolate heath, is some 850 ft. above sea level!
Somewhat to the north of the High Cliff is St. Genys, the saint of which
is said to have been one of three brothers, all of whom were beheaded.
This particular brother is believed to have walked about afterwards, his
head held under his arm, a proceeding which reminds us that "King
Charles walked and talked, half an hour after his head was cut off!"
There is here an interesting example of an Elizabethan communion cup and
paten cover, but it must be remembered that many cups of that date are
older in material than in shape. When the word cup was substituted for
chalice, we find by the churchwarden's accounts that the vessels were
frequently re-shaped. We have, for example, one of 1571, "to Iohn Ions,
goldsmith, for changing the chalice into a cup, L1 15_s_. 5_d_."
BOSCASTLE
After the High Cliff the shore gradually assumes a less terrific aspect,
until Boscastle, with its tiny firth and its blow-holes, is reached.
This little straggling place took its name from Botreaux Castle (or
Castel-boterel), which was built here in the twelfth century. The last
Lord Botreaux died in 1462, and of the castle only a grassy mount,
called Jordans, from a neighbouring stream, remains. This mount is on
the hill, that steep and wooded hill which leads down into Boscastle,
and on the sides of which the houses are hung like birds' nests on a
cliff.
At the end of the valley the hills unite into slaty cliffs which take a
sudden fjord-like turn before reaching the sea. This short and tiny
estuary cannot, of course, compare with the smallest of those winding
inlets which make the strange beauty of the Norwegian coast, inlets
whose walls would dwarf the High Cliff and whose majestic desolation
would make the barrenest headland in the west seem mild and fertile.
If the tide is in, the islet at the mouth of Boscastle Harbour sends up
sudden showers of spray which suggest a geyser, but are in reality due
to a blow-hole, and there is another on the mainland.
An ancient form of tenure survives here. The upper part of Forrabury
Common is divided into "stitches"--slips of land divided by boundary
marks only--and these stitches are held in severalty from Lady Day to
Michaelmas, the proprietors for the rest of the year stocking it in
common, according to the amount of their holdings. The hilly part of the
common being unfit for cultivation is stocked in common all the year
round.
Boscastle has two churches, that of Forrabury, which has been too
zealously restored, deal having been substituted for the
sixteenth-century oak benches and for the old pulpit that was covered
with arabesques, and Minster. Near Minster, on Waterpit Downs, is a fine
specimen of Celtic interlaced work on a cross shaft. It is now rescued,
but for many years it served to bear the pivot of a threshing-machine.
The church itself stands on the chancel site of an old minster. A
doorway, now blocked, once led to the priory buildings, but of them
nothing remains.
OTTERHAM AND
WARBSTOW BARROWS
Inland from Boscastle is Otterham, which possesses two bells dating from
before the Reformation and mentioned in the inventory of Edward VI. The
inscriptions on these mediaeval bells are interesting, a frequent one
being, "With my living voice I drive away all evil things." A little to
the east of Otterham, on a hill 807 ft. above sea level, is Warbstow
Barrows, one of the largest and best preserved earthworks in the county.
Its two ramparts have each two entrances, the outer wall being 15 ft.
high with a ditch 15 ft. wide. In the middle is a barrow known as the
Giant's Grave, perhaps the resting-place of a chieftain who died in
defence of the place, and was buried where he fell. Cornwall is thickly
strewn with these memorials of the past. Earthworks of different race
encampments lie cheek by jowl, strings of forts reach from sea to sea,
and even the cliffs are fortified. These cliff castles, and there are
traces of fortification on almost every headland, must have been built
by people who were actually "between the devil and the deep sea." Foot
by foot they must have given way, till at length they stood with their
backs to the sea, defending from their enemies one ultimate rock. Only
too often is there a grave within these defences, the grave of the last
man, strong enough to hold back the enemy, but slain at last.
To the south-west of Boscastle is Willapark Head, and beyond it are some
caves which until recently were haunted, as was all this north-western
coast, by mild-eyed seals. "A man with a gun" and the English instinct
to "go out and kill something," an instinct useful in the days of the
mammoth and the cave-tiger, but more than a little tiresome in our
present state of civilisation, is responsible for their disappearance.
There are still the caves to be seen.
ST. NECHTAN'S KIEVE;
BOSSINEY
Inland the little towns are of slight interest, with the exception of
the old cross at Lambrenny, but the walk along the cliffs--and the
Cornish are amiably ignorant that trespassers ought to be
prosecuted--presents an ever-changing panorama of lichened rocks and
lacy surf and every shade of wonderful blue. In Trevalga Church is some
old woodwork that has been carefully placed against the east wall of the
church, and presently we are crossing the neck of the Rocky Valley on
our way to derelict Bossiney--Bossiney once having mayor and officers
and represented in Parliament by Sir Francis Drake, but now only a
sleepy lovely nook in a quiet corner of the land! At the head of the
Rocky Valley is St. Nechtan's Kieve, a fine but broken waterfall of some
40 ft. A legend is told of two unknown ladies who inhabited a cottage
near by and who died without ever having revealed their names, but the
legend sprang like so many others from the fertile brain of the Rev.
Robert Hawker. He thought the place looked as if it ought to have a
legend, and not finding one was both ready and able to supply the
deficiency. A cross which was formerly part of the garden gate and was
supposed to be of the ninth century has been taken to Tintagel, and is
now to be seen in the garden of that comfortable old-fashioned hostelry,
the Wharncliffe Arms.
TINTAGEL
The far-famed "Dundagel" consists of a single grey street, lined in
irregular fashion with grey cottages and houses. In this land of stone
you sigh for the cheerful sight of a red-brick building or a glowing
tiled roof; but the stone used is grey, and where the roofs are not of a
cold blue slate, they are of a thatch held on by ropes that are heavily
weighted. The place is still primitive. Until recently the nearest baker
lived at Delabole, and to judge by the prizes (instead of cakes) on view
in his window, he must have been the king of pastry cooks. In Cornwall,
however, the housewife still bakes her own bread and is in other ways
more self-sufficing, and let us add more thrifty, than elsewhere.
ARTHUR
"Who Arthur was," says Milton, "and whether any such person reigned in
Britain hath been doubted heretofore and may again with good reason." We
must remember that the traditions concerning him were not reduced to
writing until centuries after his death, while Gildas, who was born
according to his own account in what would be Arthur's lifetime, does
not mention him.
The legends, however, assert that he was born at Tintagel Castle about
499 A.D., that he had three wives, but no children, and that his second
wife, Yenifer (Guinevere), was buried with him at Glastonbury. Against
the probability of this is the fact that Tintagel is not mentioned in
Domesday and that its ruins are of the thirteenth century with later
additions. It is quite likely, however, that the place, which is
strongly situated on a jutting headland--the so-called Island--was
fortified from time immemorial. It may originally have been one of those
pathetic cliff castles, may have been improved on and made habitable by
the conquering race of that epoch, and may eventually have fallen into
decay.
THE CASTLE
The present ruins are said to represent a castle built some little time
after the Norman Conquest, a castle which speedily fell out of repair,
for it had to be restored by Richard, King of the Romans, brother of
Henry III., before he could entertain his nephew, David, Prince of
Wales, here in 1245.
When Cornwall, till then an earldom, was made a duchy (1337) and
bestowed on the Black Prince, a boy seven years old, all the castles
were again fallen into decay. At Tintagel the timber had even been
removed from the great hall "because the walls were ruinous." The main
part of the building appears to have been on the Island, but it was
connected with outworks on the shore by a drawbridge. Sir Richard
Grenville, who made an official survey in 1583, tells us that this
drawbridge, which had been in existence within living memory, was gone,
its supports having been washed away by the waves. The sea having
continued its work of destruction, the space is now too wide for any
drawbridge to span, and in spite of a handrail the little climb to the
"Island" ruins is a dizzy one. Nor is there much to see. Some of the
masonry is recent, while the tiny chapel and altar are of about the same
date as the later parts of the castle, but the view is fine. It makes up
for the disappointment in Tintagel as a castle, for the disappointment
of finding that here is no certain tradition of Arthur, that the very
people feel about him much as Milton did. He may have been born here,
this may have been his very castle of Dindraithon, but if so they know
nothing of it. Arthur is a thing of books, of art, not life, of the
Morte, the Idylls, and--best of all perhaps--of Clemence Housman's
wonderful story "Sir Aglovaine de Galis," but he has no place in
present-day folklore.
On the top of the mainland outworks is a doorway which in an eerie
manner opens upon space, and a sheer drop of many hundreds of feet. It
shows how much the sea is encroaching. Once upon a time this probably
led to the look-out tower. Now the very foundations of that tower are
gone and presently the masonry will go too, and the waters will roar
unhindered between the mainland and the island.
THE BEACH
AND BARRAS HEAD
Far below is a tiny dark beach, the colour of which is explained when
having climbed down a wooden stairway clamped to the rock--the only
means of approach--it is found to consist entirely of rounded pieces of
slate. They are of all weights and sizes, but there is no sand, no
shells, nothing but slate. Opposite the Castle rock is Barras Head, and
there at last the big modern hotel can be ignored and the wanderer lie
out on the short, dry turf with the long line of hazy coast to either
hand and, before him, the islands white with sea-birds and pink with
thrift and the boundless stretch of sunlit waters.
"_To be by the translucent green, the blue
Deepening to purple where the weed is dense!
To hear the homing call as the brave sweep
Of wings is folded on a sea-girt rock!
To lie in golden warmth while tow'ring waves
Break with a lazy roar along the cliffs--
To lie and dream._"
It is here that Swinburne, venturing on a swim, was nearly drowned. The
same story is told of him on the French coast, only there it was Guy de
Maupassant who brought him back in safety. The great French writer is
reported to have said that the little English poet, with his
bladder-like head and attenuated body, struck him as hardly sane. Yet it
was Maupassant who died mad, not Swinburne.
AN INSCRIBED STONE
At Tintagel was discovered in 1888 a stone on which is inscribed IMP C G
Val Lic Licin, _i.e._, Imperatore Caesare Galerio Valerio Liciniano
Licinio, who reigned 307-324 A.D. It is evident therefore that whether
Arthur was here or not the Romans were. What a pity that no one has been
able to discover any satisfactory evidence in enduring stone of the
British king's existence!
The cruciform church on the cliff is largely Norman, but portions of it
belong to almost every succeeding age and period. Some have even held
that it contains Saxon work, but the authorities are not agreed.
A DANGEROUS OCCUPATION
On the way to Trebarwith along the cliffs--and Trebarwith is a narrow
rocky opening up which the tide rushes with tremendous force--are
quarries. It is strange to see men, with the carelessness of long habit,
walk to the very edge of the cliff, lie down and, with their legs
hanging over, feel with their feet for the rough ladder that leads down
the rock-face to the quarry opening; or to see them stand on a plank
that juts out over the sea, and is maintained in its position by a chunk
of rock, casually adjusted. If the plank should give, or the rock roll
aside! But a man stands there from morning till night loading and
unloading slates.
THE BATTLE OF
GAFULFORD
Inland from Tintagel is Camelford, with its local tradition of a battle.
At Slaughter Bridge, near Worthyvale, one and a half miles from
Camelford, fragments of armour, ornaments of bridles, weapons, have been
found, and in 823 a battle was certainly fought at some place then
called Gafulford between the Saxons of Devon and the Celts of Cornwall,
a battle in which the Cornish were defeated. May not this unknown
Gafulford be Camelford? Writers have suggested that this may have been
the scene of Arthur's last battle; but the weight of tradition is
against this theory, a more likely place having been pointed out in
Scotland.
ARTHUR'S HALL
While on the subject of the legendary British king, it would be
interesting to see a supposed feasting-chamber, which from before the
time of Henry VIII. was known as Arthur's Hall. South-west of Brown
Willy, it is about five miles from Camelford, in the parish of St.
Breward. It appears at present as a pit hollowed out in a light sandy
soil. This excavation, which is 159 ft. long, is enclosed by an earthen
bank with slabs of granite about 7 ft. high, placed evenly on the inner
side. The absence of true walls makes it doubtful whether it was roofed
over, but it may have had a self-supporting skeleton roof, covered with
a web of branches or with sods.
LANTEGLOS
As is so often the case in Cornwall, the Camelford church is at some
distance from the place to which it ministers, being, indeed, a mile and
a half away at Lanteglos. In the churchyard is a celebrated stone with
an inscription in eleventh-century Saxon capitals: "AELSELTH & GENERETH
WROHTE THYSNE SYBSTEL FOR AELWYNEYS SAUL & FOR HEYSEL." About a quarter
of a mile from the church is the well-known entrenchment called Castle
Goff, with a single rampart and ditch.
THE FORTY BREWERS
OF HELSTON
Below Lanteglos is the manor of Helston, and Domesday records "that
there were forty brewers on the royal manor of Henliston." This is the
only mention in the great survey of brewers as an item of population,
and forty seems a good many for one place. Did they brew all the beer in
the county; and was it Henliston ale that so appalled Andrew Borde when
he thought to visit Cornwall, that he turned back saying: "it looked as
if pigges had wrasteled in it"?
THE RIVER
Camelford is not far from either of the sources of the Camel, and the
upper moorland reaches of the twin streams abound in charming spots
where the water frets among boulders and swirls in sunshine and shadow
among ferns and wild flowering shrubs. The sisters do not join forces
till they reach Kea Bridge, over ten miles from their source, but as
soon as depth allows of their existence sweet small trout are plentiful.
THE DELABOLE SLATE
Between Camelford and Tintagel are the now silent quarries of North
Delabole (or Dennyball). The road winds between great walls and under
archways of slate which look as if a touch would send the whole erection
sliding and rushing down upon the wayfarer. But the slates were set up
by cunning fingers and have withstood the gales of this coast for a
score of years. Very different is their mournful creeper-grown
desolation from the arid activity of Delabole. The approach to the high
grey windy street is marked by deep ferny lanes. Here are thirty acres
of quarry and rubble heap, a hideous excavation. In 1602 the quarry,
already old, was 900 ft. long, in 1882 it had grown to 1300 ft., and it
is growing still. The best slate is called bottom stone and lies at a
depth of from 25 to 40 fathoms, for the quarry is now over 400 ft. deep.
Beautiful crystals the so-called Cornish diamonds, are found in these
workings, truly the only beautiful things in a most dreary place.
ST. TEATH
When the church at little sleepy St. Teath was restored in 1877, two
massive Norman responds at the east end of the north aisle were
discovered. There is also some good roof timber and a little ancient
glass. The pulpit bears the arms of the Carminows and their motto: "Cala
Rag Whetlow"--a straw for a tell-tale. It was John of Gaunt,
"time-honoured Lancaster," that Prince who, though never a king, was
the ancestor of so many, who upon true evidence found Carminow of
Cornwall "to be descended of a lineage armed 'Azure a bend Or' since the
time of King Arthur;" and indeed the Carminows were certainly here at
the Conquest. They are now extinct, the last of the family, a devoted
Royalist, dying in 1646.
In the graveyard, on a slab fastened to the church, is the following
epitaph:
"_Here lyeth the body of Robert Bake, son of Samuel Bake, who was
buried the xxx day of January, 16--.
But what cheere-up altho our sonne be gone
Altho his bodiy must be racke and toren
With filthy bitter bitinge wormes of dust
And be consumd as all our bodies must
Yet still cheere-up comforte yourselves: in this
Tho the bodiy died the soule emmortall is
And now in heaven most ioyfully shall singe
O: grave where is thy strength, death where is thy victory
With God above for all e-terny-tie:
For Robert Bake._"