BUDLEIGH SALTERTON—LITTLEHAM—EXMOUTH—TOPSHAM—ESTUARY OF THE AXE
Budleigh Salterton lies at the foot of a steep descent. Only within
quite recent years has it been connected by railway with the outer
world, and so has not yet quite woke up and found itself, and become
self-conscious; although there are plenteous evidences that attempts
will be made to convert it into a small modern watering-place, pitifully
emulative of its betters. It is not fulsome to say that up to the present
it has had no betters, for it has been an individual place, without its
fellow anywhere. Conceive a brook running in a deep bed down one side
of a village street, and bridged at close upon half a hundred intervals
with brick and plank footbridges, leading across into cottages and
cottage-gardens; and conceive those cottages, partly the humble homes of
fishermen, and partly the simple villas of an Early Victorian, or even a
Regency, seaside, and midway down the street imagine that stream crossing
under the road, taking the little beach diagonally, and there percolating
through the giant “popples.” That is Budleigh Salterton.
The Otter flows out to sea farther to the east, along that beach,
obscurely, but still one speculates idly—no help for it but to do
_anything_ “idly” in South Devon—by what strange and exceptional chance
Budleigh Salterton is not “Ottermouth” in this county of Axmouth,
Sidmouth, Exmouth, Teignmouth, and other places which own rivers as their
godfathers and godmothers. Yet one is not too idle to discover that East
Budleigh and this Budleigh “Saltern,” as it was originally named, _do_,
after all, in a way, follow the general rule, for they are named after
the contributory streamlet, the Buddle, on which they stand and the
“leas,” or meadows, that border it.
It is the same old story, with regard to the haven at the mouth of the
Otter, that has already been told of other places. Leland, writing close
upon four hundred years ago, tells us that: “Less than an hunderith
yeres sins shippes usid this haven, but it is now clean barred,” and so
it remains. Salterton and its neighbourhood are therefore without the
convenience of a port.
The front of the townlet is, as an Irishman might say, at the back, for
in times before the invention of the seaside as a place of holiday,
the inhabitants seem to have had a surfeit of the sea by which they
got their living, and built their houses on the low crumbly cliff, not
only with the faces turned away from it, but in many cases with high
dead walls, enclosing back-gardens, entirely excluding any sight of
the water. And so the “front” remains; nor is it clear how, without a
wholesale rebuilding, it will ever be otherwise. It is a curious spot for
a seaside resort, and in places more resembles an allotment-garden, or
the side of one of those railway embankments, where frugal porters and
platelayers cultivate vegetables; for between the pathway and the sea,
on the fringe of that beach where the gigantic popples lie, ranging in
size from a soup-plate down to a saucer, and forming the raw material
of the local paving, there are rows of potatoes, cabbages, peas, and
scarlet runners! The effect is a good deal more funny than the humour of
a professional humourist, for it has that essential ingredient of real
humour, unexpectedness; and he who does not laugh at first sight of the
peas among those amazing popples, and the boats amid the beans, must be a
dull dog.
The explorer who does not wish to martyr himself on the way from
Salterton to Exmouth may be recommended to take steamer, for it is six
miles of anti-climax by shore and cliff, and four by uninteresting hard
high road, passing the wickednesses of suburban expansion at Littleham,
in whose churchyard is the neglected grave of Frances, Viscountess
Nelson, who died in 1831, the deeply wronged wife of the naval hero.
A marble monument to her in the church does, however, make some amends
for the neglect outside. There, in that interior, are memorials to
Peels, relatives of the statesman, and others to those ubiquitous Drakes
who, like the Courtenays and recurring decimals, repeat themselves
indefinitely.
Leaving Littleham behind, there presently begins the long-drawn approach
to Exmouth itself, looking as though all Ladbroke Grove and Putney Hill
had moved down, _en bloc_, for a sea-change. And, oh, how blue and
refreshing and lovely looks that peep of the sea over towards Dawlish
that you get at the end of this long, hot and dry perspective!
And as you think thus, you remember the pungent saying of Dr. Temple, who
once, while still Bishop of Exeter, stood upon the steps of the vicarage
of Exmouth and remarked that “Exmouth was a good place to look—from.”
He was absolutely correct, for Exmouth, facing directly into the west,
is especially famed for its sunsets. To peruse the local guide-books one
might even think Exmouth had entered into arrangements with the solar
system for a supply of the best displays.
But there was, as you have already suspected, a sting behind the bishop’s
remark. What a waspishness beyond the ordinary these high-placed clerics
do develop! The beauties of Exmouth are external, extrinsic, a minus
quantity; but it is placed in the loveliest situation at the seaward end
of the long and beautiful estuary of the Exe. The beauty of the views
across sea and river are unspeakable. To me it is an Avalon, a Gilead,
where the balm is; a country in the likeness of the Land of the Blest,
you see over there, where the red cliffs dip down in fantastic shapes to
the sea, and where the heights of Great Haldon and Mamhead, clothed with
clumps of trees of a richness only Devon can show, rise to the glowing
sky. I yearn ever to be over yonder in that Land of Heart’s Desire, as
the good Christian should yearn for Paradise; and the little hamlets
dwarfed by the two miles of water, and even the little trains that seem
to go so slowly, trailing their long trails of steam, are things of
poetry and romance.
If I were to say that Exmouth was the Margate of Devonshire, I should
please neither Exmouth nor Margate; for all Devon does not contain a
purely seaside resort of the size of that favourite place in Kent. But it
is, like Margate, popular with trippers; it has sands; and is, in short
a place where the crowd spends a happy day: the crowd in this instance
hailing, as a rule, from no further than Exeter.
Exeter is an interesting city, and its citizens, in their own streets
and in their everyday garb are sufficiently amiable, but when Exmouth
on Sundays and other holiday-times is overrun with Exeter’s young
men, tradesmen’s assistants, clad in the impossible clothes pictured
on provincial advertisement boardings, laughing horse-laughs, singing
London’s last season’s comic songs, wearing flashy jewellery, and smoking
bad cigars, Exeter’s reputation, and Exmouth’s suffer alike. If you can
imagine such a curious hybrid as a provincial cockney—the type really
exists, although it has not yet been noticed by men of science—you may
picture something of Exmouth’s week-end patrons. The provincial cockney,
poor thing, imagines himself in the forefront of style, but he is merely
a caricature of the London cockney plus his own accent, which, wedded to
cockney slang, is peculiarly offensive.
But Exmouth, when its week-end patrons are behind their counters, in
their aprons, is a vastly-different place. It is cheap, and has always
been, and always will be, but it is at last sloughing off that air of
impending bankruptcy that once sat so dolefully upon the scene; and the
shops that were once mere apologies are now for the most part real shops,
and stocked with articles less than ten years old. Moreover, the tennis
lawns and gardens have grown by lapse of time into things of beauty: the
lawns becoming something else than bald patches of red earth, and the
gardens luxuriant indeed. But cheap railway trips from Exeter, only ten
miles distant, by South Western Railway, have determined the character
of Exmouth for ever, and grey stucco, only on the outskirts occasionally
varied with red brick, or rough-cast, has clothed it in a sad shabbiness
until its ninety-nine years building-leases shall have lapsed.
Modern times, however, are making themselves felt in other directions. In
early days, when the town of Exmouth was merely a longshore settlement
called “Pratteshythe,” situated where the docks now are, the mouth of the
river was largely obstructed by an immense sandbank stretching from this
shore. At some unnamed period this geographical feature of the place
changed sides, and has for centuries past been that delightfully wild,
nearly two-miles long wilderness, “the Warren,” which extends a sandy arm
from Langston Cliff; leaving something less than half-a-mile of fairway
at the mouth of Exe. Until quite recently the Warren has remained the
haunt of the wild-fowler and the naturalist, but now the red roofs of
bungalows are beginning to plentifully dot the wastes; and to play at
Robinson Crusoe, with twentieth-century embellishments and more or less
luxurious fringes, has become a favourite summer pastime on this once
solitary haunt of the heron, the wild duck, and the sea-mew.
The salt estuary of the Exe runs up boldly from Exmouth, a mile broad,
past Lympstone; and then, suddenly contracting, reaches Topsham, which
was in other days a place of considerable importance, where ships were
built and a great deal done in the Newfoundland trade; and in the
smuggling trade too. Now the old shipyards are forgotten, and Topsham,
which, among other things, was formerly the port of Exeter, is merely a
relic, in course of being submerged by Exeter’s suburbs. Yet still odd
nooks may be found, with that curious alien air belonging to all such
out-of-date seaports, and in shy old houses Topsham is peculiarly rich in
old blue-and-white Dutch tiles.
Topsham ceased from being a port when the present Exe Canal was made,
in 1827, from Turf up to the very streets of the city: the first ship
canal that ever was. It is five miles in length, and thirty feet wide,
and it cost £125,000. Anciently, however, the tide flowed the whole way
to Exeter, until, in the old high-handed mediæval days, the imperious
Isabella de Redvers wrought her vengeance against the city by causing the
stream to be dammed with felled trees, thus obstructing the navigation.
Doubtless, in their turn, the citizens damned the countess, so far as
they safely could, but there the obstruction remained, and thus the
still-existing “Countess Weir” came into being.
[Illustration: TOPSHAM.]
The enterprising citizens of Exeter cut a small canal, so early as 1554.
This was afterwards enlarged, and the present undertaking is the still
more enlarged successor of those early waterways. It is a pleasant and
clear canal, with none of those evil associations the word “canal”
generally implies, and the walk along the broad towing-paths into Exeter
yields one of the most striking views of that picturesque city.
[Illustration: EXETER, FROM THE SHIP CANAL.]