ILSHAM GRANGE—MEADFOOT—TORQUAY
In this quiet and wooded nook near Kent’s Cavern, tucked away from the
octopus arms of Torquay, is Ilsham Grange, a chance survival of those old
times when Tor Abbey ruled the roast in these parts. Everything here was
then agricultural. Not even a village, only the monks’ farm, relieved
the solitude. Traces of those old farmers remain in the grey turret in
the farmyard, where the pigeons flutter and the pigs grunt contentedly,
blissfully unconscious of what pork, ham, and bacon mean. In this turret,
now with the floors gone, Brother this, that, or t’other, sent over from
the Abbey round the headland, lodged, and ruled from it the _conversi_,
or lay-brothers, whose business it was to conduct the practical farming
and to be as the Children of Gibeon, hewers of wood and drawers of water
for the community.
From Ilsham you come, over the hill, to Meadfoot, a particularly noble
bay, where the road is protected from the sea by a wall calculated to
make a builder of cheap houses and nine-inch party-walls faint with
horror at so prodigal a use of material. I do not know exactly _how_
thick the Meadfoot sea-wall is, but a wheeled conveyance could be driven
along it, if it were not so rough. And the roughness of these rudely
quarried, undressed rocky boulders is just the fitting character for
the spot; which is, as I have said, a very noble piece of coast-scenery
indeed, rough-hewed by nature in the large, and coloured by her in the
rich and sober hues of the rocks, alternating with the brighter tints of
sea and grass. Great islanded rocks stand off-shore, glooming over the
blue sea like ogreish strongholds: the black monstrous forms of the Ore
Stone and the Thatcher Rock, with the smaller Shag Rock close in, and a
scatter of reefs just off the sands.
Near by, but hidden from view by its enclosing grounds, is that
semicircular group of villa residences, Hesketh Crescent, built, some
forty years ago, on the model of the classic terraces of Bath and Buxton.
Little postern gates lead from the grounds on to the road at Meadfoot,
and from them the early riser on summer mornings may observe strange
figures, clad in gorgeous dressing-gowns, shuffling in bath slippers to
the sea, the bright sunshine making heliographs of their bald and shining
pates. It all looks like some newer version of _Robinson Crusoe_, or the
_Swiss Family Robinson_; but these old gentlemen are only the retired
generals and colonels of Hesketh Crescent, out for their morning dip, and
are so little like marooned inhabitants of uncivilised isles that they
will presently enter their postern-gates again, and go home to breakfast
and the morning paper, over which they will with fervour and unction damn
the War Office and the Army from head to foot—a valued privilege denied
to Robinson Crusoe.
[Illustration: MEADFOOT, AND THE ORE STONE AND THATCHER ROCK.]
The entrance to the awful sanctities of Hesketh Crescent is passed on
the ascent from Meadfoot into Torquay; but the Crescent is not what
it was, and boards, actually proclaiming houses to let, disfigure the
proprieties of its threshold. As a matter of fact, the taste—or rather,
the fashion—which obtained when Hesketh Crescent was built has wholly
changed, and residents by the seaside are no longer content to live in a
continuous row of houses. It is an unavoidable condition in great towns,
but most undesirable for a place like Torquay, whose ideal is detachment,
and whose chief feature, in the residential districts, away from the
business centre, is the multitude of discreet villas, each enclosed in
its grounds, behind masonry walls and shrubberies. If these villas were
situated near the Regent’s Park district of London, the discretion of
encompassing walls and screening shrubberies would be referred to motives
not here to be discussed, but Torquay being what it is, these features
are but marks of the strictly proper seclusion that is an essential
feature of its existence; an emotionless existence punctuated by the
visits of gibbering curates and the meetings of Dorcas Societies.
Nothing is more remarkable in the later history of Torquay than the
number of “literary landmarks” and associations it has gathered to
itself; more particularly associations connected with the spinster
lady authors of improving stories. Torquay, of course, is not merely
the place for invalid visitors in the winter, but a place of residence
for many delicate persons to whom its genial warmth is the very breath
of life. It would seem that when contemplative persons of a certain
fragility seek a permanent home, they come to Torquay and write stories
like _Christy’s Old Organ_ and _Jessica’s First Prayer_. At any rate, the
remarkable little shilling book, _Literary Landmarks of Torquay_, by Mr.
W. J. Roberts, discovers an amazing number of literary associations, with
Charles Kingsley, P. H. Gosse, W. E. Norris, and Eden Phillpotts at their
head, and a regiment of ladies bringing up the rear.
The seven hills—or more—on which Torquay is built are dotted plentifully
with the largest and finest of these quiet villas, and the hollows in
between are cut up into winding roads, where the stranger may speedily
lose his bearings. If you consult a plan of Torquay, it will be
perceived that the roads of its residential districts are like so many
vermiculations, returning upon one another and intertwining almost with
the intricacy of whorls in a Celtic design. It must have been far easier
to find one’s way about the site of Torquay a century ago than now, and
in many respects it was surely a more desirable place. From existing
records one may form a very exact picture of it, say in 1815, when the
long-dreaded “Boney,” for many years a figure of terror to hundreds of
thousands of Englishmen, was brought captive on the _Bellerophon_ into
Tor Bay, to be revealed to the gaping hundreds who put off in boats
to see him, as merely a little fat man, clean-shaven, melancholy, and
obviously unwell, mildly pacing the quarter-deck, and saying unexpectedly
complimentary things about the scenery and the climate.
Its inhabitants then numbered about fifteen hundred, chiefly fishermen
and the wives and families of naval officers, who, anchoring from time to
time in the safe and roomy anchorage of Tor Bay, had first “discovered”
the place. It was then still little more than that Quay at the foot
of the hills (or “Tors”) it had been when William of Orange landed at
Brixham, in 1688; and the fine old residence of Tor Abbey, seat then as
now of the Carys, was the only considerable place in the neighbourhood.
The hill-tops were yet in a state of nature, except the crest of Chapel
Hill, where the little chapel of St. Michael formed a notable landmark
for sailors. This was, according to legend, the offering of some ancient
mariner, and displayed a beacon-light at night, to guide shipping safely
into the bay. The ancient chapel, one of the smallest in England,
measuring only thirty-six feet in length, remains to this day, two
hundred and seventy feet above the sea, at the modern suburb of Torre,
and is part of the borough meteorological station.
[Illustration: THE ANCIENT CHAPEL OF ST. MICHAEL, TORRE.]
The Carys had so long been seated by the shores of Tor Bay, in the
halls of the discredited and dispossessed monks, that they had lost
all sense of the trend of affairs, and were utterly unimaginative; and
accordingly when in 1786 Sir Robert Palk, retiring wondrously enriched
from the governorship of Madras, and with an £80,000 legacy into the
bargain, purchased Tormoham Manor, they made no attempt to outbid him.
To the changed times and to the Palk family Torquay owes its growth.
Tor Bay had in all those bygone centuries been a lovely solitude, for in
the warlike ages, when fire and sword swept even sheltered spots like
Dartmouth, snugly hidden behind a difficult entrance, an open strand was
too dangerous a place to settle upon; but Sir Robert Palk early perceived
changed conditions and made his account with them, and in due time his
son, Sir Lawrence Palk, succeeded him and built the first harbour.
The inevitable consequence of the Palk activities and of the changed
condition of affairs was that the town of Torquay sprang into vigorous
existence, and the further and equally obvious consequence of the Palks
becoming great as ground-landlords was that in the fulness of time they
were raised from baronets to be barons; Sir Lawrence Hesketh Palk,
fifth baronet, being in 1880, in his thirty-fourth year, raised to the
peerage as Baron Haldon. I can quite distinctly hear gnashings of teeth
and imprecations at lost opportunities from the direction of Tor Abbey,
echoing down the alleys of the years.
Torquay was built when the Italian villa fashion prevailed in the land.
It was a favourable spot for such an experiment. Look back upon those
terraced and rock-girt hills from this kindly distance of the harbour,
and the Italianate character of the scenery, in its brilliant colouring
and bold and picturesque outline, is obvious, and from this remove quite
a number of those villas deceptively resemble in outline the marble
palazzos of Florence, of Venice or Bologna. But close at hand they are
no more Italian than an Italian warehouse, which we all know to be a
parabolic description of an oil and colour shop.
And now Torquay has acquired a Mayor and Corporation, with town arms and
a crest and the advertising motto, _Salus et Felicitas_, and ought to
_be_ happy as well as healthful, as per motto: even though that motto
does, when spoken, suggest “sailors and solicitors.” But no! Torquay has
since learned that these luxuries are expensive; in the facts that while,
when the town was incorporated, in 1892, there were then but twenty-one
officials, whose salaries amounted to £2,413, there are now thirty-nine,
who draw £5,495.
Presently there will be electric tramways at Torquay! Conceive it, all
ye who know the town. Could there be anything more suicidal than to
introduce such hustling methods into Lotos-land?
I observe that, according to a handbook advertising the attractions of
Torquay, while its winters are mild, its summers are cool, and that “the
maximum mean annual temperature is 56·7°, and the minimum 45°.” Also it
appears that “the thermometer in the shade seldom rises to 70°.” I must,
therefore, be mistaken in supposing that in August I have frequently
observed it, in the Strand, and on the spot eloquently known as “the
Gridiron,” to be twenty degrees higher, and the Lord only knows what
phenomenal heights in the sun. Under the same extraordinary illusion,
yucca, bamboo, palms, eucalyptus, and other tropical plants flourish in
the beautiful rock-walks along the Torbay road, and the fuchsia grows in
the likeness of trees.
There are many who think Torquay looks its best on moonlit summer nights,
when the lights in hill-top villas seem to vie with the stars, and the
search-lights of naval leviathans in the bay send inquisitive beams along
the shore or, adventuring higher, surprise fair maids in their bedrooms
and make them blush.