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MOTOR TOURS IN THE WEST COUNTRY
* * * * *
THE “MOTOR TOURS” SERIES
BY MRS. RODOLPH STAWELL
Bound in red cloth and boxed, price 6/- net each. Profusely Illustrated.
MOTOR TOURS IN WALES
_With 63 Illustrations from Photographs, and Map._
SECOND EDITION.
Max Pemberton in the _Sphere_:--“… Will be read and reread by all who
have toured Wales a-wheel. Mrs. Stawell is a charming writer; she has a
fine sense of the road, and she adds to it a literary insight that is
always captivating.… I have rarely encountered a book so full of pleasant
literary gossip and yet so very practical.”----_World_:--“This most
artistic book … gives a sympathetic description of all that is worth
seeing in Shropshire, North Wales, the Heart of Wales, South Wales, and
the Wye Valley. I do not think I have ever seen such beautifully-arranged
photographs in any book of travel.”
MOTOR TOURS IN YORKSHIRE
_With 48 Illustrations from Photographs, and Map._
SECOND EDITION.
“This charmingly-written account of motor travels in Yorkshire has
no feature in common with the ordinary dry-as-dust matter of fact
guide-book. The volume is one of the most fascinating books of home
travel, within its own assigned limits, with which we are acquainted.…
Full of exquisitely finished photographs.”--_Standard._----“Motorists
require a new order of guide-book, which shall be as independent of show
places and beaten tracks as the happy possessor of a car. Mrs. Stawell
has gauged by practical experience the new requirements, and has now
done for the county of broad acres what her previous volume did for the
Principality.”--_Outlook._
MOTOR TOURS IN THE WEST COUNTRY
_With 48 Illustrations from Photographs, and Map._
In common with Mrs. Rodolph Stawell’s other books of Motor Tours, this
delightful volume is specially written for those who like to know
something of the history and antiquities of the places through which
they pass, and for lovers of beautiful scenery. At the same time all
the principal roads of Devon and Cornwall are discussed in considerable
detail, and though Somerset is not fully dealt with, there are two
chapters on that county. Each chapter is preceded by a summary of
distances, &c. The book is illustrated by 48 photographs by R. de S.
Stawell, and contains an index and map of the routes.
LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON
* * * * *
[Illustration: CASTLE ROCK, LYNTON.]
MOTOR TOURS IN THE WEST COUNTRY
by
MRS. RODOLPH STAWELL
Author of “Motor Tours in Wales,” “Motor Tours in
Yorkshire,” etc.
With Photographs by R. De S. Stawell
Hodder and Stoughton
London MCMX
_The photographs in Chapter III. are reproduced by the kind permission of
the Editors of “Country Life” and the “Car Illustrated.”_
CONTENTS
PAGE
I
A RUN ACROSS SOMERSET 1
II
THE HEART OF DEVON 31
III
THE SOUTH COAST OF DEVON 71
IV
SOUTH CORNWALL 103
V
NORTH CORNWALL 143
VI
NORTH DEVON 177
VII
THROUGH SOMERSET AGAIN 197
ILLUSTRATIONS
CASTLE ROCK, LYNTON _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
CHEDDAR GORGE 8
THE BISHOP’S EYE, WELLS 12
WELLS CATHEDRAL 14
ST. MARY’S CHAPEL (OFTEN CALLED ST.
JOSEPH’S), GLASTONBURY 16
THE CHOIR, GLASTONBURY 22
MARKET PLACE, SOMERTON 26
SIDMOUTH 36
GUILDHALL, EXETER 44
CLOISTER, EXETER CATHEDRAL 50
LUSTLEIGH 58
HOLNE BRIDGE 64
BUTTERWALK, DARTMOUTH 86
SLAPTON 90
SOUTH POOL CREEK, SALCOMBE 92
FORT CHARLES AND BOLT HEAD 94
DRAKE’S ISLAND, FROM THE HOE 98
LOOE RIVER 106
LOOE HARBOUR 108
STREET OF POLPERRO 110
POLPERRO 112
RESTORMEL CASTLE 114
BODINNICK FERRY 118
PONT PILL, FOWEY 120
ARWENACK AVENUE, FALMOUTH 126
KING HARRY’S FERRY 130
THE LIZARD 132
MULLION COVE 134
ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNT 138
NEWLYN HARBOUR 140
THE LAND’S END 142
ST. IVES 148
TRERICE 150
GATEHOUSE, LANHYDROCK 156
TOWN GATE, LAUNCESTON 158
TINTAGEL 164
MORWENSTOW 172
CLOVELLY 176
STREET IN CLOVELLY 178
CLOVELLY HARBOUR 180
ON THE TAW 186
LYNMOUTH 192
VIEW FROM LYNTON 194
RIVER LYN 196
PORLOCK 200
DUNSTER 204
GATEHOUSE, CLEEVE ABBEY 208
TAUNTON CASTLE 214
A RUN ACROSS SOMERSET
SUMMARY OF RUN ACROSS SOMERSET
DISTANCES.
Clifton Suspension Bridge
Clevedon 11½ miles
Wells 25⅛ ”
Ilchester 17⅝ ”
Crewkerne 11 ”
Devon Border 12 ”
---------
Total 77¼ miles
ROADS.
No bad gradients except near Chard--1 in 8.
Surface: from Clifton to Ilchester, poor; Ilchester to Crewkerne, fair;
Crewkerne to Border, extremely good.
I
A RUN ACROSS SOMERSET
To most of us the very thought of the West Country is full of
enchantment. In this grey and strenuous island, where a man must move
quickly if he would be warm, this is the nearest approach to a Lotus
Land--a land of green hills and hollows all lapped in an emerald sea,
a land where the breezes are sleepy and scented, and the flowers
grow because they want to see the view, and the sunshine is really
encouraging, and the very rain is soft and kind. Even here the weather
has its moods; but they are all lovable, and in any case cannot touch our
happy memories. We who are but wayfarers, and have chanced to see the sun
shining on the blue distances of Dartmoor, and warming the little sandy
coves of South Devon, and peering into the depths of the wooded valley of
Lynmouth, and lighting up the dark granite of the Land’s End, may keep
the remembrance of it unspoiled for ever. Like the figures on Keats’
Grecian Urn, our vision of sunny hours suffers no change. “For ever shalt
thou love, and she be fair.”
Even in Somerset the spell begins to work. We feel at once there is no
need for haste. We begin to loiter, and stray from the straight path, and
saunter through the orchards of the “Summerland;” though all the time the
thought of the Devon border is never absent from our minds.
Very slowly the car creeps over Clifton Suspension Bridge. The Avon, a
long way below us, flows between its high red-and-white cliffs towards
the Severn Sea, to whose shore we too are bound before we turn southwards
and make our leisurely way to Exeter, through Cheddar, and Glastonbury,
and Chard.
It is a fairly hilly road that takes us by way of Failand to Clevedon.
The surface is a little rough, too, but this is unfortunately a quality
that is shared by many of the roads of Somerset. After passing through
some pleasant scenery--here a dark plantation, and there a wide landscape
bounded by the grey waters of the Bristol Channel, and here on the slope
a pretty village--it leads us into the bright, clean, breezy streets that
have been trodden by Coleridge and Thackeray and the Brookfields, by
Tennyson and the Hallams.
When Coleridge came to Clevedon with his bride, and “only such furniture
as became a philosopher,” there was no more than a village here. There
was no esplanade, nor pier, nor bandstand to try his philosophy, when he
took the one-storied cottage with the jasmine-covered porch and the tall
rose that peeped in at the window, and settled there with the woman whom
he loved “best of all created things” and by whom he was bored at the
end of two months. Except in the matter of the jasmine on the porch, and
the garden that contains--in the words of the sarcastic Cottle--“several
pretty flowers,” there is little likeness between the Coleridge Cottage
in the Old Church Road and the poet’s “Valley of Seclusion.” Local
tradition would have us believe, however, that this red-tiled cottage
with the two sentinel trees is the very one that “possessed everything
that heart could desire”--for two months; the one that was supplied at
the philosopher’s request with a dustpan and a small tin kettle, a Bible
and a keg of porter; the one in which poor Sara sat so often by herself,
uncheered even by Mr. Cottle’s gift of “several pieces of sprightly
wall-paper.”
In those days Clevedon Court, which we passed as we drove into the town,
was really in the country, no doubt. It is still shaded and sheltered
by trees, and its mellow walls, its stately arches and mullions and
terraces, contrive to keep an air of academic calm in defiance of the
highway that passes near them, and of the neat little villas that
make modern Clevedon look so tidy. If we should chance to be here on
Thursday we may see the gardens. The rare beauty of this ancient house is
inevitably tinged with sadness now; but it was not sad, we may be sure,
when boyish Brookfield did his wooing here, and Thackeray paced these
paths, as novelists use, with the visionary Henry Esmond at his elbow,
and Tennyson walked with Arthur Hallam among the flowers, and there was
as yet no tablet “glimmering to the dawn” in the dark church on the cliff.
Quite solitary still, and undisturbed by any sound but the faint murmur
of the sea, is the grey church “by the broad water of the west” where
Arthur Hallam lies. It must always have been a desolate, haunting
spot, even before the song of the sea became a dirge and the old walls
were consecrated anew to the memory of a poet’s sorrow. In those
days, doubtless, the fragments of Saxon work and the moulding of the
chancel-arch received more attention than now, when every eye wanders
instantly to the white tablet on the wall of the south transept, and
every foot is fain to stand where Tennyson stood with his bride, above
the grave of Arthur Hallam and his father.
From Clevedon, turning inland to Wells, we cross a level land of orchards
and meadows on a very poor surface, through Yatton with its curious
church-tower, and Congresbury with its old cross-steps, and Churchill
with its historic name. Before us is the long shoulder of the Mendips,
changing from blue to green as we pass Churchill and climb, on a road
that suddenly becomes good, through a gap in the hills. There are fine
views from these uplands, and here and there a glimpse, far behind us,
of the Severn estuary. Very slowly we drive through the narrow, winding
streets of Axbridge, shadowed by overhanging eaves and gables of every
height and angle; and quickly through the level strawberry fields beyond,
to Cheddar under the hills.
[Illustration: CHEDDAR GORGE.]
Cheddar Gorge is a surprising--almost a startling--place, and we must
leave our highway for a little time to see it. From the village at the
foot of the Mendips a road--and a very good road it is--climbs to the
table-land above through a natural cleft between two mighty cliffs, which
rise sheer from the roadway and stand out against the sky in a mass
of towers and pinnacles. And all this sternness is softened and made
beautiful by hanging draperies of green. Masses of ivy trail from crag
to crag; high overhead the little birch-trees find a precarious footing
on invisible ledges; every tiny cleft and ridge holds a line of grass
and wildflowers across the grey face of the cliff. Gradually, as the road
sweeps higher, the towering sides of the gorge change into steep slopes
of grass and fern, strewn with boulders and broken here and there by
clumps of firs. The slopes become lower and lower, more and more open,
till at last the landscape widens into undulating fields. Then we turn,
and glide down again round curve after curve, while the grandeur grows,
as the huge walls of the gorge close in upon us and reach their climax in
the Pinnacle Rocks.
And deep in the heart of these wild cliffs is a strange, uncanny world.
Surely in these caverns the gnomes ran riot till they were frightened
away by an elaborate system of electric lighting and an exuberance of
advertisement. It is plain that they have left Gough’s Cave, for it is
more than a little artificial; but none the less there is an ethereal
beauty in the myriad stalactites and stalagmites through which the light
gleams so softly on roof and floor. As for the poor prehistoric man who
guards the entrance of the cave that has served him for dwelling-house
and tomb, it is an indignity for him, I think, after his seventy
thousand years or so of rest in the heart of the earth, to be set up thus
in a glass case to grin at tourists.
Between Cheddar and Wells a pretty, winding, undulating road dips in and
out of several red-roofed villages shaded by trees. In the distance the
unmistakable outline of Glastonbury Tor is dark against the sky.
This is not the best way into Wells, for the cathedral is hidden. It is
from the Shepton Mallet road that we may see “the toune of Wells,” as
John Leland saw it nearly four hundred years ago, “sette yn the rootes of
Mendepe hille in a stony soile and ful of springes.” It has not changed
very much: the clergy here being secular, the Dissolution did not affect
them, and Wells has never greatly concerned itself with worldly matters
and has been all the more peaceful on that account. There have been
disturbing moments, of course; as when Perkin Warbeck set up his claim,
so confusing to the minds of quiet folk; and when the Parliament-men
made havoc in the cathedral; and when Prince Maurice and his troops
were billeted on the town, to its great impoverishment; and when King
Monmouth passed this way. But on the whole Wells has suffered little.
Leland, when he visited the cathedral, entered the close by one of these
gates that are standing to-day: came through the Chain Gate, under the
gallery and past the great clock that was made by a monk of Glastonbury,
or through Browne’s Gate from Sadler Street, or on foot through Penniless
Porch in the corner, once the haunt of beggars; and saw Jocelin’s famous
west front rising above the greensward, with the embattled deanery hard
by; and passed from the market-place to the moated palace under the
archway of Beckington’s “right goodly gatehouse,” the Bishop’s Eye.
This fifteenth-century Bishop Beckington did much for the beauty and
benefit of Wells; built, not only three gateways, but also “xij right
exceding fair houses al uniforme of stone, high and fair windoid,” in the
market-place, and set a conduit there, “for the which the burgeses ons a
yere solemply visite his tumbe, and pray for hys sowle.”
We may visit his tomb ourselves. His dust lies in the cathedral at the
entrance to the choir, beyond that ugly inverted arch that was set up
for safety’s sake in the fourteenth century; but in later days his tomb
has been treated less reverently than of yore. Its carved and painted
canopy stands broken and empty in the chapel of St. Calixtus, and in the
south aisle of the choir is the rather ghastly tomb--bishop above and
skeleton below--which the burgesses visited so gratefully. It is a rare
and delightful custom here that allows one to walk alone through the
choir and exquisite lady-chapel; to linger at will by the throne where
William Laud and Thomas Ken have sat; to picture Lord Grey standing
with drawn sword before this altar, to defend it from the rabble that
followed Monmouth; to seek out Bishop Button’s tomb, which cured so many
mediæval toothaches; to mount the long flight of footworn steps to the
chapter-house, and rest beneath its lovely vault in silence. These same
steps lead also to the gallery that was built by Beckington for the use
of the priest-vicars, whose peaceful close is reached by a gateway of its
own, outside the Chain Gate.
[Illustration: THE BISHOP’S EYE, WELLS.]
Beyond the cloisters is the palace: the fortified gatehouse, the towers
and drawbridge that Ralph of Shrewsbury found it wise to set between
himself and the citizens; the moat that is filled every day from St.
Andrew’s Well; the shattered banquet-hall where Edward III. once ate his
Christmas dinner; the great red dwelling-house that has passed for nearly
seven centuries from hand to hand. “Many bisshops hath bene the makers of
it, as it is now,” says Leland. It has had Wolsey for its master though
not its inmate; it has been stolen by Somerset the Protector; it has been
the home of Bishop Laud. Saintly Thomas Ken went from its seclusion for
a little time to join the rest of the Seven Bishops in the wild uproar
of their trial and acquittal, and later on was driven from its doors by
William of Orange. Here is Ken’s summer-house, at the upper corner of
the garden that he loved. Local tradition, whose wish is usually father
to its thought, declares that he wrote his Evening Hymn in this little
summer-house at the end of the terrace; but history, I believe, says
otherwise. It is tradition, too, that accuses Bishop Barlow of stripping
the lead from the roof of the banquet-hall, whose great windows we see so
plainly from this terrace. Barlow’s misdeeds at St. David’s have given
him a well-deserved bad name; but, on this occasion only, he was more
sinned against than sinning, for the palace and many other things were
wrung from him by Protector Somerset, from whom they passed to one Sir
John Gates. This vandal was the destroyer of the banquet-hall, and would
probably have done more mischief than he did, if he had not been most
justifiably beheaded.
It is behind the palace that we find the loveliest spot in Wells. Here,
overlooked by sixteenth-century oriels, are the springs that long ago
gave the city its name--the wells of St. Andrew, whose still surface has
reflected for hundreds of years the beautiful east end of the cathedral.
For hundreds of years, too, its waters have fed the moat. It is only at
certain hours, of course, that strangers may walk in the palace garden;
but the moat that circles it and the towers that guard it are visible to
everyone. So is the swan who rings for his dinner when it is late, with
all the jerky impatience of a man in the same plight.
[Illustration: WELLS CATHEDRAL.]
There is something that takes a hold on the imagination in the very
dulness of the country that lies between Wells and Glastonbury. For the
reason that this road with the rough surface is so level, and has such
uninteresting surroundings, is that all this country was once the swampy
land that lay round the Isle of Avalon. There is Glastonbury Tor before
us, conspicuous for many a mile with its steep sides and crowning tower;
and here on our left is the orchard-clad slope of Avalon itself, where
“golden apples smile in every wood.”
We drive slowly down the long High Street of Glastonbury.
Many, many pilgrims have come this way before us: have passed the great
Tudor-rose and mullioned windows of the old stone court-house on the
right, have stopped before the panelled front, the wreathed vines and
carven beasts, of the “George” Inn, and have entered it beneath the
painted arms of Edward IV. For this inn is the New Guesthouse that Abbot
Selwood built and embattled and made so fine, for such of the pilgrims
as paid for their lodging.[1] It was Selwood’s successor, Abbot Bere, “a
grave, wise, and discreet man, just and upright in all his ways,” who
raised the grey Tribunal that has been in turn an abbot’s court-house, a
boys’ school, and a lawyer’s office. Exactly opposite this house is the
passage that leads to the abbey.
It is not in the stones of Glastonbury that we shall find her history;
not in this soaring broken arch that leads our eyes and our hearts
upwards; nor even in the splendours of arcading and moulding that are the
glory of the _Ealde Chirche_, the chapel usually called St. Joseph’s,
though it is really St. Mary’s. Many centuries before these walls were
raised, many centuries before Norman hands ever laid one English stone
upon another, the soil beneath our feet--this dust that is the dust of
saints and kings--was held sacred by Saxon and Celt. “This place,” says
Camden, “was by our Ancestors call’d the first ground of God, the first
ground of the Saints in England, the rise and fountain of all religion in
England, the burying-place of the Saints, the mother of the Saints.”
[Illustration: ST. MARY’S CHAPEL (OFTEN CALLED ST. JOSEPH’S),
GLASTONBURY.]
The mind loses itself here in a cloud of legend. Dim forms of early saint
and holy grail give place to visions, almost as dim, of St. Patrick and
St. David and St. Bridget. Every holy man and woman came to Glastonbury,
according to the chroniclers, sooner or later, alive or dead; so that the
very floor, says William of Malmesbury, and the sides of the altar, and
even the altar itself above and beneath, were laden with the multitude
of relics. From Northumbria, from Ireland, from Wales, came the bones of
the saints in search of safety: Paulinus and Aidan and Bede, and Hilda
from her wild cliff by the North Sea, and David from his Rosy Valley
in the west. How much of this is true we not know and need not greatly
care, seeing that in any case the fact that gives interest and beauty to
these stories is the fact of Glastonbury’s immense age and sanctity, the
undoubted fact that it was “the first ground of the Saints in England,
the burying-place of Saints, the mother of Saints.” We may even be
informed by some officious person that the real name of the Glastonbury
Thorn is _Cratægus oxycantha præcox_, and that it will blossom at
Christmas elsewhere; yet nothing can rob us of the picture of Henry
VIII.’s lying and thieving commissioner, when he came hither to despoil
and desecrate, carefully wrapping up two sprigs of the sacred thorn
in a piece of white sarcenet, and sending them as a present to Thomas
Cromwell; nor of that other picture of the zealous puritan, solemnly
hacking the thorn-tree to death for the good of his soul.
When St. Dunstan was a boy, living here in the primitive monastery
founded by King Ina, he dreamt that he saw, on this spot where we are
standing among the ruins, a glorious fabric of “fair alleys and comely
cloisters.” The splendours of his vision have come and gone, but we too
may see them in dream: the mighty church with its towering arches, its
many chapels, its marble floors and sapphire altar; the enclosing wall
with the two great entrances; the acres of domestic buildings--cloisters
and dormitories, library and refectory, and the abbot’s stately lodging.
Over there among the trees his kitchen still stands. The steam of much
good cheer rose to its quaint octagonal roof when Henry VII. was here
as the guest of that wise and discreet man, Abbot Bere; and when Leland
visited his “especial friend,” Richard Whiting; and when Henry VIII.’s
commissioner came on his mean errand, and found to his annoyance that the
brethren were “so straight kept that they could not offend.”
It was not the magnificent building of Dunstan’s dream, but the simple
church he knew, that was the burial-place of kings. He himself, as abbot,
laid Edmund the Elder in his grave; and here in the monastery “which he
ever loved beyond all others” lies Edgar the Pacific, “the flower and
pride of all kings, the honour and glory of England,” and near him his
grandson Edmund Ironside, who was merciful and kind, says Matthew of
Westminster, “to the just persons in his kingdom, and terrible to the
unjust.… And all England mourned for him exceedingly.” And somewhere
deep beneath the turf, near the spot where the high altar used to stand,
is the dust of those bones and that golden tress of hair that some
would have us believe were the actual remains of Arthur and Guinevere.
Edward I. and his Eleanor believed it, and came to the great church
here when it was new to gaze, adoring and credulous, at the skulls of
their predecessors. But now our minds--like that of the blameless king
himself--are “clouded with a doubt”: for the historic Arthur, we are
told, died almost certainly in Scotland, and never came to the Island
Valley of Avilion to heal him of his grievous wound.
The first Norman abbot of Glastonbury, Thurstan, set to work at once to
improve the old building, and would have done more if his abbacy had
not suddenly ended in an unseemly skirmish on the very steps of the
altar. “He would have taught the monks amiss,” says the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle severely. In point of fact he was resolved to abolish the use
of Gregorian chants, to the great scandal of the monks, and, like many
another, thought that the introduction of the soldiery would have a
convincing effect. “Rueful things happened there on that day,” says the
chronicler, “for the French broke into the choir and threw darts towards
the altar where the monks were collected, and some of their servants went
upon the upper floor and shot down arrows towards the chancel, so that
many arrows stuck in the crucifix which stood above the altar, and the
wretched monks lay around the altar, and some crept under it … and they
slew some of the monks and wounded many, so that the blood ran down from
the altar on the steps.” Rueful things indeed!
The dogmatic Thurstan was removed, and a year later the monastery was
burnt to the ground. It was then that this beautiful chapel began to
rise, with all its profusion of ornament; and round it for hundreds
of years the great abbey continued to grow slowly into the perfection
of Dunstan’s dream. How great was the magnificence of it we may judge
from the “dyverse parcells” that were ultimately “delyvered until his
Majestie”--the spoils of many shrines, gold and silver vessels, jewelled
altars, and “the great saphire of Glastonburg.” Poor Abbot Whiting did
his best to save them before he went to his death on Glastonbury Tor.
[Illustration: THE CHOIR, GLASTONBURY.]
There is Glastonbury Tor before us, framed in the piers of the broken
chancel-arch. It was to the summit of that hill that Richard Whiting,
last Abbot of Glastonbury, who had been wont to travel in all the pomp of
a prince, was dragged upon a hurdle to the gallows. Over the great gate
through which his guests had so often crowded--sometimes five hundred in
a day, they say--his head was set up, lest men should forget that the
King loved “parcells of gilte plate” more than justice. For there was
hardly a pretence of justice in the trial of Richard Whiting. Like the
Abbot of Fountains, he hid the treasures of his abbey from the King’s
commissioners, and, since he must be proved a traitor before these riches
could be wrung from him, this act was called high treason. Neither his
immense charities, nor his simple, saintly life, nor even his submission
to the Act of Supremacy could save him. It was with “businesslike
brevity,” says Green the historian, that Thomas Cromwell “ticked off
human lives.” “Item,” he wrote among his memoranda, “the abbot of Glaston
to be tryed at Glaston and also executyd there.” So Richard Whiting was
hanged and quartered at the foot of that tower that still stands upon the
hill, and serves him for a monument.
I am not sure whether the main entrance to the abbey, over which
Whiting’s head was set, was the vanished gateway on the north side, or
the still existing entrance in Magdalen Street. We pass the latter as we
drive out of the town. Its newly restored archway stands on the left,
beside the house that was once the “Red Lion” Inn, and quite close to
the modern market-cross that is so unusually graceful. Our road skirts
the foot of Wearyall Hill, where once the sacred thorn-tree grew--the
miraculous tree that had been, said the monks of Glastonbury, the staff
of Joseph of Arimathea.
After a few minutes of level running we climb the Polden Hills--no very
arduous work--and look down upon the wide green plain of Sedgemoor. It
lies on our right as we glide down the hill, and stretches far away from
us to Bridgwater. It was from some spot in that blue distance that “a
volley of shot and huzzas” rang out into the night, when Monmouth and
his peasant army made their futile attempt to “vindicate their religion,
laws, and rights;” and it was far away across those level fields that
Feversham’s grim line of gibbets rose on the following day. In all this
peaceful country there was not a ditch from which some poor wretch was
not dragged to make sport, later on, for Jeffreys: but the ditch that hid
Monmouth himself was not here, but in Dorset. As we look out upon the
scene of his undoing let us forget that distant ditch, and the weakness
of an exhausted, starving man, and remember only that he made a gallant
end. “I shall die like a lamb,” he said on the scaffold. “I have now no
fear, as you may see by my face; but there is something within me which
does it, for I am sure I shall go to God. I will make no speeches: I
come to die.”
Again the road is level, or nearly so; but, as is rare in level country,
the surface is bad. We pass under the railway-bridge of the new Great
Western line, and soon see Somerton on the crest of a hill. The road to
Ilchester climbs the hill at the outskirts of the town, without actually
passing through it; but it would be a pity to turn our backs on the
ancient capital of the Somersœtas without a glance at its picturesque
streets and old houses, whose mellow walls are so characteristic of
Somerset. In the silent square that was once dominated by the castle,
and is now made beautiful by an arcaded, stone-tiled market-cross, there
is nothing to show that Somerton is a town of varied experiences. It has
seen a vast amount of life, but prefers to say nothing about it.
Here where the “White Hart” stands, without a sign of age, once stood
the palace of King Ina and his pious wife. Ina, King of the West Saxons,
was “a rare example of fortitude,” we are told; “a mirror of prudence,
unequalled in piety”--though he ascended the throne, as the same
chronicler delicately expresses it, “more from the innate activity of his
spirit than any legitimate right of succession.” Active he certainly was:
a conqueror of the British, a builder of monasteries and churches and
castles. We meet the records of his activities at Wells and Glastonbury,
at Taunton, and here in Somerton; and even when his determined Ethelburga
had persuaded him to abdicate, with some reluctance, he continued to
build in Rome. It was on this hill he chiefly lived and made his laws,
I believe, but his castle was burnt by the destroying Danish princes,
Hinguar and Hubba. On its foundations rose the later castle that served
as a prison for King John of France; but even this has left no remnant
but some thick masonry in the modest walls of the “White Hart.” In this
scene of long past revelry and war there is hardly a sign of life.
Somerton is inhabited, apparently, by one man, two children, and a cat.
[Illustration: MARKET PLACE, SOMERTON.]
Through cornfields and orchards and over Kingsdon Hill, on a surface that
is gradually improving, we go on our way to a town that is older still
than Somerton, but by no means so attractive. Indeed, Ilchester has a
very dull air, though it stands on the Fosse Way and has a few relics of
its Roman origin. A little more than two hundred years ago, however, its
sombre streets were lively enough on a certain August day, when gay young
Monmouth rode through them on a carpet of flowers and scented herbs, and
the crowd swept after him along the narrow ways. What schemes for the
future were in his mind we cannot guess, but at this time--during his
father’s life--there was nothing on his lips more treasonable than the
smiles that made the people love him. He had come “into the country to
divert himself,” and for a week or two all these lanes round Ilchester
and Ilminster, Chard and Yeovil, were ringing with cheers. “God bless
King Charles and the protestant Duke,” the people shouted, as he rode
smiling between these hedges. For he, like ourselves, left Ilchester by
the Roman road, which was probably even more badly kept in those days
than in these. It has, of course, the charm--in a motorist’s eyes--of
straightness, but the irregular fringe of grass at the sides gives it
an unkempt air that is unworthy of its origin, and it is only in patches
that the surface is good. The abrupt hill on the left with the tower on
its summit is the “sharp mount” that gave its name to Montacute.
We turn away from the Roman road by a lane that climbs a long hill
between high hedges, and quickly runs down again. Below us, in a fold of
the low hills, lies Crewkerne.
Joshua Sprigge, in his enchanting history, “compiled for the Publique
good, and to be sold at the Parot in Paul’s Churchyard,” describes how
the army of the Parliament came to _Crookhorn_ by “ill and narrow” ways
in a very hot season, “the foot weary with their long and tedious march,
the carriage-horses tyred out;” and how, only an hour later, they left it
again with all their weariness forgotten. “They leapt for joy that they
were like to be engaged.” As they were following the enemy to Petherton
it was probably by this very road that they marched away, probably on
this very road that Fairfax and Cromwell came riding side by side.
We need not stay in Crewkerne even so long as they, for there is nothing
to be seen except the church. There is hardly a church in Somerset that
is not worth seeing, either for its beauty or its interest; but the
church here is more than ordinarily stately. Like all the rest it is
built of the stone whose grey and yellow tints make even the simplest
cottage in Somerset a lovely thing, and add greatly to the beauty of this
elaborate church, with its crockets and statues and niches, its embattled
turrets and parapet, and all its intricate gargoyles. In an angle of the
south transept is a curious recess such as I have never seen elsewhere,
with a canopy and a stone seat. It is said to have been a hermit’s cell;
but a hermit who frequented the outer wall of a large church must have
been very fond of society.
Here we strike the London and Exeter road, and therefore the surface,
which has hitherto been indifferent at best and at worst very bad,
becomes almost perfect. As we climb the long hill of St. Rayne to the
height that is ominously known as Windwhistle, the scenery grows very
lovely: the breezy road passes along a ridge, a wide park skirts the
wayside, and to right and left the landscape sweeps away into the
distance. Indeed, I have heard that at one point near Windwhistle inn--at
the fourth milestone from Chard--it is possible on a clear day to catch
a glimpse of the two seas, to north and south. A run of two miles on an
easy downward gradient takes us to the “prepared” road that leads into
the long, wide, sloping street of Chard; then a steep climb lifts us to
the hilltops again; and a few minutes later we glide down into the soft
green woods of Devon.
THE HEART OF DEVON
SUMMARY OF RUN ACROSS MID-DEVON
DISTANCES.
Devon Border
Sidmouth 22 miles
Exeter 18 ”
Moretonhampstead 13½ ”
Two Bridges 12¼ ”
Tavistock 8¼ ”
--------
Total 74 miles
Exeter to Plymouth _viâ_ Ashburton 44 miles
Exeter to Launceston _viâ_ Okehampton 42 ”
ROADS.
Hills steep and frequent.
Surface: rather rough on the Moor; between Exeter and Launceston,
variable; between Exeter and Plymouth, good.
II
THE HEART OF DEVON
To hurry in Devonshire is absurd. In the first place, it is contrary to
the spirit of the country: no one does it. In the second place, it is
impossible.
I cannot conscientiously recommend Devon as a motoring field for those
who find great speed essential to their happiness, for to them the
alternate use of the gear lever and the brake is apt to be exasperating.
But to many of us the reduction of our average mileage is a small matter
in comparison with certain important things; such as scarlet poppies in
the corn, and high banks fringed with ferns, and cottages smothered in
flowers, and wide purple moors, and the rippling of emerald seas, and the
complete serenity that fills the heart in Devon.
Here, on the very border, there is a long rise and an extremely sharp
turn, on the hill where Yarcombe stands. After this winding climb we run
down easily through lovely wooded country into the straight, wide street
of Honiton. This is a name that rouses deep emotion in every female
heart, and to the female ear I will confide the fact that Honiton lace,
as made to-day in Honiton, is perhaps more really beautiful than it has
ever been; and there is a certain little upper room, not hard to find,
where the enthusiast may watch swift fingers and flying bobbins. Except
these filmy bramble-leaves and roses there is nothing of interest in
Honiton. Sir William Pole summed it up three centuries ago, and his words
describe it accurately to this day. “This towne is a very prety towne
indifferently well bwilded, and hath his market on the Saterday.”
By the direct road Exeter is only fifteen miles away, but by making
quite a short _détour_ we may see the birthplaces of Coleridge and
Sir Walter Raleigh, and catch a glimpse of the sea. A mile or two of
splendid Roman road, and a shady lane, take us to Ottery St. Mary and
its famous church; the church, says Pole, that John Grandison, Bishop of
Exeter, “bwilded in imitatinge of ye church of St. Peter’s in Exon, with
ye cannons’ howses round about, standinge in a sweete wholsom advanced
ground.” He did not actually “bwild” it, however, but rather enlarged
it and made it collegiate, and left upon it the marks of that taste for
splendour in which he indulged more fully at Exeter. Not only a great
part of the fabric itself is his, but the painted reredos and the stone
screen and the choir-stalls were his gifts. The pulpit is of a much more
modern date; but it is the very same from which Coleridge’s father was
in the habit of addressing his congregation in Hebrew, “the authentic
language of the Holy Ghost.” The grammar-school in which the poet spent
his childhood with his twelve brethren no longer exists; but we may still
see the narrow lanes where little Samuel, a visionary already, curvetted
on an imaginary horse and slew the enemies of Christendom as represented
by the wayside nettle. And here, close at hand, is the little Otter, and
the “marge with willows grey” by which he loved to dream.
Long before Coleridge played his warlike games there were horsemen of a
sterner sort riding hither and thither through these lanes. Fairfax spent
a busy fortnight here, resting his army, “who never stood in more need of
it,” but by no means resting himself: visiting the works at Broad Clyst,
caring for his dying soldiers, and doing his best to make peace between
King and Parliament. “To be general raised him onely to _do_ more, not to
_be_ more than others,” said a man who was with him here. Where he lodged
I do not know, nor the spot where he was presented with a “fair jewel”
in the name of both Houses, in gratitude for the services “he performed
for this kingdome at Naseby Battel.” It is certain, however, that a
deputation brought it to Ottery, and “tyed it in a blue Ribband and put
it about his neck.”
[Illustration: SIDMOUTH.]
Sidmouth is only five miles away from Ottery, and lies so prettily
between its two headlands that it is worth seeing, though the lanes that
lead to it are hilly. It is quite an old place, really. Its prettiness,
however, does not at all depend upon its age, but on the ruddy cliffs
that bound the bay, and the little brown stream that runs down through
the shingle to the sea, and the tiny cascade that glitters in the sun,
and the groups of boats that lie upon the beach. Yet, driving through
the western part of the town, we see that Sidmouth after all is merely a
typical watering-place. Here is the esplanade we know so well, and the
row of bathing-boxes, and the shrill-voiced nursemaid with her shriller
charge, and the dreaded pierrot. Beyond that western end rises the Peak
Hill, and up its steep side lies our way.
It is steep indeed; both steep and very long. Before it is faced the
hill-climbing powers of the car should be carefully considered, for the
gradient at one point is at least one in five, and is extremely steep
for a considerable distance. But from this height the blue bay and red
rocks of Sidmouth look very lovely through the trees, and at the top of
the hill there are colours enough on a sunny day to repay us for much
climbing: pale blue hills and a dark blue sea, and a wide expanse of
varying greens, and to the left a red cliff, and to the right, perhaps,
a patch of brilliant heather. Very carefully--for the lanes are narrow
and steep--we run down the other side of the hill that has just been
laboriously climbed, and reach the pretty street of Otterton, with its
runnel and little bridges, and thatched cottages, and background of
trees. We cross the Otter, and are soon in East Budleigh, the twisting,
straggling village near which Sir Walter Raleigh was born.
In the grey church on the knoll above the street we may see the Raleigh
arms, and with them the three “horsemen’s rests” that figure in so many
shields--the arms of the great Grenvilles. The bench-end that bears them
is the first on the left side of the aisle, and was carved early in the
sixteenth century, when one of the Raleighs married Honor Grenville. Sir
Walter’s mother, we need not doubt, sat in this pew many a time, for the
Raleighs lived only a mile away at Hayes Barton. We can find the house
quite easily, standing beside a little sloping green: a low, gabled,
grey house, with a thatched roof and a gay old-fashioned garden. There
have been many changes here, of course, since that sixteenth-century baby
first blinked at the world he was destined to explore; but even then
this was a humble home for the daughter of the Champernownes, the mother
of two great men. For through this heavy oaken door that swings slowly
open to admit us has passed not only Walter Raleigh in his nurse’s arms,
but also the Eton boy who was his big half-brother, Humphrey Gilbert. Of
the life that was lived and the ideals that were taught under the gables
of Hayes Barton we may perhaps guess something, not over rashly, from
the last words of these two boys when they came to die, each his tragic
death. “This,” said Sir Walter with a smile as he felt the axe, “is a
sharp medicine that will cure all diseases.” “We are so near Heaven at
sea as on land,” said Sir Humphrey as his last storm broke over him.
That Sir Walter loved this house, of which his father was only a tenant,
we have good evidence; for when he was a man he tried in vain to buy
it. Here, in the room on the left side of the doorway, is a copy of the
letter he wrote to Mr. Duke. “I will most willingly give you what so:ever
in your conscience you shall deeme it worthe.… You shall not find mee an
ill neighbore.… For the naturall disposition I have to that place, being
borne in that howse, I had rather seat mysealf ther than any wher else.”
The little room where he was born, the room upstairs with the high
ceiling and the latticed windows, has not been changed, they say. They
say too--and for this one was prepared--that he smoked his first pipe in
England in the room over the porch. Sir Walter’s first pipe had evidently
some of the qualities of the widow’s cruse. Wherever his name is heard
the tradition of the first pipe lingers. He smoked it, we are told, on a
rock in the Dart, and beside a Devon fireplace, and in an Irish garden,
and here at Hayes.
And now, returning first to East Budleigh, we go on our way to the Ever
Faithful City by lovely woods of fir and beech, and wide heaths, and
hills and dales of richest green, with here a glimpse of sea and there
a wealth of heather. Through Woodbury we go; and Clyst St. George,
where the Champernownes lived; and Bishop’s Clyst, which was once Clyst
Sachvill. The last of the Champernownes of Clyst was the unconventional
Elizabeth, who married her first husband three days after her father’s
death, and her second husband two days after her first husband’s death.
“A frolic lady,” says John Prince. As for the Clyst that once belonged
to the Sachvills and afterwards to the bishops, it changed hands in this
manner. Sir Ralph Sachvill, being about to go to France in the service
of Edward I., was in sore need of a large sum of money, and mortgaged
the manor of Clyst to Bishop Branscombe of Exeter. The bishop, prudent
man, forthwith built largely on the land, and made so many improvements
that poor Sachvill, coming home from the wars with empty pockets, could
not redeem his estate. So Clyst Sachvill became Clyst Episcopi, and the
Bishops of Exeter visited it when they needed change of air. The time
came, however, when “as Brounscomb cuningly gott it, soe did Bishop
Voisey wastefully loose it.”
It was by this road that we are travelling on, this very excellent road
from Otterton, that the Duke of Monmouth once came riding into Exeter;
and it was somewhere near Bishop’s Clyst, I think, that a curious
spectacle met his eyes. Twenty thousand people came out to welcome him,
“but that which was more remarkable,” says the historian--and who will
deny it?--“was the appearance of a brave company of stout young men, all
clothed in linen waistcoats and drawers, white and harmless, having not
so much as a stick in their hands.” There were nine hundred or a thousand
of these innocents drawn up on a little hill. The Duke reviewed them
solemnly, riding round each company. Then the stout and harmless youths
marched two by two, hand in hand, before him into the city.
The story of Exeter has no beginning. To Norman and Saxon, Roman and
Celt, it was a fortified stronghold, the Gate of the West. For centuries
it was the desire of kings, the first thought of the invader, the
forlorn hope of the rebel. Yet, as we drive through the dull suburb
of Heavitree--which owes its grim name to the gallows--and pass into
the heart of the town we see no sign of the walls that endured so many
sieges, the walls that were built by Athelstane, that were attacked by
Alfred, that fell before the Conqueror, that withstood Warbeck, that
defended the cause of Charles: no sign of the towered archway that was
once the entrance to Exeter and had Henry VII.’s statue above it: nothing
to show us where poor Perkin, the king of straw, battered in his futile
way upon the gate, “with casting of stones, heaving of iron barres, and
kindling of fire,” nor where William the Conqueror, in ways that were
not futile, battered so successfully--“although the citizens smally
regarded him”--that it was believed “some part of the walls miraculously
of his owne accord fell downe.” Nor is there any sign of the western gate
that once stood at the further end of the High Street, the gate through
which another William, seeking the same crown, came in a later century.
Through this street, which Leland calls the fairest in Exeter, the great
procession of William of Orange swept in all its splendour of bright
armour and banners. Here where we are driving they passed by: the English
gentlemen on Flanders steeds; the two hundred blacks in embroidered
fur-lined caps with white feathers; the two hundred men of Finland in
bearskins and black armour, with broad flaming swords, very terrible
to unaccustomed eyes; the motto of the cause--“God and the Protestant
Religion”--fluttering on fifty banners borne by fifty gentlemen; the
led-horses and the pages and the grooms; and the prince himself, all
glittering in armour upon his milk-white palfry, surrounded by his
running footmen and followed by a mighty host. The billeting of this host
upon the citizens of Exeter, says an eye-witness in a Letter to a Person
of Quality, “was done so much to the content and satisfaction of the
inhabitants, and such just payments made for what the soldiers had, and
such civil behaviour among them, without swearing and damning as is usual
among some armies, that it is admiration to behold.”
[Illustration: GUILDHALL, EXETER.]