ASHBURTON
Ashburton manors--The Ashburn--The cloth-workers--The
tucking-mills--County families sprung from the woollen
trade--Introduction of machinery--John Dunning--Created
Baron Ashburton--Wood-carving in Ashburton--The Oldham
owl--Screen destroyed--Ilsington--The Pomeroys--Holne--Dean
Prior and Herrick--Abbey of Buckfast--A foundation of S.
Petrock--Staverton Church--Screens in Devon--Dr. Blackall's
Drive--Holne Chase--Bovey Tracey--William de Tracy--Chudleigh.
A pleasant, sleepy, country town, hardly able to maintain its
old-world dignity against the ruffling, modern, manufacturing
Buckfastleigh. A pleasant centre, whence delightful excursions may
be made, and with an old-world aroma about it, as though preserved
in _pot-pourri_.
It has a beautiful church. Ashburton consisted of a royal and an
episcopal manor, each with its several municipal officers. A stream
divided the manors. Ashburton is the _tun_ on the Ashburn. _Ash_ is
but another form of _Exe_, from _usk_, water. It owed its growth
and prosperity to the wool trade. The proximity to Dartmoor, an
unrivalled run for sheep, and the water of the stream to turn the
mills, gave to Ashburton a great significance as a centre of cloth
manufacture. Added to which it was a stannary town.
The old chapel of S. Laurence in the town, now converted into a
grammar school, belonged to the guild of the cloth-workers, and
their seal became the arms of the borough: On a mount vert, a chapel
with spire, in dexter chief the sun in splendour, in sinister a
crescent moon, in dexter base a teasel, in sinister a saltire. The
teasel and sun and moon were emblematical of the chief staples of
the place; the woollen trade and the mining interests.
The old fulling-mills were locally termed tucking-mills, and the
extent to which cloth-working was carried on in South Devon is shown
by the prevalence of the surname Tucker.[29]
[29] For what follows on the woollen trade I am greatly indebted to
a paper by Mr. P. F. S. Amery in the _Transactions of the Devonshire
Association_, 1879.
The process of manufacture given by Westcote, in 1630, is as
follows:--
"First, the gentleman farmer, or husbandman, sends his wool to
the market, which is bought either by the comber or spinster,
and they, the next week, bring it hither again in yarn, which
the weaver buys, and the market following brings that hither
again in cloth, when it is sold, either to the clothier,
who sends it to London, or to the merchant, who, after it
hath passed the fuller's mill, and sometimes the dyer's vat,
transports it. The large quantities whereof cannot be well
guessed, but best known to the custom-book, whereunto it yields
no small commodity, and this is continued all the year through."
The clothier was a man of some means, that bought the yarn or
_abb_ in the Tuesday's market from Cornish and Tavistock spinners,
who kept this branch of the trade pretty much to themselves. The
worsted was spun into "tops"--and the name Toop is common now in the
neighbourhood. Tops, the combed wool so called by poor cottagers,
was made by them into chains to form the warp or framework of the
fabric.
One day a week the serge-maker assumed a long apron and met his
weavers, the poor folk of the neighbourhood, who frequently hired
their looms from him, paying him a shilling quarterly. He served out
to them the proper proportions of _abb_ and worsted, with a certain
quantity of glue to size the chain before tying it to the loom. This
they took home with them, and wove at leisure, returning it the
following week and receiving the price of their labour.
These serges were then fulled at the borough tucking-mill. This was
supplied with a water-wheel that gave motion to the tree or spindle,
whose teeth communicated it to the stampers, which were made to
rise and fall. The stampers or pestles worked in troughs in which
was laid the stuff that was intended to be fulled. The cloth had
already been saturated in various unsavoury liquids to prepare it
for the stampers. For raising the nap after dying the dipsacus, or
common teasel, was extensively grown. The heads were fixed round the
circumference of a large, broad wheel which was made to revolve, and
the cloth was held against it.
The cloths were then ready.
It is evident that no large capital was needed in this mode of doing
business; the clothier had no operatives to look after, and only
a small portion of his time was occupied in his business. A day
set apart to "tend" his weavers, and an hour in the yarn market on
Tuesdays was about all that was regularly required of him. Yet the
business done was large, and he expended his capital in purchasing
land, in enclosing commons, and in starting tanneries, above all in
acting as banker to the neighbourhood.
It is really surprising to see how many of the notable heraldic
families of Devon rose from being clothiers. But then the serges
of the West were in request not in England only, but also abroad.
Westcote says:--
"The stuff of serges or perpetuanos is now in great use and
request with us, wherewith the market at Exeter is abundantly
furnished of all sorts and prices; the number will hardly be
credited. Tiverton hath also such a store in kersies as will
not be believed. Crediton yields many of the finest sorts of
kersies. Totnes and some places near it hath had besides these
a sort of coarse cloth, which they call _narrow-pin-whites_,
not elsewhere made. Barnstaple and Torrington furnish us with
bays, single and double frizados. At Tavistock there is a good
market. Ottery St. Mary hath mixed kersies; Cullompton, kersey
stockings."
The introduction of worsted spinning-frames in the North of England
early in the present century revolutionised the trade, and in 1817
Mr. Caunter started the first worsted spinning-frames in Ashburton,
charging 10_d._ a pound for spinning. For a while he held the
monopoly. But the Dart was now called into requisition at Buckfast,
and on the site and out of the materials of the abbey a spinning
factory was established.
"The next great change," says Mr. Amery, "was brought about by
the fact that all the weaving was carried on in the houses of
the poor. Perhaps in a social point of view it was a good thing,
as the mother was always occupied at home, and had her eye on
the family; but to the manufacturer it was bad, as the materials
entrusted by him to the weaver were open to great peculations,
for weavers could always supply themselves with yarn or _abb_
sufficient to provide their families with stockings, and joiners
could purchase the best glue at half price in the little shops,
where it had been bartered for small goods. So great was the
loss of yarn, worsted, and glue, and so various were the means
taken to make up the short weight by the use of oil, water,
etc., that a remedy was sought and found in the expedient of
erecting large factories, fitted with the newest _spring looms_;
here the weavers came and worked, and nothing was allowed to be
carried off the premises."
More wool is now worked up by the aid of the power-looms and combing
machines at Ashburton and Buckfastleigh than in the old prosperous
times.
[Illustration: J. DUNNING, FIRST LORD ASHBURTON]
Ashburton's most distinguished son was John Dunning, first Baron
Ashburton. He belonged to a respectable family, originally seated
in Walkhampton parish, which, though not bearing an armorial coat,
was yet above the class of yeomen. His father, John Dunning, settled
as an attorney at Ashburton, where the future Lord Ashburton was
born in 1731.[30] John Dunning the elder had as one of his clients
Sir Thomas Clarke, Master of the Rolls, who owned a good deal
of property about Ashburton. A legal instrument drawn up by the
young Dunning when only nineteen, and sent to Sir Thomas, struck
the Master of the Rolls as being so well done that he undertook
the charge of fitting him for a career at the bar; and under this
patron's auspices young Dunning, in the twenty-first year of his
age, entered the Middle Temple in 1752.
[30] For a memoir of John Dunning, see that by Mr. R. DYMOND, in the
_Transactions of the Devonshire Association_, 1876.
It was whilst keeping his terms that Dunning made acquaintance
with Horne Tooke, who addressed to him in 1778 his _Letter on the
English Particle_, which was later expanded into _The Diversions of
Purley_. After four years of study Dunning was called to the bar,
and for five weary years after that his prospects remained in a most
unpromising condition. He was a very ugly man, stunted in growth,
his limbs misshapen, and his features mean. Horne Tooke used to tell
a story illustrative of his personal appearance. On one occasion
Thurlow wished to see him privately, and going to the coffee-house
he frequented, asked the waiter if Mr. Dunning were there. The
waiter, who was new to the place, said he did not know him. "Not
know him!" exclaimed Thurlow with his usual volley of oaths. "Go
into the room upstairs, and if you see a gentleman like the knave
of clubs, call him down." The waiter departed, and returned with
Dunning.
On one occasion he was retained in an assault case, and his object
was to disprove the identity of the person named by an old woman as
the aggressor. Abandoning his usual overbearing demeanour towards
witnesses, he commenced his cross-examination thus, mildly:--
"Pray, my good woman, what sized man was he?"
"Short and stumpy, sir; almost as small as your honour."
"Humph! What sort of a nose had he?"
"Well now, what I should ca' a snubby nose, like your own, sir, only
not quite so cocked up like."
"Humph! His eyes?"
"He'd gotten a bit o' a cast in 'em, sir, like your honour's squint."
"Go down, woman. That will do."
Presently affairs took a turn. Dunning worked his way into notice
by adopting violent radical or democratical views, and became the
friend of the notorious Wilkes, who also had a squint, and he acted
as junior counsel in the famous prosecution of the publishers of No.
45 of the _North Briton_, which contained strictures on the speech
from the throne, at the close of the session of 1763. It was in this
case that Dunning firmly established his reputation as a close and
subtle reasoner, and he could ever calculate on being employed by
his party. From this date no member of the bar obtained a larger
number of briefs. I have already told, in my _Old Country Life_, a
story illustrative of the way in which he managed the defence of a
man on trial for murder. In 1766 he won the recordership of Bristol,
he was appointed Solicitor-General in 1767, and in the general
election of 1768 he was elected member for Caine.
"Among the new accessions to the House of Commons at this
juncture," writes Lord Mahon, "by far the most eminent in ability
was John Dunning.... He was a man both of quick parts and strong
passions; in his politics a zealous Whig. As an orator, none ever
laboured under greater disadvantages of voice and manner; but these
disadvantages were most successfully retrieved by his wondrous
powers of reasoning, his keen invective, and his ready wit. At
the trial of the Duchess of Kingston for bigamy, when he appeared
as counsel against her Grace, Hannah More, who was present, thus
describes him: 'His manner is insufferably bad, coughing and
spitting at every word, but his sense and expression pointed to the
last degree. He made her Grace shed bitter tears.'" The mode in
which he used his hands was absurd as it was peculiar. He drew them
whilst speaking up close together to the height of his breast, where
he rested his wrists, and kept up a continual paddling with his
outspread palms, moving them with a rapidity corresponding to the
motion of his tongue. It was said that he looked on such occasions
like a flat fish hung up in a fishmonger's shop, the body rigid, but
the fins in front vibrating up and down unceasingly.
In 1769 Dunning bought the manors of Spitchwick and Widecombe.
"Manors in Devonshire!" exclaimed Jack Lee. "A pity, Dunning, you
should have them there, and should bring no manners with you to
Westminster."
In 1770 he resigned his position as Solicitor-General, and resumed
his old position outside the bar, but with a professional income
estimated at the then unprecedented sum of £10,000 per annum.
He was now on the Opposition benches in the House. In the hot
debates on the American War, Dunning steadfastly advocated a policy
of conciliation. An instance of Dunning's sharpness of repartee
was afforded when Chatham moved an address to the Crown in favour
of this policy. The motion was upheld by Lords Shelburne, Camden,
and Rockingham, and they were supported by the vote of the Duke of
Cumberland. His Royal Highness was one day complimenting Dr. Price
on a pamphlet he had written in favour of the Americans. "I sat up
reading it last night," said he, "till it had almost blinded me."
"On the rest of the nation, your Royal Highness," said Dunning, who
stood by, "the pamphlet has had the opposite effect. It has opened
their eyes."
John Dunning was nearly fifty years old when he married. His choice
was Elizabeth Baring, daughter of John Baring, of Larkbeare, one of
the many woollen merchants then flourishing in Exeter, and sister of
the founders of the great house of Baring Brothers. He was married
to her in 1780.
His honeymoon must have been short, for exactly one week after
his marriage Dunning brought forward in Committee of the House of
Commons his famous motion, "That it is the opinion of this Committee
that the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and
ought to be diminished." After a fierce debate he succeeded in
carrying his motion by a majority of eighteen.
On the 15th March, 1782, a motion of want of confidence, though
negatived by a majority of nine, proved fatal to the Administration,
and the Premier resigned. Then, after twelve years passed in "the
cold shade of opposition," the Whigs were again in power; and one
of the first steps taken by the Marquess of Rockingham, who now
became Prime Minister, was to reward John Dunning with a coronet.
His patent of nobility bore date April 8th, 1782, and thus the
misshapen but clever son of the little Ashburton attorney became the
first Baron Ashburton. None when in opposition had denounced more
vigorously, and with greater display of righteous indignation, the
bestowal of pensions on a large scale; but no sooner had he passed
out of the Opposition into place than he exacted for himself the
enormous pension of £4000 per annum, a sum to him quite unnecessary,
as he had amassed a huge fortune.
By this time, however, his health had begun to fail, and he died
on August 18th, 1783, of paralysis, leaving a son, Richard Barré
Dunning, to succeed him in the title, and to inherit a fortune of
£180,000. The second Lord Ashburton married a daughter of William
Cunninghame, of Lambshaw, and through her became allied with the
Cranstoun family, to whom a large portion of his ample possessions
passed at his death without issue in 1823.
Ashburton, in the Tudor period, seems to have possessed a school of
wood-carving. The Churchwardens' Book shows that much work was done
in the church between 1515 and 1525. An Exeter man named John Mayne
was then employed in wood-carving, but there were Ashburton workmen
as well. There was then erected a very fine screen. The rood-loft
was removed in 1539, but not the screen itself till last century,
when portions of it became the property of private persons, and
others were laid as foundations to the galleries.
The side chapels seem also to have been screened in; and there
was one Thomas Prideaux who was a liberal contributor to the
beautification of the church. In one of the side chapels was a rich,
canopied altar-piece with wings. When the chantries and chapels were
destroyed, this was carried away by the son, Robert Prideaux, and
employed for the decoration of his room. The central piece of the
triptych has been lost, but the wings and the canopy remain. Some of
the wood-carving of Henry the Seventh's reign in and about Ashburton
is of the very finest quality, quite unsurpassed in its style. Work
by apparently the same hand may be seen at Fulford in the hall.
In Ashburton stands a quaint slated house-front with the pips on
cards cut in slate ornamenting the front. The old ring to which the
bull was attached for baiting still remains where was the ancient
bull-ring of the town. Ashburton was, as already said, originally
composed of two manors--one royal, the other episcopal--and each
had its portreeve. The King's Bridge united them, and the river
divided one from the other. This was a relic of pre-Saxon times,
when the chief of the land and the ecclesiastical chief had their
separate establishments. At a later period Ashburton passed wholly
into the hands of the Bishop of Exeter. Bishop Oldham, 1504-1519,
was a benefactor to the church, and gave it a lectern with an owl,
his symbol, supporting the desk. This owl was sold to Bigbury, along
with the handsome pulpit. Holne pulpit is very similar to that
formerly in Ashburton.
[Illustration: OLD OAK CARVING, ASHBURTON]
The church of Ashburton has been renovated, and is now very
stately and beautiful. It is to be regretted that the architect,
the late Mr. Street, was superior to restoring the screen from
the fragments that remained, and instead evolved one out of his
inner consciousness, quite out of character with the church, and
entirely different in feeling from the work common throughout the
neighbourhood, which is exquisite in beauty of design and in detail.
But such is the way with architects. The Arlers of Gmünd designed
Milan Cathedral, but were not allowed to complete it; it was given
to sixteen different Italian architects to meddle with and to muddle
it; the result is that the exterior is a bit of miserable frippery
in marble. Happily the original design for the interior was not
interfered with.
But something incomparably worse may be seen near Ashburton, in the
interior of Bickington.
Ilsington Church retains a few poppy-head benches of rich work,
unique in the county.
In Ilsington is Ingsdon, once the seat of the Pomeroy family, but
no relics of the ancient house remain. According to tradition, the
Pomeroy ancestor was jester to Robert the Magnificent, father of
William the Conqueror. He was a dwarf, full of comical movements as
well as of quips and quirks. As he came in with the dessert he was
called Pomme-roy, the Apple King. His son became a faithful servant
of William, and was rewarded by him with large manors in Devon and
Somersetshire. A junior branch was settled at Ingsdon. The tradition
is of course groundless, as the family derived from a place Pomeraye
in Normandy, near Bayeux. It probably originated with a family
tendency to jest, and to a certain grotesqueness of appearance.
It is told by Miss Strickland in her _History of the Queens of
England_. But the odd circumstance about it is that there are
Pomeroys now in and about Ashburton of humble degree--the children,
the plague of the schoolmaster and mistresses, as they are born
humourists, and withal have such a droll appearance and expression
as to inevitably provoke mirth.
Holne Church has a good painted screen, and the parsonage is the
house in which Charles Kingsley was born. The view of the winding of
the Dart from the parsonage garden is beautiful.
Dean Prior was long the place to which poor Robert Herrick was
banished. He did not love it, nor did he relish the rude ways of
his parishioners. It is to be feared he did not labour very hard to
better them. He was buried here in the churchyard in 1674. Here also
was laid his servant "Prue," recorded in his poems. Her burial is
entered in the register as that of "Prudence Balden, an olde maid,"
and Herrick's trust that the violet might blossom on her grave is
perhaps not unfulfilled, although her grassy mound is not now known.
The Abbey of Buckfast is within an easy walk, and should on all
accounts be visited. It is the earliest foundation in Devon, going
back to long before the Conquest, in fact no documents exist to show
when it was founded. "Mr. Brooking Rowe has suggested that Buckfast
Abbey probably existed before the coming of the Northmen; that would
be before A.D. 787. It may be so, but, at least, it must be grouped
with Bodmin and Glastonbury Abbey as one of a trio of monastic
churches which had property in Devon before King Edgar's time,
and is probably, with the exception of Exeter, the only monastery
before that time existing in the county. Its extreme antiquity may
be inferred from the fact that Buckfast itself was never assessed."
That is, at the taking of Domesday.
Now I have an idea concerning it. Two of its churches were Harford
and South Brent, and both are dedicated to S. Petrock. We find S.
Petrock again, further down the Dart, at its mouth. Where we find
a Celtic dedication, there we may be pretty certain that either
the saint founded the church, or that it was given to him, not
necessarily in his lifetime.
In Celtic monasteries, when a grant was made, it was not made
to the community, but to the saint personally, who was supposed
never to die, and all the lands and churches granted became his
personal property. Now, as we find two of the churches belonging
to this venerable abbey bearing S. Petrock's name, I think it
quite possible that the original abbey may have been, like that
of Padstow, a foundation of S. Petrock. When, however, the abbey
was re-endowed and recast, and occupied by monks belonging to the
Latin orders, S. Petrock would be ignored at Buckfast, and the
only indication left of his having once owned the whole territory
of Buckfast would be the lingering on of his name in some of the
churches that belonged to that same territory.
I am not sure that we have not hard by traces of other Celtic
saints, S. Wulvella in Gulwell, a Holywell at Ashburton, and her
brother S. Paul of Leon at Staverton, though now supplanted by Paul
the Apostle.
Buckfast Abbey, after having been given over to the wreckers,
has been purchased by French Benedictines, expelled from France
in 1882, and they are carefully rebuilding the abbey on its old
lines, following all the details as turned up among the ruins. The
foundations of the church have been uncovered, and show that it
was of great size. It was pulled down in 1806, and the materials
employed in the construction of a factory.
Staverton Church is deserving a visit because of its superb screen,
that has been most carefully restored. It exhibits a screen complete
in all its parts, a thing very rare. Most of these lack what was
their crowning glory, the upper member. Indeed there is but one
completely intact in the county--Atherington, if we except the stone
screen at Exeter.
There are other screens in the neighbourhood; that of Buckland has
on it some unexplained paintings.
The Celt was never a builder. His churches were rude to the last
degree of rudeness. But what he delighted in was wattle-work,
interlacing osiers into the most intricate and beautiful and varied
designs. We may conjecture that our Celtic forefathers did not
concern themselves much about the stonework of their churches, and
concentrated all their efforts on a screen dividing chancel from
nave, which with platting and interweaving they made into a miracle
of loveliness. And this direction given to decoration hung on in
Devon and Cornwall, and resulted in the glorious screens. For them,
to contain them, the shells were built. Everything was sacrificed
to them, and when they are swept away what remains is nakedness,
disproportion, and desolation.
Of the excursions in the neighbourhood of Ashburton to scenes of
loveliness I will say but little. Yet let me recommend one of
singular beauty--it is called Dr. Blackall's Drive. The Tavistock
road is taken till the Dart is passed at New Bridge, then after a
steep ascent the highway is abandoned before Pound Gate is reached,
and a turf drive runs above the Dart commanding its gorge, the Holne
coppice, and Benjie Tor, and the high road is rejoined between Bell
Tor and Sharp Tor. This excursion may be combined with a drive
through Holne Chase, if taken on a day when the latter is open to
the public.
Holne Chase, however, should be seen from both sides of the Dart, as
the aspects are very different on the two sides.
Hembury and Holne Chase camps are both fine, and deserve
investigation. They commanded and defended the entrance to the moor
from this side. Widecombe has been spoken of under the head of
Moreton.
Bovey should be visited, with its fine church and screen and painted
and gilt stone pulpit, and with the Bovey Heathfield potteries.
Bovey was one of the manors of the De Tracy who was a principal
hand in the murder of Thomas à Becket, and it is to this ambitious
and turbulent prelate that the church is dedicated. The story goes
that William de Tracy built the church at Bovey as penance for his
part in the murder; but the church constructed by him was burnt
about 1300, and was rebuilt in the Perpendicular style. The story
was diligently propagated that De Tracy died on his way to the Holy
Land, in a frenzy, tearing his flesh off his bones with his teeth
and nails, and shrieking, "Mercy, Thomas, mercy!" But, as a matter
of fact, no judgment of God fell on the murderers. Within four
years after the murder, De Tracy was justiciary of Normandy. The
present Lord Wemyss and Lord Sudeley are his lineal descendants.
The pedigree, contrary to all received opinions on the subject of
"judgments" on sacrilege, exhibits the very singular instance of an
estate descending for upwards of seven hundred years in the male
line of the same family. Fitzurse, another of the murderers, went to
Ireland, and became the ancestor of the McMahon family.
There are some curious pictures on the Bovey screen which are
supposed to have reference to the story of Becket and his quarrels
with the king.
Chudleigh is at some distance, but it is worth a visit, partly
because of the good screen in the church, but mainly because of the
very pretty ravine through which the Kate (_Cad_, fall) tumbles.
The rock here is of limestone, a fine and beautiful marble, and in
its face is a cavern supposed to be haunted by the Pixies, with
a stalagmite floor that was broken up by Dr. Buckland in 1825,
and the soil beneath it examined in the slip-shod, happy-go-lucky
style usual with explorers of that period. It deserves to be
reinvestigated systematically.
NOTE.--Books and articles on Ashburton:--
WORTHY (C.), _Ashburton and its Neighbourhood_. Ashburton, 1875.
AMERY (P. F. S.), Articles already noticed in the _Transactions
of the Devonshire Association_, 1876 and 1896.