[Illustration: OKEHAMPTON CASTLE.]
A high wind roared over the tree-tops and sent the leaf
flying--blood-red from the cherry, russet from the oak, and yellow from
the elm. Rain and sunshine followed swiftly upon each other, and the
storms hurtled over the forest, hissed in the river below and took fire
through their falling sheets, as the November sun scattered the
rear-guard of the rain and the cloud purple broke to blue. A great wind
struck the larches, where they misted in fading brightness against the
inner gloom of the woods, and at each buffet, their needles were
scattered like golden smoke. Only the ash trees had lost all their
leaves, for a starry sparkle of foliage still clung to every other
deciduous thing. The low light, striking upon a knoll and falling on
dripping surfaces of stone and tree trunk, made a mighty flash and
glitter of it, so that the trees and the scattered masonry, that
ascended in crooked crags above their highest boughs, were lighted with
rare colour and blazed against the cloud masses now lumbering
storm-laden from the West.
The mediaeval ruin, that these woods had almost concealed in summer, now
loomed amid them well defined. Viewed from aloft the ground plan of the
castle might be distinctly traced, and it needed no great knowledge to
follow the architectural design of it. The sockets of the pillars that
sprang to a groined entrance still remained, and within, to right and
left of the courtyard, there towered the roofless walls of a state
chamber, or banqueting hall, on the one hand, a chapel, oratory and
guard-room on the other. The chapel had a piscina in the southern wall;
the main hall was remarkable for its mighty chimney. Without, the ruins
of the kitchens were revealed, and they embraced an oven large enough to
bake bread for a village. Round about there gaped the foundations of
other apartments, and opened deep eyelet windows in the thickness of the
walls. The mass was so linked up and knit together that of old it must
have presented one great congeries of chambers fortified by a circlet of
masonry; but now the keep towered on a separate hillock to the
south-west of the ruin, and stood alone. It faced foursquare, dominated
the valley, and presented a front impregnable to all approach.
This is the keep that Turner drew, and set behind it a sky of mottled
white and azure specially beloved by Ruskin; but the wizard took large
liberties with his subject, flung up his castle on a lofty scarp, and
from his vantage point at stream-side beneath, suggested a nobler and a
mightier ruin than in reality exists. One may suppose that steps or
secret passages communicated with the keep, and that in Tudor times no
trees sprang to smother the little hill and obscure the views of the
distant approaches--from Dartmoor above and the valleys beneath. Now
they throng close, where oak and ash cling to the sides of the hillock
and circle the stones that tower to ragged turrets in their midst.
Far below bright Okement loops the mount with a brown girdle of foaming
waters that threads the meadows; and beyond, now dark, now wanly
streaked with sunshine, ascends Dartmoor to her border heights of Yes
Tor and High Willhayes. Westerly the land climbs again and the last
fires of autumn flicker over a forest.
I saw the place happily between wild storms, at a moment when the walls,
warmed by a shaft of sunlight, took on most delicious colour and,
chiming with the gold of the flying leaves, towered bright as a dream
upon the November blue.
At the Conquest, Baldwin de Redvers received no fewer than one hundred
and eighty-one manors in Devon alone, for William rewarded his strong
men according to their strength. We may take it, therefore, that this
Baldwin de Redvers, or Baldwin de Brionys, was a powerful lieutenant to
the Conqueror--a man of his hands and stout enough to hold the West
Country for his master. From his new possessions the Baron chose
Ochementone[1] for his perch; indeed, he may be said to have created the
township. With military eye he marked a little spur of the hills that
commanded the passes of the Moor and the highway to Cornwall and the
Severn Sea; and there built his stronghold,--the sole castle in Devon
named in Domesday. But of this edifice no stone now stands upon another.
It has vanished into the night of time past, and its squat, square,
Norman keep scowls down upon the valleys no more.
[1] "Okehampton" is a word which has no historic or philological excuse.
The present ruins belong to the Perpendicular period of later
centuries, and until a recent date the second castle threatened swiftly
to pass after the first; but a new lease of life has lately been given
to these fragments; they have been cleaned and excavated, the conquering
ivy has been stripped from their walls, and a certain measure of work
accomplished to weld and strengthen the crumbling masonry. Thus a
lengthened existence has been assured to the castle. "Time, which
antiquates antiquities," is challenged, and will need reinforcement of
many years wherein again to lift his scaling ladders of ivy, loose his
lightnings from the cloud, and marshal his fighting legions of rain and
tempest, frost and snow.