CHAGFORD
"Chagford in the dirt"--The making of Chagford--The old
clerk--The church--Tincombe Lane--Chagford Common--Flint
finds--Scaur Hill circle--Stone rows--The Tolmen--The Teign
river--Camps on it--Drewsteignton cromlech--Gidleigh--Old
farmhouses--Fernworthy--The Grey Wethers--Teignhead
House--Browne's House--Story about it--Grimspound--Birch Tor
stone rows--Chaw Gully--The Webburn.
Chagford is in Domesday written Chageford, and this is the local
pronunciation of the name at the present day. The natives say
"Chageford in the dirt--O good Lord!"
But Chagford has had the ability and promptitude to get out of the
dirt and prove itself to be anything but a stick-in-the-mud place.
It is with places as with people, some have good luck fall to them,
others make their fortunes for themselves. Okehampton belongs to
the former class, Chagford to the latter. It owes almost everything
to a late rector, who, resolved on pushing the place, invited down
magazine editors and professional _littérateurs_, entertained them,
drove them about, and was rewarded by articles appearing in journals
and serials, be-lauding Chagford for its salubrious climate, its
incomparable scenery, its ready hospitality, its rural sweetness, and
its archæological interest.
Whither the writers pointed with their pens, thither the public ran,
and Chagford was made. It has now every appliance suitable--pure water,
electric lighting, telephone, a bicycle shop, and doctors to patch
broken heads and set broken limbs of those upset from the "bikes."
Chagford is undoubtedly a picturesque and pleasant spot. It is situated
near Dartmoor, and is sheltered from the cold and from the rainy drift
that comes from the south-west. The lodging-house keepers know how to
make visitors comfortable, and to charge for so doing. The church has
been restored, coaches run to bring visitors, and the roads and lanes
have been widened.
I recall the church before modern ideas had penetrated to Chagford. At
that time the clerk, who also led the orchestra, gave out the psalm
from his seat under the reading-desk, then, _whistling_ the tune, he
marched slowly down the nave, ascended to the gallery with leisure, and
the performance began.
The church, dedicated to S. Michael, was rebuilt in the middle of
the fifteenth century, when the Gorges family owned much land in
the parish. Their cognisance, the _whirlpool_, a canting cognisance
(_gurges_), appears in the bosses of the roof. It contains two
monuments of some importance: one is a handsome stone altar tomb,
with a canopy supported on columns, in memory of Sir John Whiddon, of
Whiddon Park, Judge of Queen's Bench, who died in 1575; the other is to
commemorate John Prouze, who died in 1664.
The Three Crowns Inn, opposite the church, is a picturesque building
of the seventeenth century. Chagford was one of the Stannary towns, but
no remains of the court-house exist.
On Mattadon, above the town, stands a rude early cross of granite.
The ascent to the moor by Tincombe Lane, as I remember it half a
century ago, was no better than a watercourse, strewn with boulders,
to be scrambled up or down at the risk of dislocation of the ankle. It
then well merited the descriptive lines:--
"Tincombe Lane is all uphill
Or downhill, as you take it;
You tumble up, and crack your crown,
Or tumble down and break it.
"Tincombe Lane is crook'd and straight,
Here pothook, there as arrow,
'Tis smooth to foot, 'tis full of rut,
'Tis wide, and then, 'tis narrow.
"Tincombe Lane is just like life,
From when you leave your mother;
'Tis sometimes this, 'tis sometimes that,
'Tis one thing or the other."
Now all is changed. A steam-roller goes up and down Tincombe Lane,
the angles have been rounded, the precipitous portions made easy, the
ruts filled up. And life likewise is now made easy for the rising
generation--possibly too easy. Ruggedness had a charm of its own, and
bred vigour of constitution and moral physique.
Chagford having lost, by death, the whistling clerk, started a blind
organist. Now, also, he is gone. Every peculiarity is being crushed
out of modern life by the steam-roller, civilisation.
Chagford Common, as I recall it, half a century ago, was strewn thick
with hut circles. One ascended to it by Tincombe Lane and came into a
prehistoric world, a Pompeii of a past before Rome was. It was dense
with hut circles, pounds, and every sort of relic of the ancient
inhabitants of the moor. But inclosures have been made, and but a
very few relics of the aboriginal settlement remain. One of the most
curious, the "Roundy Pound," only escaped through urgent remonstrance
made to spare it. The road carried over the common annually eats up the
remains of old, as the road-menders take away the stones from the hut
circles to metal the highway.
At Batworthy, one of the inclosures, there must have been anciently a
manufactory of flint tools and weapons. Countless spalls of flint and a
fine collection of fabricated weapons and tools have been found there,
and the collection has been presented from this place to the Plymouth
Municipal Museum.
On Gidleigh Common, beside the Teign, opposite Batworthy, is Scaur Hill
circle. It consists of thirty-two stones, at present, of which eight
are prostrate. The highest of the stones is a little over six feet. The
circle is ninety-two feet in diameter. Apparently leading towards this
ring, on the Chagford side of the river, was a very long double row of
stones, with a second double row or avenue branching from it.
[Illustration: PLAN OF STONE ROWS NEAR CAISTOR ROCK.
(Taken in 1851. Scale ⅟₁₂ in. to 10 feet.)
A. The Longstone. Hence in a northerly direction the row continued for
520 feet. B. Cairn. C. Cairn with ring of stones.]
There was a third double row, which started from the Longstone, near
Caistor Rock. This Longstone is still standing, but the stone rows
have been shamefully robbed by a farmer to build his newtake walls. I
give plan of the rows as taken by me in 1851. There was another line
of stones leading from the Three Boys to the Longstone. The Three Boys
were three big stones that have disappeared, and the line from them has
also been obliterated. This portion I unfortunately did not plan in
1851.
In the valley of the Teign is the so-called tolmen, a natural
formation. In the same slab or stone may be seen the beginnings of a
second hole. But it is curious as showing that the river at one time
rolled at a higher elevation than at present. The scenes on a ramble
up the river from Chagford to Holy Street Mill and the mill itself are
familiar to many, as having furnished subjects for pictures in the
Royal Academy.
The river Teign below Whiddon Park winds in and out among wooded
precipitous hills to where the Exeter road descends in zigzags to
Fingle Bridge, passing on its way Cranbrook Castle, a stone camp.
The _brook_ in the name is a corruption of _burgh_ or _burrh_. On
the opposite side of the valley, frowning across at Cranbrook, is
Prestonbury Camp.
With advantage the river may be followed down for several miles to
Dunsford Bridge, and the opportunity is then obtained of gathering
white heath which grows on the slopes. At Shilstone in Drewsteignton
is the only cromlech in the county. It is a fine monument. A few years
ago it fell, but has been re-erected in its old position. After recent
ploughing flints may be picked up in the field where it stands.
Gidleigh merits a visit, the road to it presenting many delicious
peeps. Gidleigh possesses the ruin of a doll castle that once
belonged to the Prouze family. The church contains a screen in good
preservation. In the parish of Throwleigh is the interesting manor
house Wanson, of which I have told a story in my _Old English Home_.
But perhaps more interesting than manor houses are the old farm
buildings in the neighbourhood of Chagford, rapidly disappearing
or being altered out of recognition to adapt them to serve as
lodging-houses to receive visitors.
One such adaptation may be noticed in Tincombe Lane. An old house
is passed, where the ancient mullioned windows have been heightened
and the floors and ceilings raised, to the lasting injury of the
house itself, considered from a picturesque point of view. A passable
road leads up the South Teign to Fernworthy, a substantial farm in
a singularly lone spot. But there was another farm even more lonely
at Assacombe, where a lateral stream descends to the Teign, but it
has been abandoned, and consists now of ruin only. Near it is a
well-preserved double stone row leading from a cairn and finishing at a
blocking-stone.
At Fernworthy itself is a circle of upright stones and the remains of
several stone rows sorely mutilated for the construction of a newtake
wall. In a tumulus near these monuments was found an urn containing
ashes, with a flint knife, and another, very small, of bronze or
copper, and a large polished button of horn. On Chagford Common, near
Watern Hill, is a double pair of rows leading from a cairn and a small
menhir, to blocking-stones. Although the stones of which they are
composed are small, the rows are remarkably well preserved.
It will repay the visitor to continue his ascent of the South Teign to
the Grey Wethers, two circles of stone, of which, however, many are
fallen. Here exploration, such as has been conducted at Fernworthy
circle, shows that the floors are deep in ashes, and this leads to the
surmise that the circles were the crematories of the dead who lie in
the cairns and tunnels in the neighbourhood.
Near the source of the North Teign is Teignhead House, one of the most
solitary spots in England. A shepherd resides there, but it is not
for many winters that a woman can endure the isolation and retain her
reason.
And yet there remain the ruins of a house in a still more lonely
situation. The moorman points it out as Browne's House.
Although, judging from the dilapidation and the lichened condition of
the stones, one could have supposed that this edifice was of great
antiquity, yet it is not so by any means. There are those still alive
who remember when the chimney fell; and who had heard of both the
building, the occupying, and the destruction of Browne's House. Few
indeed have seen the ruin, for it is in so remote a spot that only the
shepherd, the rush-cutter, and the occasional fisherman approach it.
On the Ordnance Survey, faint indications of inclosures are given on
the spot, but no name is attached. Yet every moorman, if asked what
these ruins are, will tell you that it is the wreck of Browne's House.
[Illustration: GRIMSPOUND, AND ENTRANCE]
The story told me relative to this solitary spot was that Browne, an
ungainly, morose man, had a pretty young wife, of whom he was jealous.
He built this place in which to live with her away from the society
of men, and the danger such proximity might bring to his connubial
happiness.
Grimspound will be visited from Chagford. The way to it after leaving
the high-road from Post Bridge to Moreton, which it crosses, traverses
Shapleigh Common, where are numerous inclosures in connection with hut
circles. One of these is very large, and constructed of huge slabs of
granite. Several of these larger circles were occupied only in summer,
it would appear, as there are scanty traces of fire in them, whereas
attached to them are small huts, the floors of which are thickly strewn
with charcoal and fragments of pottery, and presumably the cooking was
done in these latter.
Grimspound is an irregular circular inclosure containing four acres
within the boundary wall. It is situated on the slope of a hill, and
the position is obviously ill-adapted for defence, as it is commanded
by higher ground on three sides. A little stream, the Grimslake, flows
through the inclosure.
The wall itself is double-faced, and the two faces have fallen
inwards. This shows that the core could not have been of turf, as in
that case shrubs would have rooted themselves therein and have thrust
the walls outward. In several places openings appear from the inside
of the pound into the space between the walls. It is possible that
this intermediate hollow was used for stores, and that the walls were
tied together with timber, and surmounted with a parapet of turf. A
trackway from Manaton to Headland Warren runs through the pound, and
the wall has been broken through for this purpose in two places; but
the original entrance to the S.S.E. is perfect, and is paved, and in
it three steps have been formed, as the descent was into the pound,
another token that the inclosure was not intended as a fortress.
The entrance is 8 feet wide, and no outwork was constructed to protect
it from being "rushed" by an enemy. The walls of the inclosure here and
throughout are from 10 feet to 12 feet thick, and stone does not exist
in any part which could raise them above 5 feet 6 inches in height.
Each wall is 3 feet 6 inches wide at base, and was 3 feet at top. On
the west side is a huge slab set on edge, measuring 10 feet by 5 feet,
and it is from 9 inches to 1 foot in thickness, and weighs from 3 to 4
tons. Other stones, laid in courses, if not so long, are not of less
weight. Such a wall as that inclosing Grimspound would cost, with
modern appliances and with horse power for drawing the stone, three
guineas per land yard, and a land yard would engage four men for a week.
When, moreover, we consider that the circumference of the wall measures
over 1,500 feet, it becomes obvious that a large body of men must have
been engaged in the erection.
[Illustration: GRIMSPOUND]
Presumably Grimspound was not a fortified village, and was merely a
pound into which cattle were driven for protection against wolves. It
is just possible, but hardly probable, that it was the place of refuge
for the scattered population on Hookner and Hamildon.
Within the pound are twenty-four hut circles; most have been explored,
and one (No. III. on the plan) has been partially restored, and is
inclosed within a railing. The object of this restoration was to
discover, by piling up the stones found in and about the wall of the
hut, what its height had been originally, and this was determined to
have been four feet.
Unless wantonly injured by trippers, it will serve to exhibit what the
structure of these habitations was, with its paved platform as bed, and
its hearth and vestibule.
A double hut (XVIII., XIX.) is interesting because a tall stone was
erected beside it, as though to indicate it as being the residence of
some man of importance, maybe the sheik of the community. In hut XVI.
is a double bed, one couch divided from the other by upright stones.
In several of the huts, in the floor, are laid flat stones with
a smooth surface, and it was supposed that these served as
chopping-stones, but further explorations have led to the belief that
they were employed to sustain a central pole that upheld the roof.
On the _col_ above Grimspound, near the source of Grimslake, is a cairn
that contains a small kistvaen, and is surrounded by a circle of stones
set upright.
[Illustration: PLAN OF HUT III., GRIMSPOUND.]
Numerous cairns crown the heights. One immense tumulus, King's Barrow,
has at some unknown time been excavated with great labour.
The great central trackway crosses Hamildon, and is very perfect where
it does so. It had apparently no connection whatever with Grimspound.
From Grimspound may be seen, on the brow of the ridge connecting
Birch Tor and Challacombe Down, a series of stone rows. They lead to
a blocking-stone, or menhir, at the south extremity. The northern end
has been destroyed by tin-streamers, whose works in Chaw Gully are
interesting, for mining has been combined with streaming. The rock has
been cut through, but no signs of the use of iron wedges for splitting
the granite can here be discovered. It is traditionally told that what
was done was to cut a groove in the granite, fill that with quicklime,
and pour water on it. The lime in swelling split the rock. Ravens nest
here; and I have seen rock doves and the pair of ravens nesting almost
side by side.
Below is the Webburn, the stream turned up by tinners. There one mine
continues in activity--the "Golden Dagger." Above is Vitifer, where
fortunes have been made--and lost; mostly the latter by investors,
mainly the former by the "captains" and promoters.
[Illustration: NEAR MANATON]