HOLNE
Holne church and screen--Epitaph--Holne Chase--The
Coffin-stone--Dartmeet Bridge--Dolly's Cot--Dolly
Trebble--Sherrill--Yar Tor--Proposed new road--Pixy
Holt--Blowing-house at Okebrook--Jolly Lane Cot--Song-hunting
under difficulties--The Sandy Way--Childe's Tomb--Crosses in
a line--Swincombe--Gobbetts Mine--Crazing-mill stones--Holne
vicarage--Charles Kingsley--Old customs at Holne--Similar custom
at King's Teignton--Sacrifice of sheep.
At Holne the old church house, now an inn, affords very comfortable
quarters, and from it many interesting excursions may be made.
Holne church has preserved its old screen and pulpit, the former
rich with paintings of saints. Both were probably erected by Oldam,
Bishop of Exeter, 1504-19. In the churchyard is the following doggerel
inscription:--
"Here lies poor old Ned, on his last mattrass bed.
During life he was honest and free;
He knew well the chase, but has now run his race,
And his name it was Colling, d'ye see.
He died December 28th, 1780, aged 77."
From the vicarage garden a noble view of the windings of the Dart
through Holne Chase is to be obtained--permission asked and given.
To see Holne Chase, it should be ascended as far as New Bridge, and
thence descended through the Buckland Drives. Permission is given on
fixed days.
In Holne Wood, where the river makes a loop, is an early camp, with
indications of hut circles in it, but thrown out of shape by the trees
growing in the area. Near the entrance charcoal-burners have formed
their hole in which to burn the timber. A finer and better preserved
camp is Hembury.
In the Chase, on the Buckland side under Awsewell Rock, are the
remains of furnaces and great heaps of slag. The point is where there
is a junction of the granite and the sedimentary rocks. Above the
wooded flank of the hill, the rocks are pierced and honeycombed by
miners following veins of ore, probably copper. The workings are very
primitive, and deserve inspection. The little village of Buckland
should not be neglected. It is marvellously picturesque, but the houses
do not appear to be healthy, being buried in foliage. The church has
not been restored. It possesses an old screen with curious paintings,
some impossible to interpret; and it is in the old bepewed, neglected
condition familiar now only to those whose years number something about
sixty or seventy. Buckland-in-the-Moor is the full name of this parish,
but it is no longer in the moor. Colonel Bastard, ancestor of the
present owner, planted all the heathery land and hillsides with trees,
and received therefor the thanks of Parliament as one who by so doing
had deserved well of his country.
If Holne Chase be beautiful, so is the Dart above New Bridge. A more
interesting drive can hardly be taken than one branching off from the
main road before reaching Pound's Gate and following a grassy track
called "Dr. Blackall's Drive," that sweeps round the heights above the
Dart and rejoins the road between Mel Tor and Sharpie Tor.
But to see the Dart valley in perfection the river should be followed
up on foot from New Bridge to that of Dartmeet, and thence up to Post
Bridge.
The descent to Dartmeet by the road is one of over five hundred feet.
Halfway is the Coffin-stone, on which five crosses are cut, and
which is split in half--the story goes, by lightning. On this it is
customary to rest a dead man on his way from the moor beyond Dartmeet
to his final resting-place at Widdecombe. When the coffin is laid on
this stone, custom exacts the production of the whisky bottle, and a
libation all round to the manes of the deceased.
One day a man of very evil life, a terror to his neighbours, was being
carried to his burial, and his corpse was laid on the stone whilst the
bearers regaled themselves. All at once, out of a passing cloud shot a
flash, and tore the coffin and the dead man to pieces, consuming them
to cinders, and splitting the stone. Do you doubt the tale? See the
stone cleft by the flash.
Among the many hundreds who annually visit Dartmeet, I do not suppose
that more than one sees the real beauties to which this spot opens the
way. Actually, Dartmeet Bridge is situated at the least interesting and
least picturesque point on the river.
To know the Dart and see its glories, a visitor must desert the
bridge and ascend the river. I will indicate to him two walks, each of
remarkable beauty and each an easy one.
The first is this: Ascend the Dart on the _left_. This can be done by
passing through a gate above Dartmeet Cottage, and descending to the
river, where remain a few of the venerable oaks that once abounded at
Brimpts, but were wantonly cut down at the beginning of this century.
Ascend by a fisherman's path through the plantation to where the wood
ends, and the hills falling back reveal a pleasant meadow, with,
rising out of it by the river, a holt or pile of rocks overgrown with
oaks. The view from this is beautiful. Proceeding half a mile a ruined
cottage is reached, where the stately Yar Tor may be seen to advantage.
This ruin is called Dolly's Cot.
Dolly, who has given her name to this ruin, was a somewhat remarkable
woman. She lived with her brother, orphans, by Princetown when Sir
Thomas Tyrwhitt settled at Tor Royal. She was a remarkably handsome
girl, and she seems to have caught the eye of this gentleman, who
located her and her brother in the lodge, and then, as the brother
kept a sharp look-out on his sister, he got rid of him by obtaining
for him an appointment in the House of Lords, where he looked after
the lighting, and had as his perquisite the ends of the wax tapers. As
fresh candles were provided every day, and the sessions were at times
short, the perquisites were worth a good deal.
[Illustration: THE CLEFT ROCK ABOVE HOLNE CHASE]
However, if the brother were away Dolly had another to watch over
her, one Tom Trebble, a young and handsome moorman, who did not at
all relish the manner in which Sir Thomas, Warden of the Stannaries,
hovered about Miss Dolly.
But a climax was reached when the Prince Regent arrived at Tor Royal
to visit his forest of Dartmoor. The Prince's eye speedily singled
Dolly out, and the blue coat and brass buttons, white ducks tightly
strapped, and the curled-brimmed hat were to be seen on the way to
Dolly's cottage a little too frequently to please Tom Trebble. So to
cut his anxieties short he whisked Dolly on to the pillion of his moor
cob and rode off with her to Lydford, where they were married. Then he
carried her away to this cottage--now a ruin--on the Dart, to which led
no road, hardly a path even, and where she was likely to be out of the
way of both the Prince and his humble servant, Sir Thomas.
In this solitary cottage Tom and Dolly lived for many years. She
survived her husband, and gained her livelihood by working at the
tin-mine of Hexworthy, where one of the shafts recently sunk was named
after her.
The candle-snuffer realised--so it was said--a good fortune out of the
wax taper-ends, and never returned to Dartmoor.
Dolly lived to an advanced age, and even as an old woman was remarkably
handsome and of a distinguished appearance.
It is now difficult to collect authentic information concerning her,
as only very old people remember Dolly. She was buried at Widdecombe,
and aged moor folk still speak of her funeral, at which all the women
mourners wore white skirts, _i.e._ their white petticoats _without_
the coloured skirts of their gowns, and white kerchiefs pinned as
crossovers to cover their shoulders.
The distance is between six and seven miles. Dolly was borne to her
grave by the tin-miners, and followed not only by the mine-workers, but
by all the women of the moorside, and all in their white petticoats;
and as they went they sang psalms.
From Dolly's Cot the hill can be ascended to "The Seven Sisters," seven
conspicuous old Scotch pines, whereof one has lost its head. Thence a
road is reached that takes a visitor back to Dartmeet by Brimpts.
The other walk, even finer, is this: Ascend the hill on the Ashburton
road till a road breaks away to the left to Sherrill. Follow this,
when on the _col_ a kistvaen, inclosed in a circle, is reached. North
of this is a much-ruined set of stone rows, three parallel lines
running 660 feet, but so plundered that only 158 stones remain. The
road descends to a pleasant little settlement, Sherrill, or Sher-well,
consisting of a farm and some cottages. The Sher-well bursts out in
one strong spring beside the road, and becomes a good stream almost
directly.
[Illustration: YAR TOR]
The situation is warm and sheltered, and the ground is cultivated. The
road descends to the Wallabrook, which it crosses, to Babeney. Thence
a track leads down the Wallabrook to its junction with the Dart, where
is disclosed what I hold to be one of the finest, if not the finest
view on Dartmoor. A tract of level pasture lies at the junction of
the streams, and from this Yar Tor soars up a veritable mountain. Few
of the Dartmoor heights are so situated as to show themselves to such
advantage. On the right, a spur well clothed in dark fir plantations
comes down from Brimpts; and on the left is a clitter of bold granite
rocks. The time to visit this is certainly the evening, when Yar Tor is
bathed in a golden glory, and the woods are steeped in royal purple.
Thence a path, or track rather, leads down the Dart on the east side,
past Badgers' Holt to the bridge.
And perhaps on the way the _Graphis scripta_ may be found, but it
is chiefly to be discovered on old hollies, a mysterious writing,
characters scrawled by delicate hands, and understandable only by
the pixies, who are credited with thus writing their messages to one
another. Actually this is a lichen, that strangely affects a script.
It was at Badgers' Holt that old Dan Leaman lived, on whom a trick was
played which I have already related in my _Book of the West_.
What a solitary life must have been led by the occupants of the
scattered farms and cottages at Babeney, Sherrill, Dury, and the like,
in former times! And yet those who occupied them got to love the
isolation. A woman at Sherrill, who had been in service and had married
a moorman, said to me, "I wouldn't live here if I could help it; but,
Lor' bless y', my old man, there's no gettin' he away from atop o'
Widdecombe chimney"--that is to say, the level of the church tower.
The reach of its bells formed the world--the only world in which he
cared to live. In a cottage near Sherrill lived an old woman absolutely
alone, who for sixty years never once allowed her fire to go out.
If it be desired to open out Dartmoor, a road should be carried up
the Dart from New Bridge to Dartmeet, and thence, still following the
river, to Post Bridge. The owners of the banks of the Dart below New
Bridge to Holne Bridge--in fact, of Holne Chase--could then hardly
refuse to allow it to be carried through their land to Holne Bridge,
and then a drive would be created passing through scenery unsurpassed
in England. Another ought to be engineered up the Webburn from its meet
with the Dart, past Lizwell to Widdecombe; then that solitary village
would be at once accessible, and brought into the world.
Below Dartmeet Bridge, if the river be followed on the right through a
wood, the Pixy Holt is reached, a cave in which the little good folk
are supposed to dwell. It is the correct thing to leave a pin or some
other trifle in acknowledgment when visiting their habitation.
Where the Okebrook drops into the West Dart is an old blowing-house,
with moulds for the tin, ruined, and with a stout oak growing up in the
midst. There are also mortar-stones in the ruin. Above Huccaby Bridge
are the remains of a fine circle of standing stones that has been sadly
mutilated. Another, far more perfect, is at Sherberton.
Near the bridge is Jolly Lane Cot, the house of Sally Satterleigh,
that was built and occupied in one day. Her father was desirous of
marrying a wife and bringing her to a home; but he had no home to
which to introduce her, and the farmers round not only would afford no
help, but proved obstructive. One day when it was Holne Revel, and the
farmers had gone thither, the labouring people assembled in swarms,
set to work and built up the cottage, and before the farmers returned,
lively with drink, from the revel, the man was in the cottage and had
lighted a fire on the hearth, and this constituted a freeholding from
which no man might dispossess him. This man was a notable singer, and
his old daughter, now a grandmother, remembered some of his songs.
One wild and stormy day, Mr. Bussell, of Brazen Nose College, now Dr.
Bussell and tutor of his college, drove over with me from Princetown to
get her songs from her.
But old Sally could not sit down and sing. We found that the sole way
in which we could extract the ballads from her was by following her
about as she did her usual work. Accordingly we went after her when she
fed the pigs, or got sticks from the firewood rick, or filled a pail
from the spring, pencil and notebook in hand, dotting down words and
melody. Finally she did sit to peel some potatoes, when Mr. Bussell
with a MS. music-book in hand, seated himself on the copper. This
position he maintained as she sang the ballad of "Lord Thomas and the
Fair Eleanor," till her daughter applied fire under the cauldron, and
Mr. Bussell was forced to skip from his perch.
Holne forms the extreme eastern end of a long ridge that terminates
to the west in Down Tor. This hog's back stands over 1,500 feet above
the sea, and is the watershed. From it stream the Avon, the Erme, the
Yealm, and the Plym in a southerly direction, and north of it are
the West Dart and the Swincombe river. It is a rounded back of moor,
without granite tors, thickly sown with bogs. But there is a track,
the Sandy Way, that threads these morasses from Holne, and leads to
Childe's Tomb, a kistvaen, with a cross near it.
The story is well known.
A certain Childe, a hunter, lost his way in winter in this wilderness.
Snow fell thick and his horse could go no further.
"In darkness blind, he could not find
Where he escape might gain,
Long time he tried, no track espied,
His labours all in vain.
"His knife he drew, his horse he slew
As on the ground it lay;
He cut full deep, therein to creep,
And tarry till the day.
"The winds did blow, fast fell the snow,
And darker grew the night,
Then well he wot he hope might not
Again to see the light.
"So with his finger dipp'd in blood,
He scrabbled on the stones--
'This is my will, God it fulfil,
And buried be my bones.
"'Whoe'er it be that findeth me,
And brings me to a grave;
The lands that now to me belong
In Plymstock he shall have.'"
The story goes on to say that when the monks of Buckfast heard of this
they made ready to transport the body to their monastery. But the monks
of Tavistock were beforehand with them; they threw a bridge over the
Tavy, ever after called Guile Bridge, and carried the dead Childe to
their abbey. Thenceforth they possessed the Plymstock estate.
The kistvaen is, of course, not Childe's grave, for it is prehistoric,
and Childe was not buried there. But the cross may have been set up to
mark the spot where he was found.
Childe's Cross was quite perfect, standing on a three-stepped pedestal,
till in or about 1812, when it was nearly destroyed by the workmen of
a Mr. Windeatt, who was building a farmhouse near by. The stones that
composed it have, however, been for the most part recovered, and the
cross has been restored as well as might be under the circumstances.
The Sandy Way was doubtless a very ancient track across the moor from
east to west, as it is marked by crosses, as may be judged by the
Ordnance map. 1, Horne's Cross; 2 and 3, crosses on Down Ridge; 4 and
5, crosses on Terhill; 6 and 7, crosses near Fox Tor, in the Newtake;
8, Childe's Cross; 9, Seward's or Nun's Cross; 10, cross on Walkhampton
Common.
Swincombe, formerly Swan-combe, runs to the north of the ridge, and has
the sources of its river in the Fox Tor mires and near Childe's Tomb.
It runs north-east, and then abruptly passes north to decant into the
West Dart.
Near this is Gobbetts Mine, a very interesting spot, for here are
samples of the modern deep mining shaft, the shallow workings, and the
deep, open cuttings of the earlier times, and the stream works of the
"old men." Thus we have on one spot a compendium of the history of
mining for tin. Among the relics lying about are the remains of an old
crazing-mill, consisting of the upper and the nether stones. The nether
stone is 3 feet 10 inches in diameter, and 10 inches thick. In the
periphery is a groove forming a lip, that served readily to discharge
the ground material.
[Illustration: CRAZING-MILL STONE, UPPER GOBBETTS.]
The upper stone has a roughly convex back, and an eye as well as four
holes drilled in it. Into these holes posts were fitted, which carried
two bars, so that the stone was made to revolve by horse or man power,
like the arrangement of a capstan.
[Illustration: METHOD OF USING THE MILL-STONES. SECTION.]
The hole or eye of the nether stone was for the purpose of
receiving a conical plug, the apex of which penetrated partly
into the eye of the upper stone, and served the double purpose of
keeping the runner stone in position and of distributing the feed
equally on the grinding-surfaces. To further assist this are four
curved master-furrows or grooves, radiating from the eye of the
grinding-surface of the upper stone. The mill, worked by men or by
horses, was of slow speed, and water was introduced to assist the
propulsion of the ground material towards the grooved lip in the
periphery of the stone. This and the feed were, of course, introduced
through the circular hole in the top stone.
On the site of what was evidently the blowing-house is a mould-stone,
about 4 feet by 3. The mould is 15 inches long by 11 inches wide at
one end, and 10 inches at the other, and 4 to 5 inches deep. There are
also cavities for sample ingots.
Other stones lie about with hollows worked in them, that seem to have
been mortar-stones, used for pounding up the ore, at a period earlier
than that at which the crazing-mill was introduced.
Further up the Swincombe, on the left, a little stream descends that
has had its bed turned over and over. This is Deep Swincombe, and here
are the remains of the earliest known smelting-house yet noticed on
Dartmoor. It has been fully described in a previous chapter. On all
sides we discover traces of those who in ancient times came to Dartmoor
and toiled after metal. We go in swarms there now--to spend our metal
and idle and gain health. So the old order changeth, and with it men's
moods and manners.
To return to Holne. In the parsonage Charles Kingsley was born, but the
house has since been to a large extent rebuilt. On a fly-sheet of the
Book of Burial Registers is the entry, "The Vicarage House, being very
_dilapidated_, was taken down and rebuilt by the Vicar (the Rev. John
D. Parham) in the year 1832." It was in that "very dilapidated" house
that Charles Kingsley was born.
A curious custom existed at Holne, now given up. There is, near the
village, a "Ploy (play) Field" in which stood formerly a rude granite
stone six or seven feet high.
On May morning, before daybreak, the young men of the village were wont
to assemble there and then proceed to the moor, where they selected a
ram lamb, and, after running it down, brought it in triumph to the
Ploy Field, fastened it to the granite post, cut its throat, and then
roasted it whole--skin, wool, etc. At midday a struggle took place,
at the risk of cut hands, for a slice, it being supposed to confer
luck for the ensuing year on the fortunate devourer. As an act of
gallantry the young men sometimes fought their way through the crowd
to get a slice for the chosen amongst the young women, all of whom,
in their best dresses, attended the Ram Feast, as it was called.
Dancing, wrestling, and other games, assisted by copious libations of
cider during the afternoon, prolonged the festivity till midnight.
This is now entirely of the past, but a somewhat similar popular
festival survives at King's Teignton, or did so till recently. There
Whitsuntide is the season chosen. A lamb is drawn about the parish on
Whitsun Monday in a cart covered with garlands of lilac, laburnum, and
other flowers, when persons are requested to give something towards
the animal and attendant expenses. On Tuesday morning it is killed and
roasted whole in the middle of the village. The lamb is then sold in
slices to the poor at a cheap rate. The story told to account for this
festival is that the village once suffered from a dearth of water, when
the inhabitants were advised to pray for water; whereupon a fountain
burst forth in a meadow about a third of a mile above the river, in an
estate now called Rydon, a supply sufficient to meet the necessities of
the villagers. A lamb, it is said, has ever since been sacrificed as a
return offering at Whitsuntide in the manner above mentioned.
The said water appears like a large pond, from which in rainy weather
may be seen jets springing up some inches above the surface in many
parts.
I know the case of a farmer on the edge of Dartmoor, whose cattle were
afflicted with some disorder in 1879; he thereupon conveyed a sheep
to the ridge above his house, sacrificed and burnt it there, as an
offering to the Pysgies. The cattle at once began to recover, and did
well after, nor were there any fresh cases of sickness amongst them.
Since then I have been told of other and very similar cases.