Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe Part 3

Holes pierced in the ceiling served for the suspension of articles liable to be injured by proximity to a damp rock. A string was attached to the middle of a short stick, that was thrust into the hole. The string was then pulled and it was fast. Another plan was that of boring holes at an angle into the rock at the side. Into these holes rods were thrust and what was required to be kept dry was suspended from them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch Plan of Rock Stable, Commarques.]

Some of the grottoes served at once for man and beast and fowl. Not only are there chambers for the former, but also mangers for cattle, and silos to contain the fodder; and there are nooks for pigeons in an adjoining cave. In many cases there are cisterns; in one is a well. The cisterns had to be filled laboriously. They are provided with bungholes for the purpose of occasional cleaning out. The walls are scored with concave grooves slanting downwards, uniting and leading into small basins. The moisture condensing on the sides trickled into these runnels and supplied the basins with drinking water. The mangers have holes bored in the stone through which pa.s.sed the halters. There are indications that the cattle were hauled up by means of a windla.s.s.

That these were not places of refuge in times of danger, but were permanent habitations, would appear from the fact that those of Lamouroux contain mural paintings, and that in them, in addition to stables, there is a pigeonry. In one or two instances the piers that support the roof have sculptured capitals, of the twelfth or thirteenth century. In the cave-dwelling still tenanted at Siourat is cut the date, I.D. 1585, surmounted by a cross. [Footnote: Lalande (Ph.), _Les Grottes artificielles des environs de Brive_. In _Memoires de la Soc. de Speliologie_. Paris, 1897.]

I have given the plan of the caves of Lamouroux in my "Deserts of Southern France."

How general rock habitations were at one time in Perigord may be judged by the prevalence of the place-name _Cluseau_, which always meant a cave that was dwelt in, with the opening walled up, window and door inserted; _roffi_ is applied to any ordinary grotto, whether inhabited or not.

It would be quite impossible for me to give a list of the cave- dwellings in France still inhabited, or occupied till comparatively recent times, they are so numerous and are to be found in every department where is the chalk or the limestone, sandstone or volcanic tufa.

They are to be met with not only in those parts of France from which the above specimens have been taken and described, but also in Var, Bouches du Rhone, Aveyron, Gard, Lozere, Cantal, Charente, Vienne, &c.

There is a good deal of sameness in the appearance of those still inhabited--a walled face, a mask, with window and door, and above a chimney of brick rising out of the rock.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plan of the Rock Holes in Nottingham Park. Total length of excavation on South Front 110 yards.]

In England, Nottingham drew its ancient British name of Tigguocobauc (House of Caves) from its troglodyte habitations; at Mansfield in that county such caves exist, and were a.s.sociated with a cla.s.s of inhabitants somewhat nomadic, who obtained their living by making besoms from the heather of the adjoining forest and moorland. They established a colony on the roadside waste, and sank wells in the rock for water. Nottingham enjoyed possibly the largest brewing and malting business in the country, and those trades were nearly wholly carried on in chambers and cellars and kilns cut out of the living rock. Mr. W.

Stevenson, author of "Bygone Nottinghamshire," writes to me: "Last week I was with an antiquarian friend exploring an ancient pa.s.sage in the castle rock, originally made as a sally-port to the castle, but at some later period when bricks came on the scene, converted or enlarged into a set of malt offices with malt kilns complete. Their original use and locality have been lost for a century, and their recovery is just being brought about. Their situation, high over the adjoining meadow, and their presence in the very heart of the rock that rises abrupt to the height of 133 feet is truly romantic. The foot of the range of cliffs, with a south aspect, was a favoured site. Here we find communities of monks dwelling for centuries, hermits spotted about, and a great part of the town-dwellers, tanners, dyers, and other trades where water was largely required. A peculiarity of these houses was their fresh-water supply. The denizens sank holes in their living apartments with steps cut in the rock until they got down to the water level, where they had little pools of fresh water. The system was known as _Scoop- wells_, and must have been very ancient. Those who lived on higher levels burrowed into the sides of sunken roads, and the track-lines of ancient military defences. In deeds of transfer of property it was customary to describe tenements as _below_ or _above_ ground.

Old writers have said that they doubted if the erections above ground would fill the s.p.a.ce excavated below ground; and to-day, when erecting new buildings, it is necessary to drill down into the rock a yard or more to ascertain that the foundations are not to be laid above the crowns of hidden vaults, chapels, or unknown habitations."

Thoroton, in his history of Nottinghamshire, 1797, gives an ill.u.s.tration of rock-dwellings at Sneynton, adjoining Nottingham, but they have recently been cleared away for railway extension.

The sanitary authorities have done their best to sweep the tenants out of the Nottingham cave habitations, but in Staffordshire at Kinver there are still troglodytes.

Holy Austin's Rock is a ma.s.s of red sandstone, a spur of the bluff of Kinver Edge, that is crowned by the earthworks of what is supposed to have been a camp of Penda. But it has been broken through by wind and rain and perhaps sea, and now stands out unattached. It is honeycombed with habitations. I have been into several. They are neat and dry, and the occupants are loud in praise of them, as warm in winter and cool in summer. They are in two stages. At Drakelow also there are several, also occupied, somewhat disfigured by hideous chimneys recently erected in yellow and red bricks. One chimney is peculiarly quaint as being twisted, like a writhing worm, to accommodate itself to the shape of the overhanging rock. Another series of these habitations is now abandoned, but was occupied till a comparatively recent period, and other houses have their stables and storerooms excavated out of the rock.

Although Derbyshire abounds with caverns, some natural, some the work of miners, from Roman times, they do not appear to have been inhabited, at least since prehistoric times, except as occasional refuges. But there is a rock hermitage at Dale Abbey that has been lived in till recently, and when Mr. St. John Hope was excavating the Abbey ruins, one of his workmen informed him that he had been born and bred in it.

A writer in _The Cornish Magazine_ gives the following account of some Cornish cave-dwellers.

"People in the habit of frequenting the sh.o.r.e of Whitsand Bay, between Lore and Dowderry, are familiar with the sight of a couple of women moving about among the rocks exposed at low tide. They are sh.e.l.l-fish gatherers, who live in a small cave a little to the west of Seaton. The ill.u.s.tration shows almost the extent of this cleft in the shady cliff, and any one who examines the place must wonder how two human beings can exist there. Along one side is a strip of sand, and from that the floor slopes upwards at an angle of about sixty degrees. Whether by years of practice the women have attained such perfection in the art of balancing their bodies that they go to sleep on the slanting rock without fear of falling, or whether they rest on the sand (wet when I saw it from a late storm), I was not informed; but it is evident that they know no comfort at any time. When I came suddenly upon the cave one morning in October, the smouldering ashes of a drift-wood fire, a kettle, a teapot, and two cups were dotted about just inside. Further up the floor their 'cupboards'--a couple of iron boilers--were standing, and in a niche near the fire was a pipe--short, dark, and odorous. The women who have made this their dwelling are Irish widows, 'born in Ireland and married in Ireland,' as one of them said. They are between fifty and sixty years of age, and for the last thirty years have managed to gain a subsistence by gathering limpets week after week and taking them to Plymouth. When the sea is rough they obtain few or no fish, but under favourable circ.u.mstances the two sometimes get fourteen shillings a week between them. In fine weather, when from Rame Head to Looe Island the sea lies calm and glistening under a summer sky, this smoke-blackened cave is an uninviting hovel; and in the winter, especially when there is a gale from the south-east, the women must be almost blown out of the hollow or frozen to death. On such occasions they are forced to leave the cave, and then they go to a disused pigsty near by. In talking with them while they dexterously chipped limpets from the weed-mantled rocks, I mildly remarked that workhouses were now very comfortable. Immediately the younger woman stood erect, and with something akin to pride and determination, exclaimed in a voice more than tinctured by the Irish patois, 'Never, sir, will us go to the workhouse while us can get as much as an crust in twenty-four hours.' Hitherto I had seen her only in a stooping att.i.tude, and I was surprised to see how tall a woman she was, and what strength of character was indicated by her features. As she stood there amongst the sea-weed, with feet and legs bare, and her hair confined by a handkerchief, beating the palm of one hand with the knuckles of the other to emphasise her words, it dawned upon me that I had named the thing against which these two women had fought grimly for more than a quarter of a century." [Footnote: _The Cornish Magazine_, i.

(1878), pp. 394-5.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRAKELOW IN KINVER, SHROPSHIRE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: AUBETERRE. One of the subterranean excavations at Aubeterre on the Dronne, serving as stables, storehouses, etc. At the side on the right may be seen an oven for bread, scooped out of the rock.]

Sir Arthur Mitch.e.l.l describes some troglodytes in Scotland.[Footnote: "The Past in the Present," Edin. 1880, pp. 73-7.] "In August 1866, along with two friends, I visited the great cave at the south side of Wick Bay. It was nine at night, and getting dark when we reached it. It is situated in a cliff, and its mouth is close to the sea. Very high tides, especially with north-east winds, reach the entrance and force the occupants to seek safety in the back part of the cave, which is at a somewhat higher level than its mouth.

"We found twenty-four inmates--men, women, and children--belonging to four families, the heads of which were all there. They had retired to rest for the night a short time before our arrival, but their fires were still smouldering. They received us civilly, perhaps with more than mere civility, after a judicious distribution of pence and tobacco. To our great relief, the dogs, which were numerous and vicious, seemed to understand that we were welcome.

"The beds on which we found these people lying consisted of straw, gra.s.s and bracken, spread upon the rock or shingle, and each was supplied with one or two dirty, ragged blankets or pieces of matting.

Two of the beds were near the peat-fires, which were still burning, but the others were further back in the cave where they were better sheltered.

"On the bed nearest the entrance lay a man and his wife, both absolutely naked, and two little children in the same state. On the next bed lay another couple, an infant, and one or two elder children.

Then came a bed with a bundle of children, whom I did not count. A youngish man and his wife, not quite naked, and some children, occupied the fourth bed, while the fifth from the mouth of the cave was in possession of the remaining couple and two of their children, one of whom was on the spot of its birth. Far back in the cave--upstairs in the garret, as they facetiously called it--were three or four biggish boys, who were undressed, but had not lain down. One of them, moving about with a flickering light in his hand, contributed greatly to the weirdness of the scene. Beside the child spoken of, we were told of another birth in the cave, and we heard also of a recent death there, that of a little child from typhus. The Procurator-Fiscal saw this dead child lying naked on a large flat stone. Its father lay beside it in the delirium of typhus, when death paid this visit to an abode with no door to knock at.

"Both men and women, naked to their waists, sat up in their lairs and talked to us, and showed no sense of shame. One of the men summoned the candle-boy from the garret, in order that we might see better, and his wife trimmed the dying fire, and then, after lighting her pipe, proceeded to suckle her child.

"In the afternoon of the next day, with another friend, I paid a second visit to this cave, when we found eighteen inmates, most of whom were at an early supper, consisting of porridge and treacle, apparently well cooked and clean. One of the women was busy baking. She mixed the oatmeal and water in a tin dish, spread the cake out on a flat stone which served her for a table, and placing the cake against another stone, toasted it at the open fire of turf and wood. This was one of three fires, all situated about the centre of the wider part or mouth of the cave, each with a group about it of women and ragged children.

"There was no table, or chair, or stool to be seen, stones being so arranged as to serve all these purposes. There was no sort of building about the entrance of the cave to give shelter from the winds, which must often blow fiercely into it. Yet this cave is occupied both in summer and winter by a varying number of families, one or two of them being almost constant tenants.

"I believe I am correct in saying that there is no parallel ill.u.s.tration of modern cave life in Scotland. The nearest approach to it, perhaps, is the cave on the opposite or north side of the same bay.

Both of these caves I have had frequent opportunities of visiting, and I have always found them peopled. Only occasional use is made of the other caves on the Caithness and Sutherland coasts. Of these, perhaps the cave of Ham, in Dunnet parish, is the most frequented. It is the nearness to a large town which gives to the Wick caves their steady tenants. The neighbouring population is large enough to afford room for trading, begging, and stealing--all the year round.

"The occupants of the Wick caves are the people commonly known by the name of Tinkers. They are so called chiefly because they work in tinned iron. The men cut, shape, hammer, while the women do the soldering.

"The Tinkers of the Wick caves are a mixed breed. There is no Gipsy blood in them. Some of them claim a West Island origin. Others say they are true Caithness men, and others again look for their ancestors among the Southern Scotch. They were not strongly built, nor had they a look of vigorous bodily health. Their heads and faces were usually bad in form. Broken noses and scars were a common disfigurement, and a revelation at the same time of the brutality of their lives. One girl might have been painted for a rustic beauty of the Norse type, and there was a boy among them with an excellent head. It is possible that one or both of these may yet leave their parents, from dissatisfaction with the life they lead."

These cave-dwellers of Wick were the offscourings of society, such as might be found in any town slum. "Virtue and chast.i.ty exist feebly among them, and honour and truth more feebly still; they neither read nor write; they go to no church, and have scarcely any sort of religious belief or worship. They know little or nothing of their history beyond what can be referred to personal recollection."

These, like the slum dwellers of a town, are recruited from outside, they do not const.i.tute a race; they are the dregs of a race--persons who have dropped out of the line of march.

An amusing story was told by Mr. Grant Allen. A missionary society had captured, converted, and educated a black man. He was such a promising pupil, and looked so respectable in black clothes and a white tie, that he was advanced to the ministry, and in due course consecrated bishop, and sent out shovel-hat, lawn sleeves, rochet, and all complete, to the Gold Coast, to found a church there among the natives.

Now Bishop Black got on for a little while decorously; but one day the old wild blood in him boiled up--away went shovel-hat and boots, he peeled off his gaiters and knee-breeches, tore his lawn sleeves to rags, and dashed off a howling savage, stark naked, to take to himself a dozen wives, and to go head-hunting. What was born in the bone would come out in the flesh.

Probably there is an underlying vein of the savage in all of us, but it is kept in control by the restraints of habit acc.u.mulated through generations of civilisation. Yet there it is. A quiet, well-conducted dog will sometimes disappear for a few days and nights. It has gone off on a spree, to poach on its own account. Then, when it has had its fling, it returns, and is meek, docile, and orderly as before.

There is something of this in man. He becomes impatient of the trammels of ordinary life, its routine and matter-of-fact, and a hunger comes over him for a complete change, to shake off the bonds of conventionality, escape the drudgery of work, and live a free, wild life. Among many this takes the form of going to the Colonies or to Wild Africa or Western Canada, to shoot game, to camp out, and be a savage for a while. Among the artisan cla.s.s it takes another form--the great army of tramps is recruited thus. The struggle to maintain a family, the dry uninteresting toil, drives the man into a fit of impatience, and he leaves his work, his wife and bairns, and becomes a wanderer; idle, moving on from place to place, never starving, never very comfortable--in dirt and idleness, and often in drink--but with no ties, and going here, there, and everywhere as he lists.

Not many years ago there was a man who lived by the Devil's d.y.k.e, on the South Downs of Suss.e.x, in a shelter under a hedge, picking up coppers from visitors to the d.y.k.e, dressed like Ally Sloper, but living in a manner more squalid and under a worse shelter than would be endured by most savages in the darkest parts of Africa. What his history was no one knew.

It is now somewhat longer since a medical man, in an excess of impatience against civilisation, constructed for himself a hovel out of hurdles thatched with reeds, in South Devon. He lived in it, solitary, speaking to no one. Occasionally he bought a sheep and killed it, and ate it as the appet.i.te prompted, and before it was done the meat had become putrid. At length the police interfered, the stench became intolerable in the neighbourhood, as the hovel was by the roadside. The doctor was ordered to remove, and he went no one seems to know whither.

In Charles the First's time there were men living in the caves and dens of the ravines about Lydford in South Devon. They had a king over them named Richard Rowle, and they went by the name of the Gubbins. William Browne, a poet of the time, wrote in 1644:--

"The town's enclosed with desert moors, But where no bear nor lion roars, And naught can live but hogs; For all o'erturned by Noah's flood, Of fourscore miles scarce one foot's good, And hills are wholly bogs.

And near hereto's the Gubbins' cave; A people that no knowledge have Of law, of G.o.d, or men; Whom Caesar never yet subdued, Who've lawless liv'd; of manners rude; All savage in their den.

By whom, if any pa.s.s that way, He dares not the least time to stay, For presently they howl; Upon which signal they do muster Their naked forces in a cl.u.s.ter Led forth by Roger Rowle."

I extract the following from the _Daily Express_ of May 10, 1910: --

"It was stated at an inquest held on Richard Manford at Market Drayton yesterday, that he was over eighty years of age, and had for the greater part of his life dwelt in a cave near Hawkstone. He was found dying by the roadside."

Elsewhere [Footnote: "An Old English Home," Methuen, 1898.] I have given an account of the North Devon savages, to whom Mr. Greenwood first drew attention. Till a very few years ago there lived on the Cornish moors a quarryman--he may be living still for aught I have heard to the contrary---in a solitary hut piled up of granite. He would allow no one to approach, threatening visitors with a gun. His old mother lived with him. By some means the rumour got about that she was dead, but as the man said nothing, it was not till this rumour became persistent that the authorities took cognisance of it, and visited the hovel. They found that the old woman's bed had been a hole scooped out of the bank that formed part of the wall; that she had been dead some considerable time, and that her face was eaten away by rats. Daniel Gumb was a stone-cutter who lived near the Cheese Wring on the Cornish moors in the eighteenth century. He inhabited a cave composed of ma.s.ses of granite. It is an artificial cell about twelve feet deep and not quite that breadth. The roof consists of one flat stone of many tons weight. On the right hand of the entrance is cut "D. Gumb," with a date 1783 (or 5). On the upper part of the covering stone channels are cut to carry off the rain. Here he dwelt for several years with his wife and children, several of whom were born and died there.

How instinctively the man of the present day will revert to primitive usages and to the ground as his natural refuge may be ill.u.s.trated by a couple of instances. Mr. Hamerton, in "A Painter's Camp," says that near Sens on a height is a little pleasure-house and the remnant of a forgotten chapel dedicated to S. Bondus. This belonged of late years to a gentleman of Sens who was pa.s.sionately attached to the spot. "Near my tent there is a hole in the chalk leading to the very bowels of the earth. A long pa.s.sage, connecting cells far apart, winds till it arrives under the house, and it is said that the late owner intended to cut other pa.s.sages and cells, but wherefore no man knows. One thing is certain, he loved the place, and spent money there for the love of it.

Night and day he came up here from his little city on the plain, sat in his pleasant octagon room, and descended into his winding subterranean pa.s.sages, and hermit-like visited the hollow cells." On his death he bequeathed it to the Archbishop of Sens. [Footnote: "A Painter's Camp,"

Lond. 1862, Bk. iii. c. 1.]

Another instance is from our own country. Mr. L.P. Jacks' very remarkable book, "Mad Shepherds," gives an account of one Toller of Clun Downs, who went deranged, took to the moors and lived for a considerable time, stealing sheep and poultry. "Beyond the furthest outpost of the Perryman farm lie extensive wolds rising rapidly into desolate regions where sheep can scarcely find pasture. In this region Toller concealed himself. About two miles beyond the old quarry, on a slaty hillside, he found a deep pit; and here he built himself a hut.

He made the walls out of stones of a ruined sheepfold; he roofed them with a sheet of corrugated iron, stolen from the outbuildings of a neighbouring farm, and covered the iron with sods; he built a fireplace with a flue, but no chimney; he caused water from a spring to flow into a hollow beside the door. Then he collected slates, loose stones and casks; and by heaping these against the walls of the hut, he gave the whole structure the appearance of a mound of rubbish. Human eyes rarely came within sight of the spot; but even a keen observer of casual objects would not have suspected that the mound represented any sort of human dwelling. It was a masterpiece of protective imitation.... His implements were all of flint, neatly bound in their handles with strips of hide. There was an axe for slaughter, a dagger for cutting meat, a hammer for breaking bones, a saw and sc.r.a.pers of various size--the plunder of some barrow on Clun Downs." There Toller lived for several months, and there he died, his hiding-place being known to one other shepherd, and to him alone; and there after his death he was buried.