Wanderings in Wessex Part 9

[Ill.u.s.tration: LYME BAY.]

Lyme church is Perpendicular, though the tower is far older, the vestry room being part of the ancient church. Of much interest is the tapestry on the west wall representing the marriage of Henry VII. On the front of the gallery (1611) and on the Jacobean pulpit (1613) are inscriptions setting forth the names of their donors and the dates.

The rood-screen is modern but the old double lectern is interesting; chained to it is a "Breeches" Bible and Erasmus' "Paraphrase." One of the stained-gla.s.s windows is a memorial to that celebrated daughter of Lyme--Mary Anning, who with the enthusiasm of a greybeard hammered and chipped at the cliffs around in a most ungirlish style, but to such good purpose that she unearthed the Ichthyosaurus that now astonishes the visitor to the Natural History Museum in Kensington.

In Pound Street is an auxiliary church that in 1884 was converted out of a stable into the present beautiful and uncommon little building.

Of particular merit are the fine tapestries and the altarpiece of Venetian mosaics. In Church Street stands an old house once belonging to the Tuckers, merchants and benefactors of the town. It is now named Tudor House and is really of that date, although its exterior hardly looks its age. The a.s.sembly Rooms at the end of Broad Street mark the time when Lyme was starting upon a career of fashion. In the new Town Hall erected on the old site to commemorate the first Victorian Jubilee is an ancient door from the men's prison, and a grating from the women's quarters, let into the wall; in the Old Market stands an ancient fire engine and the stocks, removed here from the church. Near by is the "Old Fossil Shop" devoted to the sale of fossils and fish, as quaint a combination of trades as one could imagine. The old houses around the Buddle are of dark and mysterious aspect. This part of the town has always had a romantic air, here and there slightly flavoured with squalor, though of late, especially about the course of the river, improvements have effected a change. Curious customs of great antiquity such as the Saxon Court Leet and the Court of Hustings, a copy of a London civic inst.i.tution dating from the first charter of the town, have continued to present times.

The other famous girl of Lyme, besides Mary Anning, was Jane Austen, who lived with her parents at Bay Cottage, the white house near the harbour. Here it is supposed that _Persuasion_ was written. Captain Coram, the bluff seaman and tender-hearted philanthropist who spent his small fortune on the Foundling Hospital, and. Sir George Somers, who colonized the Bermudas, were both local worthies. The latter died in the West Indies, but his body was brought home to Dorset and buried at Whitchurch Canonicorum.

The beautiful coast west of the Cobb is described in the next chapter, but mention must be made of the Landslip Walk. Several falls of the cliff, here resting on a precarious foundation of sand and blue has clay, have from time to time occurred and have produced this wide tract of broken and tumbled ground, only to be equalled in its picturesque confusion by the better known Undercliff in the Isle of Wight. The greatest "slip" took place in 1839 on Christmas Day and the country people were awakened during the night by loud and continuous noises like the rumble of distant artillery. It was found the next morning that a chasm nearly a mile long and about 400 feet wide had been formed parallel with the sh.o.r.e. This subsidence continued for a couple of days and took with it, without loss of life, several cottages. The wildly erratic disorder has been covered with a lovely profusion of flowers and plants in the sheltered valleys and ravines of this miniature Switzerland, and the whole undercliff as far as Rousdon and beyond is a wonderland of beauty.

Uplyme, three-quarters of a mile beyond the station, is in Devon. This may have been one of the pleas put forward a few years ago when strenuous efforts were made to get Lyme Regis transferred to the western county. The pretty village is about a mile and a half from Lyme Esplanade on the Axminster road. The church has been judiciously restored, but there is nothing of great interest to be seen apart from the old yew tree in the churchyard. Not far away is a beautiful old manor house called the "Court Hall"; it is now a farm house. The fine porch and queer old chimneys make a picture worth turning aside to see.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OTTERY CHURCH.]

CHAPTER VII

EAST DEVON

To go from one Dorset or East Devon coast town to another by rail involves an amount of thought and a consultation of time-tables that would not be required for a journey from London to Aberystwyth, and unless the traveller hits on a particularly lucky set of connexions he will find that he can walk from one town to the other in less time than by taking the train. From Lyme to Seaton by the Landslip is barely seven miles; by rail it is fifteen, involving two changes. From Seaton to Sidmouth is nine miles by road and twenty-four by rail, with two changes and a possible third. Each of these sections can be comfortably tramped by the average good walker in a morning or afternoon with plenty of time for "side issues" and rambling about the towns themselves in the evening. One word of warning to those who adopt this method of seeing their own land, the only effective way in the writer's opinion. Do not be deceived into thinking that a mile on the map is a mile on the road. In this country of hills and valleys the distance can be added to considerably by these "folds in the tablecloth." A contour map in colours such as Bartholomew's "half inch" is a great help in this matter.

From Lyme the walk westwards by the cliff is, of course, the most beautiful way. Our present route, by the high road, pa.s.ses between Rousdon, _the_ great house of the neighbourhood, and Combpyne, where there is a station, the only one between Lyme and Axminster. This is a pleasant place, lost between hills, and quite out of sight from the railway. It has a church, built about 1250, with a gabled tower and with a hagioscope in the chancel. The communion plate dates from before the Reformation and is said to have been in constant use for more than four hundred years. In the thirteenth century a convent stood here; part of the buildings are now a farmhouse, but the villagers still point out the "Nuns' Walk" close by. A series of lonely and delightful lanes, difficult to follow without a good map (directions given by a rustic require a super-brain to remember their intricate details), lead down to the high road just short of the bridge over the Axe. Here a turn to the right leads to picturesque old Axmouth. The houses climb up a narrow combe down which tumbles a bright stream from the side of Hawksdown, the hill which rises to the north-east and is crowned by an ancient encampment. The church was originally Norman, but only the north door and south aisle remain of this period. In the chancel, which is in the Decorated style, is the effigy of a priest within a recess, and in a chantry chapel a monument to Lady Erle of Bindon. The curious wall paintings were discovered during the restoration of the church some years ago. An old standard measure for corn called the "Lord's Measure" is kept in a recess in the churchyard wall. Turning to the left from the church are some ancient cottages. On one of the chimneys will be seen the date 1570 and a motto: "G.o.d giveth all." Not far away is the entrance to Stedcombe, a house designed by Inigo Jones, which replaced an older building destroyed in the Civil War. Bindon, the home of Sir Walter Erle, a famous officer of the Parliamentary army, is about a mile from the village in the direction of the Landslip. It is a fine sixteenth-century mansion, now a farmhouse, a chapel attached to which is more than a hundred years older than the original building.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AXMOUTH FROM THE RAILWAY.]

A road by the east bank of the Axe leads in a mile to Seaton, which is at the actual Axe mouth. This is a town almost without a history, although it still makes the not-proven a.s.sertion that it is the site of Moridunum. Some years ago the townsmen, with the idea that the label is the princ.i.p.al thing, stuck the word along the Esplanade wall in letters of black flint. Although the claim is not an impossible one, the probabilities point to the junction of the two great roads, the Fosse Way and the Icknield Way, near Honiton, as being the actual site of the Roman station. The remains of a villa of this period, together with various relics, pottery and coins, were found sometime ago at a place called Hannaditches just outside the town, so that the ubiquitous Latins were at any rate here.

Seaton is quite a different town to Lyme; it has practically no ancient buildings and the few old cob cottages that made up the original village have entirely disappeared. A "restoration" of the church in 1866 destroyed most of the old features, including a beautiful screen. The main fabric belongs to the Decorated period with some Perpendicular additions and very scanty remains of the original Early English building. The hagioscope in the chancel appears as a window in the outer wall. The Perpendicular tower replaces an older erection on the south side, of which the base alone remains. A flat gravestone in the churchyard has the following curious inscription:--

JOHN STARRE

Starre on Hie Where should a Starre be But on Hie?

Tho underneath He now doth lie Sleepinge in Dust Yet shall he rise More glorious than The Starres in skies

1633

The main streets of the town are pleasant enough, though most of the houses are small and of the usual lodging-house type. Seaton depends for its deserved popularity upon its open position, in which it differs from most Devon and Dorset resorts; its bracing air, due to the wide expanse of the Axe valley, and above all to the beautiful surrounding country. Treasure hunts along the beach for garnets and beryls are among the excitements of a fortnight in Seaton.

The unimposing way in which the Axe enters the sea will be remarked at once. It is supposed that the Danes made use of the river mouth as a harbour for their pirate ships and it was without doubt a port of some importance in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. For the siege of Calais it provided two ships. But Leland (temp. Henry VIII) remarks that the silting up of the Axe had made the harbour useless for all but "small fisschar boates." The river now has great difficulty in getting to the sea at all through the high bank of shingle.

A good deal of Honiton lace is made both here and at Beer, though this East Devon industry is slowly dwindling in the several localities in which it was once an important commercial item.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SEATON HOLE.]

The environs of Seaton are beautiful and interesting. The most popular excursion is to the Landslip at Dowlands. The nature of the scenery is so strange and bizarre, as well as beautiful, that it would impress the most stolid and sophisticated as something quite out of the common. North of the town are the villages of Colyford and Colyton; visitors are usually content to view these from the train, but they are worthy of closer inspection. The first-named is now a small village two miles from the sea. It is on the high road from Lyme Regis to Exeter and was once an important borough with a charter dating from the reign of Edward I. Colyton, a mile farther, is a queer old place with narrow, crooked streets. Its Perpendicular church is of much interest, and seems to have been designed by an architect with original ideas who, however, has not been preeminently successful in its details. The square battlemented tower with its octagonal lantern above is poorly executed, but otherwise the uncommon conception arrests attention and is worthy of praise: The parvise chamber over the porch, like many others, was for a long period the town school.

The nave, rebuilt about the middle of the eighteenth century, is of no interest, but the Perpendicular arches between the chancel and aisles are very elaborate and fine. The Pole chapel is formed out of the eastern end of the south aisle and separated from the other portions by a stone screen of elaborate and beautiful workmanship. Within are the ornate figures of Sir John Pole and his wife. On the other side of the chancel is the Jacobean mausoleum of the Yonges, a great local family during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Gothic tomb with the rec.u.mbent figure of a girl upon it is known locally as "Little Chokebone." Margaret Courtenay, daughter of an Earl of Devon, was said to have been suffocated by a fish-bone, but the tradition has been doubted. From the armorial bearings above the tomb it would appear that the figure represents one of the daughters, or possibly the wife, of the sixth Earl of Devon. An interesting inscription in the south transept perpetuates the name of John Wilkins, who was minister from 1647 to 1660 when, as a Nonconformist, he was deprived of the living.

The vicarage was originally built in 1529 by Canon Brerewood, who erected the stone screen of the Pole chapel. It has been altered and partly rebuilt, but the porch retains the original inscription placed there by the Canon--" _Meditatio totum; Peditatio totum_."

Colcombe Castle, half a mile from the town, is now Colcombe Farm. It was once the seat of the Courtenays and the headquarters of Prince Maurice during the Civil War. In 1680 the Duke of Monmouth stayed either here or at the Great House near by, now a farm, but once occupied by the Yonges. An old stone arch in a field above the castle covers a spring of clear cold water.

Seaton Hole, the western extremity of Seaton Bay, lies under White Head, which is not white but brownish grey. Up the steps from the beach, a path leads from the "Hole" for a mile of steep up and down walking and then the explorer reaches Beer, famous for its "free trade" and its memories of a prince of smugglers--Jack Rattenbury; the 'Arrypay of Seaton Bay. His adventures, though not on the grand scale of the hero of Poole, were exciting enough, from his capture by the French, while ship's-boy on a local coaster, to his attempted arrest by a posse of soldiers in a Beer inn, where his escape was effected by the women of the village raising the cry "A wreck! a wreck!" and diverting his captors' attention. Rattenbury died in 1833 after receiving the princely sum of one shilling per week pension during the last years of his life from Lord Rolle. During this period he dictated his memoirs for publication in Sidmouth, to an editor who unconsciously gave the book a delicious touch of humour by putting into the mouth of this son of a Devon shoemaker the grandiloquent phrases of an early Victorian divine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEER.]

The picturesque and unspoilt little beach and the village street leading down to the sea are in great contrast to the new houses built on the hill behind, and the fine new church erected at the instance of the Lord of the Manor, one of the Rolle family. This replaced an ancient chapel dedicated to St. Michael, from which two old memorial tablets were transferred; one is to "Edward Good, late an Industrious fisherman," who left twenty pounds in trust for the poor of Beer and Seaton in 1804, and the other to "John, the fifth sonn of William Starr of Bere, Gent., and Dorothy his wife, which died in the plague was here bvried 1646." The dwelling of this Starr family was the Tudor house at the end of the main street which bears on it the design of a star, the rebus of the one-time owners.

A firm tradition is current among the fishermen, most of whom gain a livelihood in the summer by boat hire, that their forefathers were Spaniards shipwrecked in the Cove just after Beer had been depopulated by the plague, and that they settled in the empty houses, intermarrying with the maids of Devon left in the village. The story is certainly made convincing by the remarkably dark and foreign appearance of the villagers, especially in the case of the older men.

The famous quarries, from which the stone for Exeter Cathedral was taken, are about a mile from the village. The subterranean quarries are not now worked. They were used by the Romans and possibly before.

The pa.s.sages extend for a long distance under the hill and are said to communicate with the sh.o.r.e. They were no doubt of great value to the smugglers. It is extremely dangerous to attempt the penetration of the mysterious pa.s.sages and caves without a competent guide and a dependable light. Holes of unknown depth filled with water are met with in the pa.s.sages and a fatal accident is possible in any unwary exploration.

Bovey House is about a mile to the north. It is chiefly remarkable for a well about 180 feet deep which has a square chamber, 30 feet down, undoubtedly built as a hiding place. Another secret chamber in one of the chimneys is traditionally said to have hidden Charles II, but it has been proved that he did not pa.s.s this way.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WAY TO THE SEA, BEER.]

Beer Head is the last outpost of the chalk and is a dazzling contrast to the prevailing reddish yellow of the Devonian coast. On the other side of the airy common that crowns the head, and that is known as South Down, is the delightful village of Brans...o...b.. (usually p.r.o.nounced "Brahnscoom") built in the three valleys that unite at Brans...o...b.. mouth, the opening to the sea under the shadow of Bury Camp. The fine cruciform church is mainly Norman but with Early English and still later additions. It is supposed that the base of the tower is of Saxon workmanship. A monument (1581) in the transept is to Joan Tregarthen, her two husbands and nineteen children. One of the sons of her second marriage was the founder of Wadham College, Oxford.

In the churchyard is a rough pillar usually described as a coffin-lid.

It is probably a "Sa.r.s.en," indicating that the church site was used for worship in prehistoric times or at least that it was a place of sepulture. There are two headstones of very early date--1579 (?) and 1580, and the tomb of Joseph Bradd.i.c.k (1673) bears the following curious epitaph:

"STRONG AND IN LABOUR SUDDENLY HE REELS DEATH CAME BEHIND HIM AND STRUCK UP HIS HEELS.

SUCH SUDDEN STROKES SURVIVING MORTALS BID YE STAND ON YOUR WATCH AND BE ALLSO READY."

There are several other curious records here that will repay perusal by their quaintness and unconscious pathos. One is rather ferocious:

"STAY, Pa.s.sENGER, AWHILE AND READ YOUR DOOM I AM YOU MUST BEE DEAD."

The dedication and the name of the village are in some doubt.

Authorities make claim for St. Brendan as the patron, hence Brans...o...b... A chapel was built at Seaton in honour of this traveller saint.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRANs...o...b.. CHURCH.]

The coast at Brans...o...b.. is wildly beautiful, and an interesting ramble may be taken at low tide among the ma.s.ses of rock that form a sort of undercliff; the miniature valleys between are carpeted with rare and beautiful flowers. It is not practicable to continue by the sh.o.r.e except at the expenditure of much exertion. The road to Sidmouth should be taken by way of the few houses that const.i.tute Weston, and then by the highly placed Duns...o...b.. Farm and the picturesque ruin near it. These winding lanes lead eventually to the lonely little church hamlet of Salcombe Regis--"King Athelstan's salt-works in the Combe."

This is one of those sweetly-pretty lost villages by the sea which one hesitates to mention lest a speculator should investigate with the idea of an elaborate "simple life" hostel in his mind. But Salcombe is too difficult of approach, even for faddists, although only a nominal two miles separates it from the South Western terminus on the other side of the hill. The church dates from 1150, though aisles were added a hundred years later and the tower in 1450.

We now approach the borders of the older Wess.e.x, the limit for which for want of definite evidence to the contrary the writer has had to fix arbitrarily at the mouth of the Otter. The last of the coast towns in this region is one of the best centres in south-east Devon for a detailed exploration of the countryside. That is, the best if a coast town must be chosen. To the writer's mind a better plan is to make a break from this established usage and get quarters in one of the quiet old places about eight or ten miles inland, such as Ottery or Axminster. But Sidmouth is an exceedingly pleasant spot, in which one need never feel dull or bored, and in which the vulgarities one a.s.sociates with the "popular" watering place are entirely absent. The bright and clean appearance of the stuccoed houses, nearly always painted white, contrasting with the red of the cliffs and the green foliage with which the town is embowered, is very effective and even beautiful. The houses are grouped in a compact and cosy way between the two hills, although of late years a number of new and, at close quarters, staring red brick efforts at modernity have been made on the hillsides. But these are decently covered, in any general view of the town, in the wealth of trees that climb the lower slopes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIDMOUTH.]

Certain quarters of Sidmouth have an air of antique and solid gentility that is a heritage from those days when it was a select and fashionable resort before the terraces of Torquay were built on the lines of its parent--Bath. After Lyme it was the first of the western coast towns to bid for the custom of the habitues of such inland resorts as Tunbridge Wells, Cheltenham and the like. The Victorian-Gothic building known as Royal Glen, originally Woolbrook Cottage, was for several years the home of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Kent and the infant Princess Victoria. The Duke died here in 1820 and Queen Victoria caused a window to be placed to his memory in the rebuilt parish church.

The town is mentioned in Thackeray's _Pendennis_, and was the home of the immortal Mrs. Partington, an old acquaintance of Sidney Smith; she is supposed to have lived in one of the cob cottages that used to be on the front. Like the Lords with Reform, so was Mrs. Partington with the Atlantic Ocean, which she tried to keep out of her front door with a mop. "She was excellent at slop or puddle, but should never have meddled with a tempest." If she was an actual character the good dame's house probably stood where now the fine esplanade runs its straight course between Peak Hill and the Alma Bridge over the Sid. At the bridge the shingle bank baulks the stream from a clear course into the sea and usually forces it into an ignominious and green sc.u.mmed pool that slowly filters through the stony wall. From the bridge a path ascends to the Flagstaff, where there is perhaps a better view than that from the much higher Peak Hill on the west. Torbay, Start Point, and the south Devon coast are in full but distant view across the bay, but Teignmouth and Dawlish hide behind the promontory called Black Head.