North Devon

“ And now, over the steep hill dividing Welcombe Mouth from Marsland Mouth, we come to the conclusion of the coast of North Devon. Marsland Mouth is a fit ending: the very culmination of loneliness. If the scenery of its seaward end is not so rugged as that of many of these “mouths,” the extraordinary exuberance of the close-grown thorn, oak, and hazel thickets that have entirely overgrown the valley is unparalleled anywhere else in all these miles. Only a rugged footpath, closely beset with bushes, leads down to the shore. ”

“ Along the little churchyard, packed full with women, streams all the gentle blood of North Devon,—tall and stately men, and fair ladies, worthy of the days when the gentry of England were by due right the leaders of the people, by personal prowess and beauty, as well as by intellect and education. And first, there is my lady Countess of Bath, whom Sir Richard Grenville is escorting, cap in hand (for her good Earl Bourchier is in London with the queen) ”

“ Warner of the eighteenth century, “is by far the most genteel town in North Devon.” This is a very happy word; though why a town whose history includes the days of Athelstane, a town that has had a castle and a priory and a [187] life by no moans dull, should be “genteel” when all is said, is hard to understand. The nice public gardens and open spaces, the air of clean prosperity, and the colonnade with the fluted pillars give it an eighteenth-century air, at latest. ”

“ Devonshire, like Cornwall and Kent, is remarkable in having both a northern and a southern seaboard; a peculiarity shared by no other English county. Its two shores present striking points of difference. The south coast-line is broken by many estuaries. On the other shore there is only one important river mouth. There are, it is true, many little coves and inlets on the Bristol Channel, some of them of great beauty; but they make little show upon the map of England, and the stern outline of the North Devon coast affords no harbour of refuge. ”

“ INTRODUCTORY No one can, with advantage, explore the rugged coast of North Devon by progressing direct from the point where it begins and so continuing, without once harking back. The scenery is exceptionally bold and fine, and the tracing of the actual coast-line by consequence a matter of no little difficulty. ”

“ All who have travelled through the delicious scenery of North Devon must needs know the little white town of Bideford which slopes upwards from its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands, and many-arched old bridge where salmon wait for Autumn floods, toward the pleasant upland on the west. ”

“ We miss them from the moor road,
They're getting old to roam;
The road they're on's a sure road,
And nearer, lad, to home.'
H. Newbolt: April on Waggon Hill.
The charm of the coast-line of North Devon lies partly in its great irregularity. 'At one spot a headland, some five hundred feet high, rough with furze-clad projections at the top, and falling abruptly to a bay; then, perhaps, masses of a low, dark rock, girding a basin of turf, as at Watermouth; again, a recess and beach, with the mouth of a stream ”

“ You do not, generally, on the North Devon coast, as so often in South Devon, find the scenery outraged by a terrible lack of taste, displayed in a plenitude of plaster.
When Mr. Louis Jennings passed this way, about 1890, the Cliff Railway, or lift, was newly opened, but the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway was not yet in being. Lynton, nevertheless, was in the throes of expansion, and he found “the hand of man doing its usual fatal work on one of the loveliest spots our country has to boast of. ”

“ There will be no more Fagguses in North Devon and no more Doones; for the conditions160 that produced them are dead, and legends such as those that were told and retold of them around the farmhouse inglenooks on winter evenings—and that with every re-telling gained some fresh marvel—no longer form the entertainment of the farmers’ men. All the rustics can read now: the maids burning the midnight candle over novelettes, the men addling their brains over the rag-bag weeklies, whose success with the million you perceive exemplified in the pioneer instance writ large at Lynton. ”

“ But of cottages in the county there are two kinds. The first, always charming, is of cob, clay, thatched. Such cottages are found throughout North Devon, and wherever the red sandstone prevails. They are low, with an upper storey, the windows to which are small, and the brown thatch is lifted above these peepers like a heavy, sleepy brow in a very picturesque manner. But near Dartmoor stone is employed, and an old, imperishable granite house is delightful when thatched. But thatch has given way [31] everywhere to slate, and when the roof is slated a great charm is gone. ”

“ Only the pedestrian can see this coast as a whole, and even he needs to be blessed with powers of endurance beyond the ordinary, if he would miss none of those rugged steeps, those rocky coves and “mouths” and leafy combes that for the most part make up the tale of the North Devon littoral. It is true that there are sands in places, but they are principally sands like those2 yielding wastes of Braunton Burrows, whereon you even wish yourself back again upon the hazardous, stone-strewn hillsides sloping down to the sea that make such painful walking in the region of Heddon’s Mouth ”

“ The Bampton Fair is an institution that should not be passed by unsought by the visitor to North Devon, if he be a lover of horseflesh or a student of mankind. He will see there choice specimens alike of Exmoor ponies and of North Devon farmers, and will catch many a waft of the broadest dialect of the borders of Somerset and Devon. ”

“ Merchants’ palaces of the time when Totnes was completely environed by its walls, and “its inhabitants, even in times of trouble, could sleep at ease because of its strong defences.” It is from the old Norman keep, built, so ’tis said, by Judhael de Totenais, that one obtains what local folk proudly assert is the finest view in Devon. From it (let the claim pass unchallenged) one does see a prospect of delight, widely stretching and cultivated fields and uplands, with distant plum-hued Dartmoor on the far horizon to the northward. ”

“ The only known counterparts of the North Devon ovens are Continental. A 15th-century example appears in an Augsburg woodcut, and a 16th-century specimen is depicted in De Bry’s engraving after Le Moyne’s painting of Fort Caroline, the Huguenot settlement in Florida. There are many suggestions of Huguenot and Low Country influences on North Devon pottery. Bideford and Barnstaple both were Puritan strongholds in the 17th century, and both became French Huguenot centers, especially after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. ”

“ The “Devil’s Cheese-wring” is the name of one of these curious stony piles, now partly overgrown with ivy. The Valley and the cheese-wring are mentioned in “Lorna Doone,” a romance no one can escape in North Devon, strive though he may; although, really, the Doone Valley and almost every incident of that story, are in, and concerned with, Somerset.
A wind-swept little wood is almost the only sign of vegetation, except the coarse grass, in this wild valley of grey stones ”

“ Sites Yielding North Devon Types
Excepting the Bowne House oven and a 1698 jug (see p. 45) , no example of North Devon pottery used in America is known to have survived above ground. Archeological evidence, however, provides a sufficient record of North Devon wares and the tastes and customs they reflected. Following are descriptions of the principal sites in which these wares were found.
JAMESTOWN, VIRGINIA: MAY-HARTWELL SITE.
The site of Jamestown, first permanent English settlement in North America, has been excavated at intervals by the National Park Service. ”

“ All around this place the ice wastes quickly in the spring, and forms a large basin of water abounding with seals. Only that part of the peninsula which lies nearest to North Devon is high and steep, and forms a bold face: farther north it is very low. ”

“ Nor is it worth while to improve the navigation by dredging, as is done to so great an extent on the Thames, the Mersey, and the Clyde. The industries of Devonshire are now of small importance, and the county has no great manufacturing centres to supply freights. Plymouth Sound is the only busy waterway, and Plymouth is the one populous town requiring large quantities of imports.
The only harbour in North Devon given in the shipping returns is Barnstaple, with which are associated Ilfracombe, Bideford, and Appledore. ”

“ I mounts my mare to hunt the hare!
Sing tally-ho! the hounds, Sir!
There is but one patch of false colour in this song, that which represents the hunting parson as strong in the pulpit.
Society—hunting society especially—in North Devon was coarse to an exceptional degree. One who knew it intimately wrote to me: “It was a strange ungodly company, parsons included, and that not so very long ago. North Devon society in Jack Russell’s day was peculiar—so peculiar that no one now would believe readily that half a century ago such life could be—but I was in the thick of it. ”

“ The country, between the central highlands of Devon and the north-west coast of Devon and north-east of Cornwall, is not only secluded into an angular area bounded by the sea; but lies quite out of the course of the torrent of West Saxon advance westward: which indeed had been evidently checked by the Dartmoor heights. It might have been expected, therefore, except for the explanation now offered, that this district would have retained a strong tincture of its original Celtic condition, in that lasting index of race-occupancy its place-names. ”

“ Although both in Devon and Cornwall there is great independence and a total absence of that [16] servility of manner which one meets with in other parts of England, it would be a vast mistake to suppose that a West Country man is disrespectful to those who are his superiors—if he has reason to recognise their superiority; but he does not like a "foreigner," especially one from the North Country. He does not relish his manner, and this causes misunderstanding and mutual dislike. ”

“ JACK RATTENBURY
The coasts of Devon and Cornwall, north and south, are bold, with cliffs starting out of the sea, white near the Dorset frontier, then red, and then of limestone marble, or, on the north coast, of slate and schist. The rocks are riddled with caves, the highland is cleft by narrow valleys sawn through their mass by descending streams. The whole coast, north and south, lends itself to smuggling; and smuggling had been carried on as a profitable speculation till it ceased to pay, when heavy duties were removed, and when the coastguard became efficient. ”

“ No 18th-century intrusions were noted in the brick drain area, and only a scattering in other portions; none was found in association with the North Devon sherds.
JAMESTOWN, VIRGINIA: OTHER SITES.
North Devon wares occur in the majority of sites at Jamestown, but it is not always possible to date them from contextual evidence because precise archeological records were not always kept in the early phases of the excavations. Nevertheless, narrow dating is easily possible in enough sites to suggest date horizons for the wares. ”

“ The Devonian strata on the south do not form such lofty elevations as those on the north, and are in consequence, like the plain of Hereford, very fertile and peculiarly adapted for fruit-growing and cider-making. The remarkable features of the scenery of South Devon and Cornwall are due to a narrow band of Archaean rock which appears in the south of the peninsulas terminating in Lizard Head and Start Point, and to huge masses of granite and other eruptive rocks which form a series of great bosses and dykes. ”

“ The steamers call at North Corner, hard by the dockyard, where the grim streets of Devonport, rich in pawnbrokers’ shops and public-houses, dip down to the water, and dozens of naked boys splash about on summer days in a longshore mixture of sea water, mud, orange-peel, corks, and all the miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam of a great town. ”

“ To the east a green and smiling country of gentle hills and valleys leads to that shade of past splendour, the Castle of Berry Pomeroy; and far away to the north-west, it is possible to see the high, sharp tors on Dartmoor. Looking straight down, the uneven roofs seem tumbled over one another in a way that suggests that different ages have casually showered them into the little town.
Totnes received its first charter from King John, and there are [Pg 131] few older boroughs in the country. ”

“ In the spring of 1654, Charles II was proclaimed King in South Molton, for the Wiltshire gentlemen who had risen against the Government, headed by Sir Joseph Wagstaff and led by Colonel Penruddock and Mr Hugh Groves, made their way so far west before they were overpowered. Sir Joseph escaped, but the other two leaders were beheaded at Exeter.
A little to the north of the town, and about eight miles south of Barnstaple, are the wide grounds of Castle Hill—broad lawns and slopes, clear streams, and rich feathery masses of woodland that, shaded and softened by distance, spread far away. ”

“ Every mile of Devonshire has its charm, not to be mapped out in advance, but freshly discovered by each new lover of the moorland and the sea, of soft air and the play of shadows, of folklore and tradition, of the memory of heroes. Those who cannot know fair Devon in actual presence may find her at her best in the romances of Kingsley and Blackmore and Phillpotts. The shire abounds in sea-magic. The south coast, with its wealth of sheltered bays and tempting inlets, has so mild and equable a climate that its dreamy windings have become dotted with winter resorts as well as watering-places. ”