Part 11
Not one of the famous houses of Devonshire is entirely, or even in great part, as old as the thirteenth century, although there are several that contain features of that period. Such, for example, is Bowringsleigh, near Kingsbridge, a fine old building, which although mainly Tudor, and containing details of later eras--beautiful Jacobean oak screens and highly-decorated plaster ceilings of the time of William and Mary--has some striking thirteenth century work in it.
At Little Hempstone, near Totnes, is a very interesting and well-preserved pre-Reformation parsonage or priest's residence of the fourteenth century; and Ayshford Court, near Burlescombe, a fine old house now used like the Little Hempstone parsonage as a farm, contains a fourteenth century chapel. Of the same period are the great hall, now dismantled, and the old kitchen and other buildings connected with the mansion of Dartington, which although as a whole a noble example of Elizabethan architecture, was originally erected in the reign of Richard II.
Manor-houses of the fifteenth century are much more numerous. The most remarkable of them--indeed, the finest of all the many great houses in the county, is Wear Gifford, on the Torridge, about 2-1/2 miles south of Bideford, a perfect example of an old English manorial residence, built, it is believed, during the reign of Henry VI. Greatly damaged during the Civil War, the house, which stands in a commanding situation with fine timber, especially oak-trees, about it, was for a long period occupied as a farm, and having become much dilapidated, was restored about eighty years ago. It contains many beautiful and interesting details, but the most striking of the original features are the square embattled tower with the fine entrance archway beneath it, and the magnificent hall, rising to the whole height of the building, with richly-decorated oaken panelling and a carved, open, hammer-beam roof which is one of the very finest examples of Perpendicular woodwork in England. Other good specimens of fifteenth century architecture are Wortham, at Lifton, near the border of Cornwall, an almost perfect house of the period; Bradley, near Newton Abbot, a very picturesque building with a fine hall and chapel; and the main fabric of Exeter Guildhall, which was erected in 1464 though the front is Elizabethan.
The noblest Tudor mansion in Devonshire is Holcombe Rogus, in the village of that name, near Burlescombe, about three miles from the border of Somerset. A good deal of the building is a modern restoration, but many details of the time of its foundation, in the reign either of Henry VIII or of Edward VI, still remain. As in the case of Wear Gifford, the most striking features of the house are the very picturesque tower and gate-house, and the great hall--a magnificent room, more than forty feet long, lighted by two great six-light windows. Some of the rooms are finely wainscoted with curiously carved oaken panelling. Adjoining the building is the original "church-house," consisting of kitchen, refectory, and cellar, where parishioners could cook their food and brew their beer, where the poor received their doles, and where the needs of casual wayfarers were relieved.
Another very interesting Tudor mansion, only part of which, however, is now habitable, and is used as a farm, is Cadhay, at Ottery St Mary. The interior of the house has been a good deal altered, but the exterior is much as it was in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Its most remarkable feature is the inner court, round which the house is built, and in each of whose four sides, over an arched Tudor doorway, is a highly-decorated projecting canopied niche. In these niches are statues of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth.
Another very fine sixteenth century house, containing also some earlier details, is Bradfield, near Uffculme, in which are a beautiful music-room, a fine banqueting-hall with good panelling, a minstrels' gallery, and a richly-carved roof. Altogether, this is one of the best examples of domestic architecture in Devonshire.
Other interesting and noteworthy houses of the period are Colleton Barton at Chumleigh, Flete House at Holbeton, Hayes Barton at East Budleigh, and Mol's Coffee House in Exeter. Flete has been rebuilt, but it is a fine mansion, whose beauty is much enhanced by its surroundings and its avenue of cedars. Hayes Barton, where Ralegh was born--it was thus he always spelt his name--and where a table said to have belonged to him is shown, is a rather modern-looking house, plainly built of "cobb"; but its gables, its mullioned windows and its heavy door are characteristic of the time. In Mol's Coffee House, which is one of the sights of Exeter, is an oak-panelled room decorated with the arms of Drake, Ralegh, Monk and others, in which the great Devonshire soldiers and sailors of Armada days were accustomed to meet.
Two particularly interesting seventeenth century mansions are Sydenham House, not far from Tavistock, and Forde House, near Newton Abbot. In the former, which is a specially fine example of the work of the early part of the century, containing also some fourteenth century details, is some very good carved and decorated woodwork, especially in the form of artistic panelling and stately staircases. There are also secret rooms and passages, some of which have been contrived in the thickness of the walls. The house was greatly damaged during the Civil War, when it is said to have been stormed by the troops of the Parliament. At Forde House, which was taken and retaken several times in the struggle between the King and the Commons, the Prince of Orange slept on the first night after his landing at Brixham. Charles I was there twice, in the first year of his reign.
Some good examples of more modern houses are Kingsnympton, in the parish of that name, about four miles from Chumleigh, surrounded by well-wooded grounds, on a commanding eminence looking down on the Taw; Ugbrooke, near Chudleigh, standing in a deer-park of rare beauty, finely timbered, and most picturesquely varied by wood and hill and water, and where Dryden's grove may still be seen; Rousdon, near Axmouth, built of flint faced with Purbeck stone, and considered one of the most magnificent modern mansions in Devon; Saltram House, three miles east-north-east of Plymouth, a stately building in a large and beautiful park; and Bicton House near Budleigh Salterton, whose trees, brought from all parts of the world, and including a wonderful avenue of araucarias, form one of the finest collections of the kind in Europe.
Other interesting houses are Ashe House near Axminster, the home of the Drake family and the birth-place of the great Duke of Marlborough, partly burnt down during the Civil War and repaired with stones from the ruins of Newenham Abbey, and now a farmhouse; Great Fulford, in the parish of Dunsford, about eight miles west of Exeter, owned by a family who have held it since the time of Richard I, stormed by Fairfax in 1645; and the residence in Exeter of the Abbots of Buckfast, a good example of mediaeval architecture.
Some very picturesque old half-timbered houses are to be seen in Exeter, especially in High Street, North Street, and South Street; and there are so many in Dartmouth that the town has been called the Chester of Devonshire. Nor should the fine old almshouses of Tiverton and Exeter be forgotten.
Devonshire possesses a great variety of building stone; and the materials employed have naturally varied, as a rule, according to the geological formation of the district. Some of the best houses are of Beer stone. Some, as has been shown, are of flint. Brick, which when of good colour and quality is an excellent material, has been largely employed. Many cottages, and even whole villages, such as Otterton and East Budleigh, are built of "cobb," which is a mixture of clay and straw.
Thatch, which is still used for roofing, although to a less extent than formerly, has in the past been the cause of many disastrous fires. As recently as 1866 more than 100 houses were burnt down in Ottery St Mary. Nearly the whole of Chudleigh was thus destroyed in 1807. Fires in Crediton, in the eighteenth century, destroyed hundreds of houses. Perhaps the town that has suffered most severely in this way is Tiverton, where there were very destructive fires in the eighteenth century. One in 1612 consumed almost every house, and in another, in 1598, no fewer than 400 houses were burnt down.
23. Communications: Past and Present.
In prehistoric times Devonshire was crossed by a network of trackways, some of which are to-day broad and well-kept high roads. Others form those proverbially narrow, awkward, and frequently muddy Devonshire lanes which are so characteristic of the county, having become worn in the lapse of ages so deep below the level of the adjacent country, owing partly to the softness of the ground, and partly to the heavy rainfall, that their high banks, although often very beautiful, completely shut out the view. Others, again, that once served merely to connect one hill-fort with another, have fallen out of use, and are now hardly to be traced.
These roads, probably begun in the Neolithic Period as footpaths, may have been made into tracks for packhorses in the Bronze Age, and more or less adapted for wheeled traffic by the prehistoric users of iron. Packhorses, however, usually or frequently in teams of six, were in common use in the county until the middle of the eighteenth century; and although good roads were made across Dartmoor in 1792 there were parts of that wild district where, before the year 1831, wheeled vehicles were unknown. At the present time the total length of all the roads in Devonshire is only exceeded in the county of Yorkshire.
It is generally believed that no Devonshire road was wholly constructed by the Romans, who probably reached the district by the already existing British coast-road from Dorchester. There are some, however, who think that the Fosse Way joined this road and passed through Exeter, going as far as the river Teign. The Romans made no road beyond this point, at any rate; and here, not far from Newton Abbot, they built over the river a bridge of freestone, on whose foundations the modern structure--the third since then--now rests.
Some ancient roads have been abandoned because of their steepness, or because they have been superseded by more convenient ways. Such, for example, are the lane from Crockam Bridge over the Teign to Trusham, and the Lichway (i.e. the way of the corpse) along which, before 1260, the dead were carried for burial into Lydford, crossing the river over Willsworthy Steps, a series of eighteen stepping-stones. One of the most remarkable of these old roads was the great central trackway on Dartmoor, leading from Chagford to Tavistock, 10 feet wide, 2-1/2 feet deep, and made of rough stones with smaller stones above. Although much of it has been destroyed for the sake of its materials, about 18 miles of it still remain. It was during the seventeenth century that the "Moor-stones"--upright monoliths of granite--were set up to serve as guide-posts for wayfarers during the mists that so often cover the moor. One of the most important highways in Devonshire is the great trunk road from London, which enters the county with the Great Western Railway and accompanies it to Exeter, thence making straight for Plymouth, and passing on into Cornwall.
In common with other English counties Devonshire possesses a number of hamlets whose names end in "ford," a syllable which, in words of Saxon origin, means that an old road there passed through the shallows of a stream or river. Such, to give a few familiar instances, are Chagford, Lydford, and Bideford.
Devonshire canals are short and unimportant. The hilly country is not adapted for them; and such traffic as some of them once enjoyed has been absorbed by the railways. There is, however, a good deal of traffic on the Exeter Canal--constructed in 1566, and therefore one of the oldest ship canals in England and the first lock-canal in the kingdom--but it is worked at a loss. Most of the Bude Canal has been abandoned, and only two miles of it are now in use. The Grand Western Canal, running ten-and-a-half miles eastward from Tiverton, nearly to the Somerset border--all that was ever made of a waterway intended to reach Taunton--the Stover Canal, two miles in length, and the Hackney Canal, only half-a-mile long, both connected with the river Teign, are all under the control of the Great Western Railway. No Devonshire river is now of much value as a waterway. There is some traffic on some of the estuaries, especially the Teign; and the Tamar is navigable to Gunnislake, a distance of twenty miles.
There are in our county some very old lines of stone-tramway for horse-traction; from Tavistock to Princetown, for example, and from the Heytor quarries to the head of the Stover Canal, but they are no longer in use. Down the former was brought granite to build London Bridge.
The railway from London to Bristol was opened by the Great Western Company in 1841, was continued to Exeter by the Bristol and Exeter Company in 1844, and to Plymouth by the South Devon Company in 1846. Atmospheric pressure was tried for a time between Exeter and Newton Abbot, but it was a failure, and was soon superseded by steam-traction.
Brunel's railways were made on the broad-gauge system with seven feet between the rails, in order to give stability to the trains and to allow of a high rate of speed; and the entire line from London to Plymouth was broad gauge. Most other companies, however, adopted the narrow gauge, in which there is only four feet eight-and-a-half inches between the rails; and owing mainly to the inconvenience of not being able to interchange rolling-stock with other lines, the Great Western Railway Company have converted their whole system to narrow gauge.
The Devonshire railways are now owned by two companies only, the Great Western and the London and South Western. The latter, which enters the county near Axminster, runs to Plymouth, especially serving the south coast to the east of Exmouth, with important branches to Barnstaple and Ilfracombe and to Bude, and with a continuation into Cornwall. The Great Western Railway enters Devonshire at two points; near Burlescombe, running thence to Plymouth and into Cornwall, and near Venn Cross, for Barnstaple. The Cornish Riviera Express from Paddington, which slips a coach at Reading, and, passing south of Bristol, slips another at Exeter, performs the journey of 225 miles to Plymouth--the longest non-stop run of any train in England--in 7 minutes over 4 hours, which is an average speed of 55 miles an hour.
There are some famous bridges on the Devonshire roads and railways, of which the most remarkable are the Saltash Viaduct, 2240 feet long and 102 feet above high-water mark, built by Brunel across the Tamar; the old stone bridge of 16 arches over the Taw at Barnstaple, originally built in the thirteenth century, but since much altered and widened; the fifteenth century stone bridge of 24 arches over the Torridge at Bideford, also much changed from the days when it was only wide enough for a pack-horse, but always a valuable source of revenue to the town from the money that has, at various times, been left for its maintenance, and has been used to promote education, municipal improvements, charity and other objects; and the wooden bridge over the Teign at Teignmouth, one of the longest of its kind in England. Very different in character are the Lydford Bridge, whose single arch of stone spans the deep gorge of the river, close to the town; and the ancient stone clapper bridges, of which perhaps Post Bridge is the best known, already described in the chapter on antiquities.
24. Administration and Divisions--Ancient and Modern.
In the days of our ancestors the Anglo-Saxons, Devonshire was governed much in the same way as it is governed now. That is to say, while the people had to obey the laws that were drawn up under the direction of the King, they had a great deal of what we now call self-government. Every little group of houses in Devonshire had its own "tun-moot" or village council, which made its own by-laws (from the Danish _by_, a town) and managed its own affairs. The large divisions of the county called Hundreds--groups of a hundred families--had their more important "hundred-moot"; while the general business of the whole shire was conducted by the "shire-moot," with its two chief officers, the "ealdorman," or earl, for military commander, and the "shire-reeve" for judicial president. The Devonshire shire-moot met twice in the year. These three assemblies may fairly be said to correspond to the Parish Councils, the District Councils, and the County Council of the present time. Our lord-lieutenant corresponds to the ealdorman of other days, and the present sheriff to the ancient shire-reeve.
The division called a Hundred may have been named, as already suggested, because it contained a hundred families. But the present Devonshire Hundreds, of which there are 32, vary a good deal in population. The Hundred of Black Torrington, for example, contains 38 parishes, and the Hundred of Hemyock only three.
The Parish is another ancient institution, and was originally "a township or cluster of houses, to which a single priest ministered, to whom its tithes and ecclesiastical dues were paid." Many of the 516 ecclesiastical parishes or parts of parishes situated wholly or partly within the Ancient Geographical County of Devon fairly correspond to the manors described in Domesday Book; but the whole country was not divided up into parishes until the reign of Edward III. The parishes, again, vary much in size and population. Thus, the parish of Lydford, which includes a large part of Dartmoor, and measures more than 50,000 acres, being the largest parish in England, contains 325 inhabited houses and a population of 2812. The parish of Haccombe, on the other hand, contains three inhabited houses and nine people.
Queen Elizabeth made the parishes areas of taxation, partly, at any rate, to provide funds for the relief of the poor. In modern times, with the idea of taking still better care of the poor, the parishes have been grouped together in Poor Law Unions, of which there are 20 in Devonshire, each provided with a workhouse, which was meant to be a place in which the able-bodied poor might find employment. Now, however, the workhouse is little more than a refuge for the destitute, the idle, and the incapable.
The local government of Saxon times was swept away by the feudal system of the Normans, which transferred the power of making and carrying out laws from the freemen to the lords of the various manors, and was only restored as recently as 1888 and 1894.
The affairs of each parish, since the latter date, have been managed by a Parish Council of from 5 to 15 men or women, elected by the parishioners. District Councils have charge of wide areas, and have larger powers. They are, in particular, the sanitary authorities, and are responsible for the water-supply. The County Council, whose very considerable powers extend to the whole shire, is a small parliament, which can levy rates and borrow money for public works. It manages lunatic asylums and reformatories, keeps roads and bridges in repair, controls the police in conjunction with the Quarter Sessions, appoints coroners and officers of health, and sees that the Acts relating to local government are carried out.
The Devonshire County Council consists of 103 members, of whom 77 are elected every three years by the ratepayers of the various electoral districts; while 26 are aldermen, elected or co-opted by the 77; thirteen of them in one triennial period, to serve for six years, and the other thirteen in the next period, to serve for the same length of time. The Council meets at Exeter, four times in the year. Plymouth, Devonport, and Exeter are called County Boroughs, and their corporations have the powers of a County Council. Ten other towns, Barnstaple, Bideford, Dartmouth, Great Torrington, Honiton, Okehampton, South Molton, Tiverton, Torquay, and Totnes, are called Municipal Boroughs and are governed by a mayor and corporation.
For the administration of justice the county, which is in the Western Circuit, has one court of Quarter Sessions, the Assizes being held at Exeter; while Petty Sessions, presided over by local justices of the peace, are held weekly in 22 towns, to try cases and to punish those who have broken the law.
Ecclesiastical affairs are in the hands of the Bishop of Exeter, the archdeacons of Barnstaple, Exeter, and Totnes, together with numerous deans and other church officials, in addition to the parish clergy.
The County Council appoints a number of Education Committees, who have charge of all Government elementary and secondary schools throughout the county.
Devonshire is divided into eleven Constituencies, of which eight are Parliamentary Divisions, known as those of Honiton, Tiverton, South Molton, Barnstaple, Tavistock, Totnes, Torquay, and Ashburton, each of which returns one member. In addition to these Plymouth and Devonport each return two members and Exeter one, so that the county is represented altogether by thirteen Members of Parliament.
We may recall with pride the fact that, among the Members for Devon, have been some of the most distinguished men who have ever sat in Parliament. Thus, Sir Walter Ralegh sat for the county, Plymouth has been represented by Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkyns, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Tavistock by John Pym and Lord John Russell, Barnstaple by Skippon and Lord Exmouth, Okehampton by William Pitt and Lord Rodney, Plympton by Lord Castlereagh and Sir Christopher Wren, Dartmouth by Lord Howe, and Tiverton by Lord Palmerston.
25. The Roll of Honour of the County.
Famous as our county is for its beautiful scenery, its wealth of prehistoric antiquities, and the abundance and variety of its wild life, it is still more renowned for its long Roll of Honour, for the many great and distinguished men who were born in it, or who have been more or less closely associated with it by residence within its borders. There can be little doubt that the foremost man in the whole history of Devon is Sir Francis Drake, the greatest of Elizabethan seamen, the first English circumnavigator of the globe, the terror of every Spanish ship, and the most conspicuous figure in the defeat of the Armada. Born near Tavistock, about 1540, of humble parentage, he early took to the sea, and was only seventeen when he and his kinsman Hawkyns, in the course of a trading-voyage to Guiana, were so ill-treated at a South American Spanish port that, for the rest of his life, Drake's chief aim seems to have been to avenge his injuries by plundering the towns, destroying the shipping, and capturing the treasure-ships of both Spain and Portugal.
Among his greatest exploits were his voyage round the world, between 1577 and 1580--after which, on his return, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth on board his ship the _Golden Hind_; the ravaging of the West Indies in 1585 and 1586; the destruction in the harbour of Cadiz of ships and stores intended for the invasion of England, by which he delayed for a whole year the sailing of the Armada; and the prominent part he took in the defeat of the Armada itself, when he captured the flagship of Admiral Pedro de Valdez.