Part 5

Estates here being small, the farms are small also; and they could not well be large in such a hilly country--haulage would be too costly, if a farm went over many ridges and coombes. Usually they are too small, and two or three might be thrown into one, one set of buildings serving for the whole, likewise one set of implements, and fewer horses--six horses have sufficed, where three farmers had each been keeping three. Even in districts where estates are large, and ground is flat, the farms are seldom large enough to give the best results. The ideal is the largest area that can possibly be worked from one homestead; and in some districts that may be very large indeed. No doubt, the _latifundia_ were not a success; but that was due to slavery, not to size. Here in England our countryfolk would make a better stock as labourers on big estates than in starvation on small-holdings.

The labourer has certainly fared badly in the past. He grew the dear loaf, and never had a bite at it. But, when economists go writing of “the hungry ’forties,” they should remember that there were such things as trout and salmon, hares and rabbits, partridges and pheasants.

My grandfather writes to my father, 3 December 1844:--“I was told yesterday at Moreton that many travellers now give their horses a portion of wheat flour. Some are too scrupulous to do it: but the labourer would say Why give barley, as that is my food, and the Scotch and Irish may say Why give oats.” He writes a few days later, 15 December 1844:--“I had some conversation with the Lustleigh parson yesterday. He said we had no poor here, and the labourers were better off than where he came from.”--He had just left a living in Norfolk.--“There the wages were less, and they never tasted animal food from one year to another, but here they all managed to salt in a pig.”

He writes on 2 December 1849:--“Bad as times are, I have known them far worse under Protection.... Such was the distress among farmers then that labourers were put up to auction by the parish authorities, and hired for 6_d._ to 9_d._ per day.” And on 7 February 1850:--“There is no grumbling among the labourers, for now they have a cheap loaf, and are able to get a bit of meat to eat with it.... Besides under Free Trade they get salt, sugar, tea, coffee, etc., at a much lower rate than formerly, when their wages were but a half or a third.”

On 13 July 1851 he writes:--“I see a vast improvement in agriculture in this neighbourhood since Free Trade came in.... Protection did but foster indolence.” Fifty years later, when Protection was allied with Tariff Reform, an ardent Liberal said to me:--“No, ’t ain’t no tariffs and ’tection that they farmers need: ’t be nothin’ but lime and doong.” And certainly the land was starved.

My grandfather was converted to Free Trade somewhere about 1817 or 1818, but I do not know exactly when or how. He writes on 3 June 1843:--“I have been a Free Trader for more than five-and-twenty years.” And on 28 January 1844:--“I almost stood alone in Moreton as a Free Trader about five-and-twenty years ago.” As for the other party, he writes on 25 November 1849:--“Protection is substituted for Church & State and King & Constitution, and what they will have next I am at a loss to say.” He was a Liberal then; but the party went beyond his principles, and my brother writes from here, 4 July 1868:--“Grandpapa now calls himself a Conservative, and makes dire prophecies of the political future of England.”

Lord John Russell was the only politician whom he altogether trusted. There was some slight acquaintance; and Lord John gave my father a very nice desk upon his coming of age. My father used it always, and I have it still, not much the worse for wear, but somewhat damaged by burglars on one of their visits to our house in town.

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Writing to my father on 25 January 1846, my grandfather says:--“Agricultural labourers are very scarce: most of the young and able bodied are gone on the railways.” Men got better pay as navvies than they had ever got in agriculture. Better pay meant better food; and the navvies developed into finer men than anyone had seen before--at least, old people always told me so. I fancy this displacement of labour had more effect on wages and employment than the change from Protection to Free Trade.

Writing on 8 March 1846, he says:--“I do not think many of the agriculturalists are prepared for the very great changes that the railways will make.” But those great changes never came, as the agriculturalists never grasped the situation. So long as transport was difficult, each district had to grow nearly everything that it required. When transport was made easy, each district should have grown what it grew best. Here in the South Hams there was quite the best cream in England, and about the best cider, and also excellent mutton. Had people kept to things like these, and laid down all their arable land to grass, they would have saved far more on agricultural buildings, implements and horses, than they would have spent in getting arable products from a distance. And they would hardly have felt the depression that began in 1878, as that scarcely touched these things.

Being short-sighted, they neglected their orchards, and grew careless of their cider-making, till Devonshire cider was outclassed by Hereford. And now they are ruining the cream by using separators. Of course, it is cream made in Devonshire, but it is not what was known as Devonshire cream. The stuff is not worth eating; but I suppose people will go on eating it as Devonshire cream, just as they go on drinking the wines of well-known growers, whose vineyards were exhausted years ago.

There is also a machine now to prepare wheat straw for thatching; and this bruises the reed, and renders it less durable than when it was prepared by hand. And now they never sow wheat early enough for the straw to gather strength. The result is that the thatch decays, and landlords and farmers both get tired of patching it, and put up slate or iron instead, thereby helping to destroy the market for one of their own products. I have known a field of wheat pay rent and rates and every outlay with the straw for thatching, and the grain was all clear profit.

Nobody who has lived under a thatched roof would willingly live under any other--the comfort is so great. The thatch keeps out the cold in winter, and keeps out the heat in summer. This house has about 4000 square feet of roof, and my other buildings in Wreyland have about 12,000 altogether; and the whole of this is thatched. Thatching costs about three pence a square foot, and lasts about five-and-twenty years; the period varying a little with the shape of the roof and its aspect, exposure, and so on. And really it is not inflammable. Just as paper will burn and books will not, so also straw will burn and thatch will not: at least, thatch will only burn quite slowly like a book. I have twice seen a fire stopped by cutting away a strip of thatch, and so making a gap that the fire could not cross; and the fire burnt so very slowly that there was ample time for this.

In insurance against fire a higher rate is charged on thatch than on the other kinds of roofing; and I presume the higher rate is needed, though possibly for other reasons than the nature of the roof. Writing to my father about a small estate that was for sale, my grandfather remarks quite placidly, 13 June 1864:--“The premises are all but new, for ***** took care to burn down the whole at different times--so all new and well built and slated. No office would continue the insurance for him, but being all slated it did not much require it.” I have heard the same thing said of other small estates.

There were many fires in Moreton about seventy or eighty years ago. In those times the insurance companies had fire-engines of their own, and people trusted to these engines. After a fire there, 11 September 1838, my father writes in his diary:--“The Moreton engine poured on the thatch in front of Mrs Heyward’s house, and kept the fire in the back premises. But, as the fire was extending towards the White Hart, which was insured in the ‘West of England,’ the engine (which belonged to that office) was removed there to endeavour to preserve the inn. As soon as the engine was removed, the fire came into the front of Mrs Heyward’s house, and extended on in Pound Street.... There ought to be two engines in the place; and, as the ‘Sun’ lost so much, perhaps they will send one there.” After another fire there, 12 September 1845, my grandfather writes to him:--“Many houses not insured: their owners dropt it at Ladyday last, when the advance took place on thatched houses.” This fire was a notable event. My father writes in his diary, Coblence, 21 September 1845:--“Read in the Galignani newspaper an account of the recent fire at Moreton, which has destroyed so much of the town.”

Cob walls are as good as a thatched roof for resisting heat and cold; and the houses that have both, are far the best to live in, when the temperature out-doors is either high or low. The cob is made of clay and gravel kneaded together with straw, and is put up in a mass, like concrete. It is very durable, if kept dry, but soon goes to pieces, if the wet gets into it, especially from above. The roof must therefore be kept quite watertight, and the outside of the walls may be protected by a coat of plaster or cement with rough-cast.

Good bricks are made on Bovey Heathfield at the other end of this parish. And nine inches of brickwork, laid in cement, is as strong as eighteen inches of cob, and looks the same, if covered with cement and rough-cast. But the eighteen inches of cob keeps a house much warmer than eighteen of brick.

In rough-casting the wall receives two coats of plaster or cement; and, before the second coat is dry, a mixture of fine gravel and hot lime is thrown hard at it with a trowel, and sticks on to the second coat. It was the custom here to rough-cast the south and west sides of a building, but not the north and east, as these are less exposed to wet.

Down here the building-stone is either granite or elvan; and rough-cast is desirable, as both sorts take damp, especially the granite. Moreover, if the walls are built of unsquared stone, the rain will sometimes find its way between the joints and down into the wall, wherever the bedding of the stones slopes downwards from the outside.

Some of the older buildings have squared stones from three to five feet long and two or three feet high. But generally these do not go beyond the first few courses, and then comes unsquared stone, and very often cob on top. In most of the old buildings here the walls are constructed with an inner and an outer face of unsquared stone and a core of mortar or cement. If the core decays, the stones get loose; and, if a stone falls out, others may

go after it, the edges being unsquared, and then the whole structure may come tumbling down.

At the inn at Manaton I once heard a group of old inhabitants talking over various buildings that had fallen down, and quarrelling as to which of them had made the greatest noise in falling. Here at Wreyland the end wall of the Tallet--some 40 tons--fell out into the orchard in the twilight of a Sunday evening as people were on their way to church. “And Miss Mary *****, her were a-passin’ at the time; and, when her come in afterward, her said in all her born days her never beheld such a noise.”

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People talk as though there was no jerry-building in the olden times. I believe the jerry-builder was as busy then as now, but his buildings have all tumbled down and been forgotten long ago. Only the best of the old buildings have lasted until now; and these are constantly in need of structural repair. I have overhauled a good many of these buildings; and by the time I have underpinned the walls, and grouted them, and done all the other necessary things, I always find I could have got a better result by taking them right down, and setting them up again on fresh foundations. And no one would have known the difference. At the lower end of Souther Wreyland there is a chimney-stack that looks as venerable as anything here. I built it new in 1906 from its foundation to its summit: there was nothing there before.

If one had merely to repair a building as an ancient monument, there would be comparatively little trouble. But there is serious trouble, when one wishes to retain the characteristics of a building, and yet meet modern needs with bath-rooms and the like. Bed-rooms used to open into one another, and you had to pass through other rooms to reach your own; but people now object to that. If the roof slopes down towards the outer walls, one cannot always get height enough for a passage without encroaching too much upon the rooms; and one does better then by putting in more staircases, each giving access to a group of rooms. This house has three main staircases, and no passages upstairs, except a short one that I built in 1899. Others have as many staircases, and passages as well; and people say that they are like the countryside--all lanes and hills.

In dealing with the Hall House, I decided not to sacrifice the Seventeenth Century work in order to restore the Fourteenth, though the restoration would have been of interest. There was originally a hall, with a screen across it, and a gallery projecting out beyond the screen on corbels. Subsequently the floor of the gallery was carried on across the hall, and the front of the gallery was carried up to the roof, thus making two rooms upstairs, and two down below, divided by the screen. These four rooms are useful, and the hall would have been very useless, as no courts are held for Wreyland manor now.

My great-great-grandfather Nelson Beveridge Gribble was lord of Wreyland manor, but always lived in this house--Yonder Wreyland--and never at the Hall House. I believe he held Court Baron and Court Leet and View of Frankpledge in the Lower Parlour here; and it must have been unpleasantly crowded, if the Homage and the Tithing came here in full force.

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The last sitting of the court was held on 14 February 1871. I have printed the record of the sittings from 1437 to 1441, from 1479 to 1501, and from 1696 to 1727, _Wreyland Documents_, pp. 1-88, and have said there (pp. i-c) all I have to say about the history of this manor.

In 1898 I became a tenant of a manor in which admission is “by the verge.” The verge is a wooden staff or rod; and the steward of the manor holds one end, and the tenant holds the other, while they say the operative words. I thought the ceremony would be interesting, and might be picturesque; so I went myself, instead of doing it by deputy. The scene was a solicitor’s office of the most prosaic kind with type-writers and telephones. The steward was seated at an American desk; and, when I looked round for the verge, he said, “I haven’t got a stick, but this ’ll do.” And he took up a pencil (made in Austria) and held it out to me.

There was a pleasant old house at Becky Fall, burnt down on 18 April 1875, and rebuilt as one sees it now; and I have a full-length portrait of my great-great-great-grandfather, John Langworthy, sitting in the porch there. He has been described as “reading his bible, and looking as if he didn’t believe a word of it,” but it really is a law-book. The painter was Thomas Rennell. There are many pictures of his in Devonshire, mostly labelled Reynolds by mistake for Rennell. Sir Joshua and he were fellow-pupils in Hudson’s studio in London, but had not much in common afterwards.

Becky was a lonesome place till the new Manaton road was made, but now lies open to excursionists, and has lost something of its charm. While the old house remained, I coveted it more than this. It passed from John Langworthy to his daughter Honor, the wife of Nelson Beveridge Gribble, and then to their eldest son John Gribble, and to his eldest surviving son John Beveridge Gribble, who very soon got rid of it. He claimed Wreyland also as the heir, but found there was a settlement. He died here in this house on 18 August 1891, just ninety years after the death of his elder brother.

His father did not live here after he grew up, and this house was let to Captain Thomas Moore for several years. Moore was on the Genoa at the battle of Navarino, 20 October 1827, and ten days afterwards he died of wounds.

John Beveridge Gribble had an amateur knowledge of architecture, and also a little practical knowledge, picked up from a cousin who was an architect. A barn was being built upon some sloping ground near here; and, on seeing the foundations and the beginning of the walls, he told the builders that the whole thing would slip down, when they had reached a certain height. When they reached that height, it slipped down as he said; and they all marvelled at the prophecy. There were many false prophets here, when the railway was being made. They had never seen a skew-arch before, or even heard of such a thing; and they said these arches would come down as soon as the frames were taken out.

One of the old masons here would never condescend to use a plumb-line on his work. He said that he could tell if a wall was straight by just puttin’ his leg ag’in’n. Another said that he could do it with his eye. They, and others like them, are commemorated in the contour of the walls.

On many of the older houses round about here, one sees a board with the word “dairy” fixed up above a door or window. These boards are relics of the window-tax, as exemption could be claimed for the window of a dairy or a cheese-room, if “dairy” or “cheese-room” was painted up outside. There is a board with “dairy” at the back of this house. It seems to cover two windows now; but these are really the ends of one wide window. I had to block the centre up with walling, to support the bath-room that I built in 1904 above the former dairy.

Many of these houses also have windows that were stopped up, when the window-tax was heavy, and were not brought into use again, when it was abolished. I have opened up quite a dozen of them in my buildings. A window was not freed from the tax, unless it was stopped up with stone or brick or plaster; but usually the frame was left, and only needed glazing, when the stopping was removed.

The window-tax goes back to 1695, but many of these windows are of later date than that. The tax did not become oppressive until after 1784. In that year the tax on a house of ten windows was raised from 11_s._ 4_d._ to £1. 4_s._ 4_d._, to £1. 12_s._ 0_d._ in 1802, and to £2. 16_s._ 0_d._ in 1808. On a house of twenty windows it was raised from £1. 14_s._ 8_d._ to £4. 9_s._ 8_d._ in 1784, to £7. 10_s._ 0_d._ in 1802, and to £11. 4_s._ 6_d._ in 1808. And on a house of thirty windows from £3. 3_s._ 0_d._ to £7. 13_s._ 0_d._ in 1784, to £13. 0_s._ 0_d._ in 1802, and to £19. 12_s._ 6_d._ in 1808. It thus became worth while to block up windows; and this, I believe, was the period when most of these windows were blocked up. Window-tax had been imposed in place of hearth-money, the notion being that the number of the windows would indicate the value of the house. But it played havoc with the health of the community, as people were willing to live and sleep in rooms with neither light nor air, in order to escape the tax.

The same thing happened with ships. Dues were levied on tonnage; and formerly the tonnage of a ship was calculated from her length and breadth, the depth being reckoned as half the breadth, which was about the usual ratio when the rule was made. If the depth was more than half the breadth, the ship carried more cargo without any increase in the tonnage or the dues. And the result was that ships were built deeper and deeper, until the depth came to be about three-quarters of the breadth, and they became unsafe and foundered.

Then came the Act of 1854, which put tonnage on the basis of a ton for every hundred cubic feet of space inside the ship, excepting space required for engines, crew, coal, etc. But space was reckoned in a way that led to unforeseen results. If a screw-steamer of 3000 tons had an engine-space of 380 tons, or 38,000 cubic feet, she was allowed a further 285 tons as coal-space; but, if her engine-space was brought up to 400 tons, the allowance was 560 tons. And in powerful tugs the deductions often came to more than the total from which they were to be deducted. Their nett tonnage being registered as 0, these vessels had no dues to pay.

In going through old books that had been packed away here, I found the first edition of Lloyd’s _Register of British and Foreign Shipping_. It is dated in October 1834; and, including the supplement, it gives particulars of about 13,850 ships. On looking through them, I cannot find more than forty ships of above a thousand tons. The largest is of 1515 tons, the next of 1488 and the next of 1469; then come eleven of 1440 to 1403, eighteen of 1380 to 1311, three of 1286 to 1256, one of 1175, and four of 1068 to 1013. All forty are of the Port of London. Below the thousand tons, there is one of 993 and one of 987, then nine of 894 to 802, fifteen of 773 to 701, forty-three of 695 to 602, and a hundred and ten of 600 to 501. Thus (unless I have overlooked some) the ships of above 500 tons number 219 altogether, which is only about a sixty-third part of the total number on the Register.

In the Register for 1841, which I found here also, there are only eighteen ships of above a thousand tons. It gives only fifteen of the forty that were given in 1834: eight built of teak in the East Indies in 1798 to 1816, and seven built on the Thames in 1817 to 1827. And there are only three new ships of that tonnage, one of 1070, built at Amsterdam, and one of 1064 and one of 1267, both built in Canada.

In the 1834 edition the abbreviations Sr. and St. stand for schooner and schoot, not for steamer, as one might surmise; and the rules are framed for sailing-ships, with a few additional rules “for ships navigated by steam.” There are inquiries for the diameter of the paddle-wheels, and the length and breadth of the paddles, but no inquiries as to screws.

I can remember the Channel Fleet lying in Torbay with one of the old “seventy-fours” carrying the admiral’s flag. She was the Edgar, a wooden two-decker of 3094 tons, fitted with a funnel and a screw, but otherwise not unlike the ships of Nelson’s time. That was on 2 September 1864. One day in November 1916 I noticed an unusual number of steamers lying in Torbay, and found that they were sheltering from an enemy submarine outside. I felt that times had changed.

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In the old letters and diaries here I find many words and phrases that have now gone out of use. The garden was ‘very rude,’ when it was untidy. A man was ‘thoughtful,’ when he was cunning, and ‘high-minded,’ when he was pretentious; and was a ‘patriot,’ when he was a profiteer. People were ‘confined,’ when they were kept indoors by any kind of illness; and some invalid old ladies had three or four ‘confinements’ every year. They all ‘used’ exercise, and did not take it; nor did they ever take tea. “We drank tea with Mrs ***** at Moreton, and Jane was on the carpet all the while: she has been to Exeter without a bonnet.” I do not know why people drag in scraps of French like ‘chaperon’ and ‘sur le tapis,’ nor why they follow Anglo-Indians in saying ‘pucka’ for ‘proper.’

Hearing a good deal of laughter in the lane, I inquired what was going on. And the answer was brought back:--“Please, zir, it be little Freddie ***** a-tryin’ to say swear-words, and he cannot form’n proper.”