Leechwell Garden, Totnes

From the Herald Express, November 30, 2009, Public open space is first in town for more than century:

THE first green open space to be handed to Totnes in more than a century has been unveiled to the town in a £275,000 two-for-one offer linked by an 800-year-old walled walkway.

The Leechwell Garden will be spread across three quarters of an acre of ancient orchard dating back to Anglo Saxon times in the southern area of Totnes — and comes complete with a herb garden, play area, stream, bridge, trees, pergola and an ancient plunge pool which is a scheduled ancient monument.

The smaller gardens on the site of the old George Heath seed beds between South Street and the main town car park comes with a lawn and sitting area, and a play sculpture.

The two individual projects will be linked by the Leechwell Lane — the footpath dating back to the 12th century which still leads to the town's historic healing wells.

It's refreshing to see overgrown green space released to remain as green space (in this case the result of considerable campaigning and negotiation); there's normally an inexorable tendency for such plots in ancient Devon towns to end up under new residential developments.

For more details on the project and the long history of the plot, see Leechwell Garden Association website.
- RG Read more ...

Lost Plymouth

From The Herald, Plymouth, Friday, November 27, 2009: Unearthing our buried stories.

IF YOUR knowledge of history from school is one part half-remembered battles, two parts best-forgotten reigns and three parts dull, dull, dull, take a lesson with Felicity Goodall.

She paints a picture of the past that's not deadly grey but living colour, and an assault on more than the visual sense. She has a nose for a story.

Stroll back with her to 1852 through the pages of Lost Plymouth, her new history of the city.

Published in December by Birlin, Lost Plymouth, Hidden Heritage of the Three Towns (ISBN: 9781841586250) covers a number of hidden aspects of Plymouth's history. From the publisher's description:

During World War II, Plymouth earned the distinction as the most bombed city outside London. But it was planners not bombers which destroyed most of the history of the city. Few traces remain of Plymouth’s best known sons, Drake and Hawkins. By the 19th century, houses built by Elizabethan merchants had deteriorated into the worst slums in Europe, second only to Warsaw. The population of Plymouth, Devonport and Stonehouse quadrupled between 1800 and 1840, and whole families were forced to live in tiny, windowless rooms.

In Castle Street there was a pub every ten metres and every pub was said to be a brothel. Damnation Alley, as Castle Street was dubbed, was the haunt of thousands of soldiers and sailors who passed through en route to serve the British Empire. Thanks to the military, the ’Three Towns’ earned a reputation as the VD capital of Britain, and the city’s women were subject to repressive legislation if they went out at night.

Plymouth’s lost history includes the first man to sail around the world in both directions; the shocking image which helped end the slave trade; the first convicts bound for Botany Bay; and the man who navigated over 3,000 miles in an open boat with only the stars to guide him.

Felicity Goodall is a former foreign correspondent. She covered Norway for the Sunday Times, Business Week and other international publications. She has also worked as a producer for Radio 4, specialising in historical and literary documentaries, and in television, as an assistant producer and scriptwriter. She has written a play for Radio 4, A Change of Heart and is the author of three books, including Lost Devon, which is also published by Birlinn.

- RG Read more ...

Torre Abbey restoration

BBC News for 20th November 2009 spotlights the restoration of the 12th century Torre Abbey, Torbay: Lottery funding for ancient abbey.

Significant structural repairs have already been carried out to part of Torre Abbey, which is believed to be the oldest building in Torquay, Devon.
...
Founded in 1196, the abbey is listed with English Heritage as an ancient monument and has two Grade I and four Grade II listed buildings and historic gardens.

The site also has the Spanish Barn, believed to be one of the country's most complete early medieval barns which was used to house prisoners from the Spanish Armada.

It became a private residence following the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th Century and was bought by Torbay Council in 1930.

For more information, see the Torre Abbey Project.
- RG Read more ...

Anna Eliza Bray

Anna Eliza Bray, engraving from frontispiece of Autobiography. Click to enlarge.

Anna Eliza Bray (1790-1883) was a writer of considerable output, which included biographies, historical novels and topographic works. Born Anna Eliza Kempe, she was first married to the historical draughtsman and antiquarian Charles Alfred Stothard, with whom she travelled widely until his death in 1821 from a fall while sketching a church ceiling in Beer Ferrers, Devon (as documented by Anna in the 1823 Memoirs, including original journals, letters, papers, and antiquarian tracts, of the late Charles Alfred Stothard). Although born in Newington, Surrey, she had family connections in Devon and Cornwall; during frequent visits, she met her second husband, the Reverend Edward Atkyns Bray, vicar of Tavistock, also an antiquarian, who she married in 1822.

A number of Anna Eliza Bray's books are Devon-related, those of most specific Devon interest being the 1836 A description of the part of Devonshire bordering on the Tamar and the Tavy: its natural history, manners, customs, superstitions, scenery, antiquities, biography of eminent persons, &c. &c. in a series of letters to Robert Southey, esq and the three-volume Traditions, legends, superstitions, and sketches of Devonshire on the borders of the Tamar and the Tavy, illustrative of its manners, customs, history, antiquities, scenery, and natural history (volume 1 / volume 2 / volume 3). The 1854 A peep at the pixies: or, Legends of the west also looks at Devon folklore (her cousin Christina Rossetti used it as a source for her poem Goblin Market) and several of her novels have Devon settings: Fitz of Fitz-Ford; a legend of Devon (1830), Warleigh; or, The fatal oak. A legend of Devon (1834), and Hartland Forest (1884). See the Internet Archive for these and other of Bray's works online, including her autobiography.

A footnote to the story of Eliza Elizabeth Bray is that of Mary Maria Colling, who led a short and rather disadvantaged life as a servant in Tavistock. Nevertheless, she displayed a talent for poetry, whch was collected and published by Mrs Bray, her employer and mentor, in a single volume, the 1831 Fables and other pieces in verse. It received good reviews: see The Gentleman's magazine and London Literary Gazette. Webrarian has collated the story of her discovery as a poet - Mary Maria Colling - as documented in the letters between Mrs Bray and Robert Southey.
- RG Read more ...

DHS news / 20 Nov 2009

Treasurer
Dr Sadru Bhanji, whose name you may recognise from a number of books, papers and talks on Devon history topics, retired as Honorary Treasurer after ten years' service. The new Treasurer is Graham Bliss, but the e-mail address is unchanged (treasurer@devonhistorysociety.org.uk).

Website
You may also have noticed the increased flow of news topics over the past two months. We're pleased to announce that we have formalised the agreement for Ray Girvan (who has been running the technical side of the site since it launched) to maintain the site content more actively. As well as keeping official Devon History Society news up to date, he will also be sourcing news and writing weblog posts for the site. If you have any event or website with a Devon history theme that you would like featured, get in touch via the Contact page. Read more ...

Branscombe book launch

The Sidmouth Herald - Branscombe: mysterious death book launch - reported the 2009 launch of a book about a forgotten crime in Branscombe.

THE mysterious death of John Perryman is the subject of a new book to be launched by the Branscombe Project later this month.

Written by Barbara Farquharson and John Torrance, the new who-dunnit/social history book 'The Shooting at Branscombe Project Old Pits: a Nineteenth Century Devon Mystery' will be on sale at the village hall from 7pm on Monday, November 30.

The book concerns the circumstances of the "Branscombe Murder" of 1883. Summarising from Trewman's Exeter Flying Post (September 26, October 3 and October 10 1883) it concerned the murder of John Perryman, an elderly Wesleyan Sunday-School superintendent, who was shot fatally at Culverwell Common, Branscombe, on the night of September 8th 1883. Three suspects - William Dowell, Eliza Williams and Amos French - were taken into custody, police suspecting the shots having been meant for another man, David Pyle, with whom the three had a dispute. However, they were released without charge, with the inquest returning an ultimate verdict of "Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown".

The Sidmouth Herald continues:

Using William Dowell's own impassioned pamphlet, detailed newspaper accounts and other material, the authors paint a picture of the village as it was 150 years ago, the drama of the shooting and the inquest- and then go beyond the contemporary accounts to offer a new ending to the story.

There will be a short reading from the book and a free glass of wine to celebrate its launch.

- RG Read more ...

Changing landscapes, changing names

Wild Devon, the magazine of the Devon Wildlife Trust, has an interesting article in its Winter 2009 issue: "Mapping the past", in which David Chamberlain of Devon County Council's Land Changes Department writes about the rapid changes in Devon landscape over the past century. He mentions, for instance, the shrinking heathland of the Bovey Heathfield, and the establishment of new ponds at Little Bradley.

By coincidence, I was just reading an article of related interest: Notices of the Flowering Time and Localities of some Plants observed during an Excursion through a portion of South Devon, in June, 1851 (Edwin Lees, Esq. FLS, pp530-541, The Phytologist: a popular botanical miscellany, Volume 4, Part 2, J. Van Voorst, 1852). The Worcester-based Lees (1800–1887) was staying in Exmouth, and gives an account of his botanical observations on walks westward to Dawlish, Teignmouth and Torquay, and eastward to Budleigh. Even if you're not a botanist, his descriptions of the landscape are evocative and informative. He noted even then the growing urbanisation of Torbay

I was sorry to observe, in exploring the vicinity of Torquay, that most of the romantic rocky tors, once so characteristic of the place, were being broken up (and down too) by the destroying hand of building speculation, and hence their local plants will soon, I fear, only exist in herbaria.

but the coastline of East Devon has changed far less.

Walked by the summit of the cliffs (all red marl, based upon red sandstone) from Budleigh Salterton to Exmouth, a singularly-pleasing ramble, varied at almost every step by shelving, precipitous cliffs or broken coombs, like the "chines" of the Isle of Wight ...

I like chines, of which there are number in East Devon. Seaton Chine is well-known, but it's less known that there's another, the heavily overgrown Sherbrook(e) Chine, just to the west of Budleigh. It features on a few early postcards of Budleigh, and is called the "Sherbrook ravine" in the Devonshire Association's 1890 Notes on the parish of East Budleigh. The pamphlet Budleigh Salterton - as it used to be (Richard D Woodall, 1954) shows that it provided access to the beach then ("In Victorian times ... Access to the beach at Sherbrooke Chine was then much easier").

There are several smaller chines on the coastal section toward Exmouth, including some on the headland by the GeoNeedle at Orcombe Point, but so far I haven't found any documentation of their names, if any. The one above Littleham Cove is especially pretty.


Bridge where coastal path crosses unnamed chine above Littleham Cove.

Returning to Edwin Lees' excursion, his description of the coast around Straight Point is very striking.

A long point of sandstone extends far into the sea between Budleigh Salterton and Exmouth, after passing the highest range of cliffs; and on either side of this were some singular, secluded, deep, gloomy dens, excavated by the sea, as if intended for the perpetration of deeds of darkness. On the western side of the point the sea had so broken down the sandstone rocks, that it seemed as if a huge quarry had been excavated there, such monstrous masses lay scattered about in all directions; the cliff itself shattered almost to fragments.

Unfortunately the Army range makes investigation of Straight Point impossible, but this seems a little overblown as a description of what is evidently Sandy Bay. However, a look at historical maps using Old Maps finds a surprising change that could explain the difference in descriptions.

Click to enlarge: Sandy Bay in 1890 (above); 1933 (below). Reproduced from the OS/Landmark site Old Maps with kind permission. Historic map data is (© and database right Crown copyright and Landmark Information Group Ltd. (All rights reserved 2009).

On the 1890 Ordnance Survey map, Sandy Bay had sand only at the cliff foot, with rocky shelving exposed at low tide. It's not even called Sandy Bay on the map. By 1933, however, the maps show that name, and virtually all the shore at low tide is sand, as it is nowadays. The reason for the change is a mystery to me, though studies show beach profiles to be very dynamic in this general area of coastline (see Holcombe to Straight Point (including Exe estuary), SCOPAC, 2004)

Pre-1900 Devon guidebooks - for instance, John Murray's A handbook for travellers in Devon - repeatedly mention Straight Point as a landmark, with no sign of "Sandy Bay", and the poet Patricia Beer's autobiographical Mrs Beer's House, in which she writes about her Exmouth childhood in the 1920s, confirms that "Sandy Bay" appears to be an early 20th century neologism.

We had a family routine of our own, which was to spend the afternoon at Straight Point. This was a beach about a mile along from Orcombe Point towards Budleigh Salterton. Considering its nearness to Exmouth, it was amazingly deserted: sometimes we were the only family there. It was not too easy to reach, however, and the path down from the cliff-top needed a fair amount of agility: there were no ropes or steps, and it was both slippery and steep. We always called it Straight Point, which was the name of the headland, but many people referred to it as Sandy Bay. I felt very strongly about this, after the age of ten, on what I thought were grounds of literary taste. 'Sandy Bay' seemed to me banal and pretty-pretty and feeble, whereas I felt that 'Straight Point' was decently and austerely descriptive (I hear it is now universally called Sandy Bay and that there is a caravan site on the cliff-top.)
- Mrs Beer's House, Patricia Beer, Macmillan, 1968

The "Waterchute" mentioned in RF Delderfield's historical novel Farewell the Tranquil (a.k.a. Farewell the Tranquil Mind) also appears to refer to the same location and to the stream that runs southward through what is now Devon Cliffs Holiday Park and enters the sea through the waterfall at Sandy Bay.

The buildings stood on the crest of a gentle slope, about half a mile from the sea and the same distance from Littleham in the valley behind. To the east our land extended as far as a deep briar-grown streambed, (called a "goyle" in these parts) which carried all the springs and rivulets of the watershed to the sea, dropping some twenty feet over a low cliff to the beach at an outfall we called "Waterchute".
- Farewell the Tranquil Mind, RF Delderfield, 1950

Delderfield is evidently using a real local name, as it is confirmed in an account of lime burning in the district in Devon & Cornwall notes & queries:

There was a second Lime-Kiln at Straight Point, close to Water Shute, the barges discharging limestone on the beach in the same way as at Maer Bay.
- Devon & Cornwall notes & queries, Volume 17, ed. John S. Amery, 1933

and in a Trewman's Exeter Flying Post report (A sad drowning fatality at Littleham, Saturday, June 28, 1890) about the accidental death of a child who fell into the sea "between Straight Point and Water Shute".
- RG Read more ...

The House that Moved

An Exeter Express & Echo story, Exeter charity's model prize (November 18, 2009), is a reminder of an interesting conservation project nearly 50 years ago, when the early 15th century Merchant House, Exeter, was moved 100 metres to save it from demolition during clearance for the building of the new inner bypass.

See Mr C Brewer's photo-essay The House that Moved at Exeter Memories, which links to the BBC South West video archive of the same name:

This fascinating black & white film from 1961 shows the ingenious engineering required to move an entire 16th century Tudor house. Now known as 'The House that Moved' - the timber framed building was hauled on rollers to make way for a new inner by-pass.

The film includes various shots of the house as it is lifted onto rollers and manoeuvred inch by inch up the street. The footage includes an interview with the man in charge of the operation.

360 Cities has an interactive panoramic photo of the house in its current location.
- RG Read more ...

The Barn, Exmouth

The Barn, Exmouth: click to enlarge

If you happen to be taking the upper footpath from Orcombe Point toward Exmouth, the one above Marine Drive (aka Queen's Drive), take a peek over the hedge as you descend Foxholes Hill, and you'll see an unusual and significant building. The Barn, which dates from 1896, is acclaimed as a masterwork of the architect Edward Schroeder Prior, who was a prime mover of the Arts and Crafts Movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Originating as a reaction to Victorian revival styles and mass-produced design, Arts and Crafts design produced some monstrosities - part of its legacy, for instance, includes stereotypical pseudo-rustic garden fixtures such as crazy paving and fake wishing-wells. But it also produced stylish and innovative buildings, of which The Barn was one; using a striking "butterfly" design, its wings provided an imposing entrance on the landward side, and enclosed the seaward-facing terrace to make a sheltered sun-trap.

The Barn was so radical that it inspired Hermann Muthesius, the subsequent promoter of Arts and Crafts ideas in Germany; its influence on the design of his 1907-1908 Haus Freudenberg in Berlin is very obvious. Another Arts and Crafts house, Happisburgh Manor in Norfolk, also notably resembles The Barn, although its architect Detmar Jellings Blow said its design was not influenced by it, but came from "my friend Mr Ernest Gimson, who sent me the little butterfly device on a postcard". 1 Lutyens' Papillon Hall, now demolished, used a similar ground plan. 1

For more background about The Barn, see Not Brutal but Savage at the Continuity in Architecture blog. As well as links to a nice Flickr photoset, it has a picture from Muthesius' book Das Englische Haus in its original thatched form as built for Major Harry Weatherall. After a fire in 1905, it was rebuilt with a gabled front and tiled roof. The Barn is now a hotel; its website's Architecture page has a short history, including floor plans.

1. Small country houses of to-day, Volume 2, Sir Lawrence Weaver, Offices of Country Life, 1922
- RG Read more ...

Hooken Undercliff

Hooken Undercliff - Sept 06, 2012

Hooken Undercliff to Branscombe Mouth at seatonbay.com has a very nice gallery of photos of the Hooken Undercliff, where a large slice of chalk clifftop slumped to produce a sheltered wooded ledge. While the Axmouth-Lyme Regis landslip is well-documented - see Seaton, slips and Sabine Baring-Gould - it's less known that the smaller Hooken Undercliff is also a historically recent feature.

A part of the high cliff facing the sea, between Beer and Branscombe, called Southdown, was the scene of a great landslip in 1790, when upwards of ten acres of land sunk down about 250 feet.
- History, gazetteer, and directory of Devonshire, William White, 1850

Woodward and Ussher's The Geology of the Country Near Sidmouth and Lyme Regis dates it more precisely to March 1790, quoting George Roberts (the historian of Lyme Regis) saying that two years before a fine stream had ceased to flow at the site, and that cracks had appeared long before the catastrophe. This extract from the Geological Conservation Review gives a graphic account of the event:

... in the middle of the night, a tract of from seven to ten acres, ranging along the brow of a steep cliff immediately overhanging the sea, suddenly sank down from 200 to 260 feet, presenting a striking group of shattered pinnacles and columns of chalk entangled with the sunken fragments of the fields thus torn away from their native site; the remains of hedges still traversed these fragments, and a stile was seen undisturbed on the summit of one of the subsided columnar masses. The subsided mass pressed forward into the sea … fishermen relate that points on which they had laid their crab-pots beneath the water, and over which they had sailed the night before … were raised … on a reef at a height of fifteen feet in the air
- W Dawson (Civil Engineer of Exeter) et al, 1840

See here for a geological account, which notes that a great deal of fallen material from the slip has been eroded by the sea. See the Westcountry Studies Library image - Rocks at Branscombe (1819) - which shows a deal of now-disappeared rock to seaward of the present-day pinnacles. Another interesting point is that it wasn't always as overgrown as today; there are one or two remnants of stone buildings in the undergrowth, and this sign of human presence is explained in Arthur William Clayden's 1906 The History of Devonshire Scenery; An Essay in Geographical Evolution:

There is a beautiful walk here along the sloping undercliff through the little fields where early young potatoes are raised in quantities. Tall pinnacles of fallen blocks stand out above the greensward of Under Hooken.

Perhaps one should visit the Hooken Undercliff sooner rather than later, as such features are not long-lasting on a geological, or even historical, time-scale.

- RG Read more ...

Peter Hennis

I've probably been unobservant, but I noticed for the first time only yesterday the Blue Plaque on Sidwell Street, Exeter, marking the grave of Peter Hennis

a much admired and revered physician and the hero of the Exeter cholera outbreak of 1832. He died following a duel on the Haldon racecourse in 1833.

The Irish-born Hennis achieved general admiration in Exeter through helping the poor during the epidemic. Risk of cholera apart, this required a strong nerve; as documented in Thomas Shapter's classic The History of the Cholera in Exeter 1832, the general fear and suspicion often boiled over into hostility toward doctors, with claims floating around that they were deliberately killing patients to obtain bodies for dissection (see the extract from chapter XIV).

The next year, however, Hennis became involved in a quarrel with the lawyer Sir John William Jeffcott, Chief Justice of Sierra Leone. The latter's impending marriage to a Miss MacDonald of Exeter had foundered, and he formed the idea that Hennis had caused this (as The Gentleman's Magazine, June 1833, reported, that he "had aspersed Sir John Jeffcott's character"). Hennis tried to set things straight, and went to meet Jeffcott at his hotel (Jeffcott was visiting England, where he had just picked up his knighthood, and was staying in Exeter en route to Plymouth and Sierra Leone). Unfortunately they met by accident in the street, discussion became heated, and the pair ended up having a duel on the Haldons. See Exeter Memories - The Duel of Doctor Hennis - 1833 for an account and contemporary transcript.

Jeffcott shot Hennis in the back, on grounds of having misunderstood the instructions. Hennis died a week later, by which time Jeffcott had fled the country before messengers sent to Plymouth could intercept him. He returned a year later to face justice on the understanding that he would be acquitted of murder, which he was. Quite possibly some sort of plea bargain may have been involved: the prosecution offered no evidence, and even gave a speech highly sympathetic toward the accused, saying he had left England after the shooting "for the purpose of discharging a high duty in a distant country" (The Times, Monday, Mar 24, 1834; pg. 6). Whatever the background, the affair lost Jeffcott his job at Sierra Leone. He took up a judicial appointment in Australia - see the Australian Dictionary of National Biography - but was drowned in a boat accident in 1837. Karma, some might say, as Jeffcott appears to have a thoroughly unpleasant character; RM Hague's 1963 Sir John Jeffcott: portrait of a colonial judge has accounts by John Barton Hack of Jeffcott's outbursts of temper when they were fellow passengers on the Isabella bound for Australia. See Tales from the Colonial Judicial Service, MM Park, 80, Victorian Bar News, 60-4, Autumn 1992, for a further account of how close to the edge Jeffcott conducted himself; for most of his career, he was constantly on the run from creditors.

Chips Barber's Around & About the Haldon Hills has a section on the affair. Hennis, whose funeral procession along Sidwell Street gathered 20,000 mouners, was the last known victim of duelling in Devon, and popular outrage at his death helped cement the end of the practice in general.
-RG Read more ...

The North Devon Savages

Tthe Savages' cottage, from page 11, S Baring-Gould's An Old English Home and Its Dependencies. Note the naked figure outside; one of many slurs about the "savages".

We tend to think tabloid smears a modern fixture, but not so; I've just been reading a fascinating paper, "The True Story of the North Devon Savages" by Peter Christie 1, in Volume 124 of The Devonshire Association Reports and Transactions.

The story starts with a piece in The Times (page 9, November 17, 1869) headed "Heathenism in Devonshire". Leading from a report about the conviction of two men for trespass in pursuit of game, it goes on to give a highly hostile report of an unnamed farming family living in rough circumstances in and around a tumbledown farmhouse in the parish of Nymet Rowland. The piece says of them:

To the clergyman of the parish and the neighbourhood they behave in a most shameful manner. They sing obscene songs when the reverend gentleman passes, they perform the most disgusting and nameless acts when he is in the company of ladies and those who are noxious to them they pelt with stones and mud as they go by their wretched domicile. Depredations in the neighbourhood are frequent. Gates and gate-posts and other objects of utility often disappear and threats of violence are common. We may add that members of the family have several times been convicted of offences. And yet these people continue their savage habits to the annoyance and disgust of the neighbours, treating the remonstrances of the clergyman with mockery, ribaldry and obscenity and setting the rules of civilised life at defiance.

The story snowballed, and the family - the Cheritons - gained national notoriety as "the North Devon Savages". The Daily Telegraph did a widely-reprinted special on them in October 1871: A Family of Savages in Devonshire. James Greenwood's 1874 In Strange Company: Being the Experiences of a Roving Correspondent gave a detailed account of them (reprinted here) which adds further sensational detail of them going near-naked and overtly suggests their children to be the product of incest because no men outside the family ever associated with the Cheritons. Greenwood had visited various low-lifes and criminals, but awarded the Cheritons pride of place: "Strangest of all strange company was that which, in my journalistic peregrinations, it was my lot to fall in with in North Devon". Reaction grew more and more rabid as the story spread. For instance:

Such, adds the Daily Telegraph, are the leading facts accumulated by our Commissioner, literally at the risk of his life.
...
Now that his work has been so successfully achieved it behoves us to ask two very plain questions. First, is or is not the existence of this abominable Cheriton family a disgrace and scandal to civilisation in general and North Devon in particular? Second, is it or is it not possible to devise some legal means for abating the hideous nuisance?
...
Are they to be allowed to reek and fester in their den, defying the laws of God and man? Cannot the law force them to adopt the habits of human beings?
...
Can or cannot certain offences be brought home to the Cheriton tribe? Have the births of their children been duly registered? Have they complied with the requirements of the Vaccination Act? Cannot their den be overhauled under the provisions of the Nuisances Removal Act? Does not the conduct, these forty years past, of the elder Cheriton, warrant the assumption that he is insane, and might not a Commission de lunatico be advantageously held to investigate the matter? There is no need to strain the law; but in a case so revolting and so flagitious, it is surely expedient to ascertain what its provisions are, and then to put them in force with the view of suppressing a scandal which would not be tolerated in any other civilised country in the world.
...
The Cheriton family in Africa would be bad enough; in an English village and under the lee of a Christian church, these creatues become simply unbearable.
- The North Devon Savages, The Leeds Mercury, October 24, 1871

These stories were further fuelled by letters, such as that in the Morning News accusing their women (inconsistently with Greenwood's story) of corrupting local farmer's boys "to which fact medical men in the neighbourhood can bear revolting testimony". Their notoriety even reached the pages of the New York Times: see A Tribe of English Savages, November 11, 1871, which further exemplifies the hand-wringing they evoked:

Many of the more revolting details of this bestial tribe we have ventured only to indicate. Their existence in one of the most fertile and populous districts of one of the most enlightened countries on the globe, is not a reassuring commentary on modern civilization.

Peter Christie's paper takes a fresh look at the subject, and finds a rather different story, one actually raised at the time. The Cheritons did have defenders, particularly the Reverend TJ Leslie from Appledore, who wrote several letters to the North Devon Journal pointing out that many of the anonymous accusations were libellous and that the Cheritons did attend religious services, and particularly arguing the possibility that rich farmers who wanted the Cheritons out of the parish could easily entertain journalists who wanted to 'interview' a poor family.

Christie's research to a large extent bears this out: documented court cases show the Cheritons' crimes were small, but of the kind such as poaching about which landowners were particularly neurotic. He also notes that many of the cases were dismissed. Furthermore, land records of the period do show a consolidation of land ownership around Nymet Rowland into fewer and fewer hands. Ultimately the story may come down to a land feud in which the underclass Cheritons were less able to play the media than their rich and well-connected opponents. As the abstract to the paper summarises:

The 'North Devon Savages' were a notorious family living in the small parish of Nymet Rowland in the nineteenth century whose story has entered the realms of folklore. This study explores the truth behind their reputation and suggests that their notoriety, though based to some extent on fact, was deliberately exagggerated by local landed interests in order to force them off their land.

The Heard Family History website page A Criminal Past has two pictures of the Cheritons' house taken around 1860 by the photographer William Hector. The artist F. Bligh Bond's impression in Sabine Baring-Gould's 1898 An old English home and its dependencies matches one quite closely, and may be based on it. By Baring-Gould's time, the Cheritons were receding from history into folklore; Sarah Hewett's Nummits and crummits: Devonshire customs, characteristics, and folk-lore has another account, which tells of the just deserts inflicted on a sight-seer:

Many inquisitive persons went to Nymet Rowland to get a peep at the "Savages." One man, more curious than the general public, approached too near the house, and was at once pounced upon by a couple of Amazons, who demanded a reason for his visit. " Ladies," said he "I have lost my way, will you be so good as to put me on the right road to Dartmoor ? " " Aw, ess, tü be sure, replied Miss Cheriton, " come theāse yer way an' I'll shaw'e.

She took him into the adjoining yard for the ostensible purpose of directing him, and the unsuspecting wayfarer, venturing too near the edge of the horse pond in following his guide, was suddenly thrust into the filthy liquid, as a " There, thicky's the way tü Dartymoor and be — tü you," fell on his ears.

1. Christie, Peter. 'The true story of the north Devon savages'. Devonshire Association Report and Transactions, 124 (1992), 59-85. ISSN 03097994. If you are a member of a licensed UK higher of further education institution, you can listen to a lecture based on his research about the Cheritons: see here at the British LibraryArchival Sound Recordings site. Read more ...

Brat Tor and Hunter Memorial

It seems appropriate for Remembrance Sunday to mention Brat Tor 1, near Lydford, at whose summit is Widgery's Cross, built with funding by the artist William Widgery to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887.

To the west at Black Rock, on the opposite side of the River Lyd, is a bench and plaque in memory of the Lydford-born Captain Nigel Hunter MC (and Bar), who was killed in action at Biefvillers, near Bapaume on March 25th, 1918, aged 23. The Lydford website run by Derek Palmer features transcripts of his war diary, letters and poetry, including the poem he wrote on his last visit to Lydford. The last section appears on the plaque.

Widgery Cross

I stood at the gate awhile in thought
And gazed out into the night
The tors stood black, but their peaks just caught
A flickering gleam of light.
For the night was clear; the stars shone bright,
And silence reigned o'er the moor.
And long I looked through the haze of night
At the cross on Widgery Tor.

Then cried I in my heart "Farewell,
Oh brooding moor, thou land of dreams
The wind-swept tor, the sheltered dell,
The gurgling brook, the rushing stream.
I loved to roam over all and breathe
The magic air, over laden with
The scent of heathers, gorse and bracken.
Of sunny rock grown grey with lichen,
Of bog that hides beneath a sheet
Of bright green moss or dark black peat.

Farewell, oh land that I must leave –
Mysterious land whose brooding face
In rocky tor and wooded cleave
Yet bears of forms men the trace;
Whose secret I would fain explore.
Yet must I hence. Perchance no more
Shall I return to linger by the rushing fall,
the dark still pool,
The stream which falls from rock so high
To depths so dark, so clear and cool.
Farewell, oh land I love – Goodbye"

Are we not like this moorland stream
Springing none knows where from
Tinkling, bubbling, flashing a gleam
Back at the sun – ere long
Gloomy and dull, under a cloud,
Then rushing onwards again:
Dashing at rocks with anger loud,
Roaring and foaming in vain,
Wandering thus for many a mile,
Twisting and turning away for a while.
Then of a sudden 'tis over the fall –
And the dark still pool is the end of all.
- - - - - -
Is it? I thought, as I turned away,
And I turned again to the silent moor.
Is it? I said, and my heart said "Nay!"
As I gazed at the cross on Widgery Tor.

N D R Hunter, 2 July 1915
from Captain Nigel Hunter: diary, poetry and letters, lydford.co.uk

For more background about the location, see A wealth of history around Widgery Cross (Jo Bishop, BBC Devon).

1. Opinion is divided about the name. The modern Ordnance Survey map uses "Brat Tor", but the 1888 one calls it "Broad Tor". David Lee's A Dartmoor Boyhood (see page 37) says that "Brat" is wrong, and that he knew it as Bray Tor, also mentioning Devon authors who called it Bra Tor (William Crossing) and Brai Tor (Eric Hemery, in High Dartmoor, land and people). Read more ...

Exeter's blitz looters

From the Exeter Express & Echo: The story of Exeter's blitz looters revealed (Thursday, November 05, 2009)

NEW research has thrown a shocking shadow over Exeter's reputation during the Second World War bombing blitz that devastated the city.

Investigations by Exeter University historian Dr Todd Gray shows that looting of bombed properties was carried out throughout the city by residents.

The report, which gives a number of accounts of looting in Exeter, introduces Todd Gray's new book Looting in Wartime Britain (Mint Press, October 2009, ISBN 1-903356-58-6). This is the third book in his "History that Hurts" series, which also includes Blackshirts in Devon and Devon and the Slave Trade.As the publisher's introduction says

This new fascinating book will have broad national appeal to anyone with an interest in wartime, social or local history. Scholarly but readable.

Looting took Britain by surprise in the summer of 1940 and it continued throughout the war. The shock was replaced by anger and outrage as looting accompanied the German bombing of cities across the country. It intensified as many looters were revealed to be in positions of trust. Todd Gray uncovers diverse reasons for why it took place and with careful research provides evidence to support this uncomfortable aspect of the past. It is part of our history that hurts but to ignore it is to diminish a generation’s struggle against fascism.

If you're interested in this topic in general, see Petting Cafés! (E.S. Turner, London Review of Books, Vol. 25 No. 23 · 4 December 2003). Turner reviews the 2003 An Underworld at War: Spivs, Deserters, Racketeers and Civilians in the Second World War by Donald Thomas Murray, which takes a wider view of the varieties of crime and corruption of the period, often intermingled with the bureaucracy that opposed it. Read more ...

Ottery Tar Barrels

The Ottery St Mary Tar Barrels is a spectacular event, held annually on November 5th, in which participants carry flaming tar barrels through the streets.



The official website is www.otterytarbarrels.co.uk: as it says:

The Tar Barrel tradition is hundreds of years old. The exact origins are unknown but probably started after the gunpowder plot of 1605. Various alternative reasons suggested for burning barrels have included fumigation of cottages and as a warning of the approach of the Spanish armada.

A number of accounts mention more pagan roots for the event: for instance, the Tar Barrel Racing section of Curious Country Customs by Jeremy Hobson says it

originated in the 17th century as a way of cleansing the streets of evil spirits

But Ronald Hutton's The stations of the sun: a history of the ritual year in Britain (Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0192854488), an interestingly revisionist take on British traditions, argues that such origin stories for British November fire festivals are later accretions on to origins in anti-Catholic feelings after the Gunpowder Plot. In some, this is overt: the Pope is still burned in effigy at the Lewes Bonfire Night in Sussex. Hutton writes:

At Ottery in 1990, assisting a laughing 'barrel girl' whose hair, coat, and gloves were all on fire, I asked her why she took part. She chose to make a general interpretation of the question, and said it was to chase evil spirits away from her community at the beginning of winter. At Battle, the 'bonfire boys had told me had told me that their procession came down directly from the fire rituals of the 'Celtic New Year'. In both cases the reality of the Gunpowder Treason had receded into oblivion, to be replaced by the speculative theories of Victorian and Edwardian folklorists.

- p. 407, Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun.

This historical aspect of the Ottery St Mary celebration isn't difficult to confirm via the 19th Century British Library Newspapers archive:

Ottery St Mary
...

The Fifth of November was kept up here with great spirit on Friday last. There was a torchlight procession with an effigy of the Pope, which was committed to the fire amid the yells and cries of those present. After this there was a grand display of fireworks, and tar barrel rolling until a late hour. No accidents took place.

- Trewman's Exeter Flying Post or Plymouth and Cornish Advertiser (Exeter, England), Wednesday, November 10, 1875; Issue 5788

Neverthless, Hutton admits that the strength and appropriateness of the seasonal symbolism may be what keeps the celebrations going despite their topical origin having been forgotten. Nor does an essentially politico-religious origin detract from what is a cherished tradition. As the official site explains:

The "Barrel Rollers" jealously guard their right to carry barrels. Unlike bygone days, the present day "Rolling" has a high element of control but the fervour and commitment is no less now than in olden days. The motivation is borne from a deep sense of tradition and in many cases this has involved generations of the same family.

A look at the Flying Post archives finds that in the 19th century the event used to involve the discharge of miniature cannon and various firearms. Despite this, it was generally trouble-free except in 1858, when the police attempted to stop the event, leading to a near-riot. Subsequent investigation showed the police, led by an Inspector Ross, had claimed to be acting on the basis of a letter by landowner Sir John Kennaway. The latter, who raised the complaint against the police on behalf of a number of respected Ottery residents, said he had written no such letter, and the account generally suggests the whole idea to suppress the event was a unilateral one from Ross himself. (Either that, or he was carrying the can for unidentified superiors).
- Source: The disturbances at Ottery on the Fifth of November, Trewman's Exeter Flying Post or Plymouth and Cornish Advertiser (Exeter, England), Thursday, January 20, 1859; Issue 4841.

Addendum, 11th November 2009. The event has acquired controversy and even appeared in national news - for instance, Spectators injured by flaming barrel of tar at Ottery St Mary parade in The Times - following an incident at this year's event. The Times says "it is believed this is the first time there has been a significant number of injuries". Apart from 1858, the only previous serious incident on record appears to be in 1882, when a young man called Porter was badly burned on the arms and chest by fireworks in his pockets that ignited as he helped roll a tar-barrel (Flying Post, Nov 8th and 15th, 1882).

Addendum, April 22nd 2010.

DEVON - PLAYING WITH FIRE

"Ottery barrel running, 1965, British Pathé: click to view

I just found this nice 1965 and 1966 footage, featuring the barrel running and the discharge of hand cannon, on the British Pathé site. See British Pathé: Devon footage for more on this archive.

BLAZING BARRELS

click to view
- RG Read more ...