Lynton and Lynmouth: A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland

by John Presland

Castle Rock, Lynton

The woods of the Lyn Valley climbed to my feet, and I sat down in the shade of the outermost fringe of trees to eat my lunch, and dream and muse, and doze away the first hot hours of the afternoon. I sat looking down over the valley; below me and to right and left the green spikes of the larches were aflutter in the wind; before me rose a great bare shoulder of hill, outlined sharply against the blue. Overhead the sun was blazing, but in the wood the sunlight hung mistily among the trunks and branches of oak and birch; it looked as if the wood were filled with tremulous sunlit water, rather than with air and sun. The air from off the moors was keen and very sweet. I lay on the dry, clean turf and moss, looking up at the cloudless sky; a solitary swallow hawking far up seemed no bigger than a fly, and a brilliant green fly on a leaf above me, buzzing turbulently, seemed portentously big and important. I lost my sense of space and time and of the world in relation to men, set, as it were, as the background to men, and I slipped into a world which belongs to the birds and the mice and the moles, and the fish in the clear stream below; I watched the chaffinches and thrushes, and a little grey ash-tree near me which was full of linnets, delicious, sleek, grey, sweet-piping, busy little birds, sliding and skimming in and out of the tree, a little home of song and love-making, of intimate and familiar life. I heard a cuckoo calling from the thick woods of the valley below, like the note of a bell, very far away. I noticed the unopened buds of the ash shining like silver against the flawless blue sky; it seemed to me I had lain there a hundred years looking at them, and hearing the thin song of the linnets, in a world entranced from movement or the passing of time. And then I fell asleep.

CHAPTER V

LYNTON (continued), COUNTISBURY, AND NORTHWARD

The word "Lynton," Mr. Chanter tells us in his interesting monograph on the village, means the town on the lyn, and "lyn" is the Celtic word, not for river, but for pool, and occurs in this meaning all over England, in Northumberland, Yorkshire, Kent, Herefordshire. It is strange, perhaps, that this rushing mountain stream should have been named from its very rarely occurring pools, but the authority is indubitable.

The Celtic folk who named it, the "early Britons," as our childish history books used to call them, were not, of course, the first inhabitants of this wild and wooded spot; there are neolithic remains—hut circles and burial-places—fairly thickly scattered along this coast, and a certain number of flint implements have been found. The hut circles in the Valley of Rocks, of which traces still remain, though many of them have been destroyed quite recently, within the last two hundred years or so, belong to this period, and it is probable that the earth-camps of Lynton and Countisbury, of Parracombe, Martinhoe, and Ilfracombe, were built by the immense labour of this vanished people. Remains of the early Bronze period show that there was a moderate population in this district before the Roman Conquest. Of Roman remains there are none, save a few coins of doubtful authenticity found at Countisbury, which are supposed to have been scattered and buried by a resident clergyman at the close of the last century, with the avowed intention of "fogging" later antiquarians—surely the strangest "fourberie" ever indulged in by a reverend gentleman. All other evidence points to the fact that the Romans never occupied North Devon, though they may have held in temporary garrison one or other of the existing camps of the district.

These camps open up most interesting avenues of speculation; many of them were undoubtedly built as defences, some few—such as the small earthwork on the din's edge at Martinhoe—as beacons or signalling stations, and some are conjectured to have been built for burial purposes, not the mere barrows for single internment, but in connection with sepulchral ceremonies and rites of the worship of the dead. Such, perhaps, is the small camp at Parracombe, which is built with a strong double fosse, but the inner fosse deeper than the outer, which does not seem to have been the case with camps built only for defence. There are two other camps at Parracombe, one on the common and one on a high hill; near Lynton there are two simple earth enclosures, called popularly Roborough Castle and Stock Castle, and seven miles south of Lynton there is a square enclosure called High Bray Castle, which commands a view of the fortified camps of the district from Barnstaple to Braunton and Martinhoe. Tradition has it that Alfred held this camp against the Danes, not that he built it, for even in his day its foundation had become legendary and was ascribed to "men of old time."

The Saxons do not seem to have built earth-camps, but stone fortifications on hills, like Athelstan's castle at Barnstaple, or Kenwith Castle, though they used the barrow-camps at their need. The Romans, we know, were mighty engineers, and their roads and buildings bear witness to the endurance of their handiwork, but many of these camps are indisputably not Roman, and their names bear witness to their Celtic origin. Such is the camp at Countisbury, which name is almost certainly the same as Canterbury—"Kant-ys-bury," the "camp on the headland," and which is one of the most perfect in Devonshire. It stands on a hill a thousand feet above the sea, commanding a view of the coast from Porlock to Heddon's Mouth, with the line of the Welsh coast opposite; it consists of a triple rampart and fosse, rising boldly one within the other, with a gate cut in the northern face of the rampart, and with a small mound exactly in the centre of the inner camp. How did these peoples of the Celtic speech build a work of such engineering magnitude, without the tools and appliances of the Roman civilization, with implements of flint, or at best of bronze, a work of such strategical foresight, of such nicety of proportion, and of such enduring strength, that now after the lapse of probably twenty-five centuries its bold proportions can be traced by the most casual glance of the passer-by of the road that runs past, now that the sheep clamber and feed in its deep fosses, and daisies sprinkle the grass of its ramparts?

The Saxons seem to have come more or less peaceably to the Britons of North Devon, who had taken little impress, probably, of the alien Roman civilization, except Christianity, for many of the churches round still carry the name of a Celtic saint, showing that the Saxons did not come devastating villages and destroying the little churches (in which case, of course, the churches would carry the name of a Saxon saint of their later Christianity), but settled with the inhabitants, intermarried, and probably adopted their worship. There is the church of St. Culbone, St. Brendon—that tiny village of Brendon, near Lynton, which must have been a village, with a rude little church of its own, before Hengist and Horsa landed—of St. Dubricius at Porlock, of St. Brannock at Braunton, near Barnstaple.

St. Brannock ought to have been an Irish saint; the legends of him have a levity, and a fantastic and humorous twist, that we do not find in the stories of the Teutonic saints. He was the son of the King of Calabria, and came to North Devon somewhere about A.D. 300. He searched the hearts of the inhabitants by various miracles, among them by having a cow killed, cut in pieces, and boiled in a cauldron, and then, calling the cow by name, out it walked, alive and whole, and never a penn'orth the worse. The story of this is carved on one of the bench-ends of the pews in the present fourteenth-century church of St. Brannock, and there is a large carved boss of the roof representing a sow and her litter, because St. Brannock is said to have been commanded in a dream to build a church on the spot where he should first meet a sow. He pressed the deer into the service of God, and yoked them, making them draw timber from the woods to build the church. This is how the rhyme goes—a fairly modern version of a much older doggerel:

"He had nor horse, nor ox, nor ass, but the deer so little
and limber;
They ran in the forest to please themselves, why shouldn't
they draw his timber?"

There is also another rhyme which seems to show that a bond of affection sprang up between him and the cow which had had to serve his miracle:

"St. Brannock fed on venison when he sat down to table;
Behind him stood his favourite cow, and his
valet-de-chambre Abel!"

I do not know why his servant should have been called Abel.

The Norman Conquest also came peaceably to this beautiful and remote place; the census of the population of Lynton and Countisbury given in Domesday, which was compiled in 1086, twenty years after the Conquest, gives the numbers for the two villages as 425. In 1801 the population numbered no more than 601, these numbers being as many as the district could support until the modern distribution of supplies; and the comparatively small increase in seven hundred years shows that in William the Conqueror's reign sobriety of government and security of the life of the individual gave these localities freedom to develop to the limit of their capacity. Countisbury had been held by Ailmar "on the day on which King Edward was alive and dead," and it "rendered geld for half a hide." A "hide" was the unit of assessment on which the Danegeld was paid in Saxon times—

1 virgate = 1/4 of a hide.
1 ferling = 1/4 of a virgate (also identified with sixteen acres).
1 ploughland = as much land as 8 oxen could cultivate.
(In Devonshire 1 ploughland was equivalent to 4 ferlings.)

The "manor" consisted of the "demesne," which was the lord's home-farm, attached to his dwelling, and the villagers' land, which was held by the villeins for their own use, on the condition of the cultivation of their lord's ground. Hence it will be seen that the condition of the peasantry in the eleventh century, while actually serfdom, with enforced labour, and no right of moving from the dominion of the lord under which they were born, was virtually better than the conditions of the agricultural population at the beginning of the nineteenth century (and some would say, even, at the present day) in that they practically owned smallholdings and were in a position where industry and enterprise could be better rewarded than many a labourer of our own time could expect, whose prospects—so long as he remained an agricultural labourer, and in England—were inalterably bounded by eighteen shillings a week.

The manor of Countisbury rendered geld for half a hide, of which the lord held one virgate and four ploughs, and the villeins held one virgate and six ploughs. Here is a list of the possessions of the overlord in 1086:

"There William has 12 villeins, and 6 bordars, and 15 serfs, and 1 swineherd (who renders 10 swine by the year), and 1 packhorse, and 32 head of cattle, and 24 swine, and 300 sheep less 13, and 35 goats, and 50 acres of wood, and 2 acres of meadow, 1 leuga in length and 1 furlong in breadth; and it is worth by the year 4 pounds, and it was worth 20 shillings when William received it."

The Danish raids also, though they were frequent up and down this coast, seem to have passed by Lynton; the narrowness of the landing beach, the steep rise of the cliffs immediately from the shore, the rocky bed of the river and the thick woods which fence the valley, all made it difficult of attack, while Porlock and Ilfracombe lay within a few miles, offering smoother harbours and easier access. There are several notices in the Saxon Chronicle of Danish raids on the coasts of the Severn Sea, in A.D. 845 and in A.D. 917, when the Lidwiccas, under Ohtor and Rhoald, landed and devastated a great portion of this north-west country, but they probably came to Watchet, near Minehead, and even then all that Lynton saw of the fierce raid was the smoke of the beacon fires from Dunkery Beacon to Martinhoe Beacon, near Heddon's Mouth.

In the twelfth century the manors of Lynton and Countisbury were in the possession of Henry de Tracy, Becket's murderer, and by him were given to the Abbey of Ford, in whose right they remained until the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Ford Abbey was a foundation of Cistercian monks, an order which was always engaged in matters of practical value, and under their rule something was done to improve the breed of mountain sheep round this district and produce wool of greater market value; they also attempted some development of agriculture and the fishery of Lynmouth. They had, indeed, extensive rights of fishery by land and sea—a very valuable asset, it must be remembered, in the Middle Ages, when the mass of the population lived almost exclusively on salt fish, and meat was scarce, except on the tables of the noble. Their rights extended over Lynmouth, Martinhoe, Countisbury, and the coast of Wales, and the monopoly of deep-sea fishing along the Severn Sea. This went beyond the old manorial claim, which was "from the shore so far seaward as a horsed knight could, at low water-springs, reach with his spear." Beyond was the King's, and was free and open to all his subjects, though a claim for deep-sea rights was allowed if it could be proved to be of very ancient usage, as in the case of Ford Abbey. Lynmouth was a noted resort for herrings all through the Middle Ages, and curing-houses stood on the beach for many years until 1607, when nearly all were swept away by a great storm, and never after properly reconstructed. The herrings also at some time in the seventeenth century left these coasts completely—tradition says because of the avarice of a parson of Lynton, a hard man and greedy, who cared rather to fleece his flock than feed them, and who imposed such heavy tithes on his poor parishioners, that, in spite of the prosperity of their fishing, they were unable to pay them. So the herrings left the district, and the parson could whistle for them, until he mended his ways and reduced his tithes, when they magically returned.

At the dissolution of the monasteries very little difference in the daily routine of their lives can have been felt by the country people round Lynton and Countisbury. John Chidley, who had been bailiff for Ford Abbey, applied to the King for continuation in his office, which was granted to him, and he administered the property for Henry VIII, Edward VI, and, Elizabeth, as he had administered it for the Abbey of Ford.

Nor did the Civil Wars touch it nearly. Barnstaple and Dunster were taken and retaken by the Parliamentarian troops, and armies marched from Dunster west to Bideford across Exmoor and the great commons, but no armed troops came down into Lynton; perhaps hardly even a straggler found his way there. In the tragic rebellion of 1685 a bloody little drama was enacted here indeed, but that is connected with the history of the de Wichehalses, the family of chief interest and importance who have lived at Lynton. They did not come to Lynton before the early seventeenth century; their home was a small hamlet called Wych, near Chudleigh in Devonshire, though Blackmore invents for them a romantic Dutch pedigree, and asserts that they fled to England to escape from Spanish persecution in the Netherlands; this story, however, has been proved entirely without foundation by the careful researches of Mr. Chanter. In the time of Elizabeth, he says, these de Wichehalses had overflowed all over the country; we find them at Exeter, Chudleigh, Ashcombe, and Powderham. In 1530 one, Nicholas de Wichehalse, settled at Barnstaple and started in the woollen trade; he married into the Salisbury family, who were in the same business; and when he died he decreed by will that his nephew John should marry his stepdaughter, Katherine Salisbury. The next Nicholas de Wichehalse married Lettice Deamond, the daughter of the Mayor of Barnstaple, and it is an inventory of his shop, taken in 1607, that I have quoted in a previous chapter.

His son Hugh married in due course, and continued to live at his family mansion in Crock Street, until, in 1627, the fear of the plague which ravaged Barnstaple and Bideford (it was supposed to have been brought into the towns by an infected mattress which had been thrown overboard by a plague-stricken ship, and was fished out of the river just below Barnstaple by four children who were fishing) drove the de Wichehalses out of the city.

Hugh de Wichehalse decided to send his family to the purer air of the old Grange Farm of Lee, near Lynton. One can picture the removal: his wife, his children, his servants, and a whole string of packhorses (carriages were still rare as a means of transport), coming down Boutport Street, and across Pilton Causeway, up the beautiful and fertile valley of the Yeo, to Westland Pound on the edge of Blackmoor, and its inn, where in all probability they slept. The next day they would be on the high barren moors, where the air was too sweet and keen for infection, and so would come across Parracombe Common, Martinhoe Common, Lynton Common, and down the Valley of Rocks to Lee (what is now called Lee Abbey).

The farm stood about a mile and a half or two miles from Lynton, and after the busy life of the town their solitude must have seemed to them excessive, for their near neighbours would live half a dozen miles away, and were inaccessible in winter. There were the Berrys from Crosscombe, a branch of the Berrynarbor family into which Hugh's sister had married; the Knights at West Lyn; the Pophams, who came from Porlock.

The family lived there for the next eighty years. Hugh was buried in the parish church at Lynton, and his monument can be seen there; it is he to whom Blackmore refers in "Lorna Doone" as Baron Hugh, who was somewhat too much hand-in-glove with the Doones; but the "young Squire Marwood," who rode too frequently past the Ridds' farm and kissed Annie Ridd, is a character of fiction, for Hugh de Wichehalse's son was called John, and not Marwood, there was never one of that name.

John was a strong Parliamentarian, and married into the Venner family; but very soon they were in opposite camps, and there was great distrust and anger between them. Colonel Venner commanded a regiment in Monmouth's haphazard and ill-fated army in 1685. Wade, a renegade lawyer from Holland, with a captain's commission, served in his regiment, and after the defeat of Monmouth at Sedgemoor, Wade and Ferguson (a notorious factious Scotchman, and the father of all plots) escaped to Bridgewater and from thence got passage down to Ilfracombe. There they hired a small ship and worked their way up the coast, hoping to rescue other refugees; they were sighted and chased by one of the King's frigates, and were forced to run ashore, when Lynton became the scene of one of those grim and terrible rebel hunts which made the West Country tragic and bloody during that summer of 1685. Wade was discovered at Brendon by John de Wichehalse; he made a run for it, and was shot by de Wichehalse's servant, John Babb. The Babbs were said never to have prospered afterwards; their crops failed, the fisheries failed, and they became extinct in the second generation. The last of them, Ursula Babb, the grand-daughter of John, was to be seen wandering up and down the little beach of Lynmouth, a half-crazed old crone, cursed with the evil-eye, and babbling disjointed and incoherent stories of the ruin of the de Wichehalses.

Partly because of discord between him and the Venner family, partly because of the strong feeling which was aroused locally by the action of de Wichehalse, who had the body of a rebel who was shot in Bonham Wood quartered and hung on the paled gate opposite Lee, he left Lynton and went to live in London. The simple Devonshire estates could not support the expenses of living in London; bit after bit his property was mortgaged and frittered away, and when he died he possessed East Leymouth (now Lynmouth) only, which he left to his daughter Mary. She it was who became the heroine of all the stories of the "last of the de Wichehalses," which, indeed, she was. She met a sudden and unexplained death off Duty Point, and the White Lady of Castle Rock—a phenomenon caused by a small aperture, bearing a slight resemblance to a woman's figure, among the dark masses of the rock—is popularly supposed to be connected with her fate. Of her brothers, Charles, the younger, was killed at the Battle of Almanza in 1707, when the English, under Lord Galway, lost 18,000 men and all their transport, and the elder brother, John, died at Port Mahon, in Minorca, in 1721, while on garrison duty, and this branch of the family became extinct.