Small Talk at Wreyland. Second Series

by Cecil Torr

A few summers ago a stray swarm took possession of the letterbox near Lustleigh Cleave. Bees came out, when letters were put in; and, when the letters were taken out, the postman was so badly stung that he refused to go again. So the usual notice of Hours of Collection was superseded by a notice of Ware Bees. After proper correspondence the superintendent at Newton Abbot authorised the sub-postmaster at Lustleigh to pay a bee-man to clear out the bees. These bee-men take up bees in handfuls, and seem never to be stung; but the fact is they have been stung so often that the sting has ceased to take effect. One of them told me that he had been stung a hundred times in a day and hardly felt it. He cleared the box; and as he saved the swarm and got the honey and was paid as well, it was not unremunerative work.

At a farm of mine I noticed a stain and a bulge in a bedroom ceiling, and thought the rain was coming through the thatch. It was a colony of bees up there making such a quantity of honey that the ceiling could not stand the weight. The room was occupied by summer lodgers, and I fancied they would not forget their farmhouse-lodgings, if the honey and the bees fell through while they were there.

Bees are mentioned in the old Court Rolls of Wreyland Manor, but only as estrays. If stray creatures came to any of the tenements, the court adjudged them to the lord of the manor, unless the rightful owner put in a claim within twelve months and proved his ownership. There are difficulties in proving that a swarm of bees is yours, after you have once lost sight of it. Ponies, cattle, sheep and goats were claimed successfully; but the lord of the manor always got the swarms. Amongst others, he got a swarm that came to Wilmead on Midsummer-day in 1484 and was valued at twelvepence—a considerable sum at that date, as the penalty for assaults was only threepence, unless they had drawn blood, in which case it was ninepence.

In dealing with the Domesday survey The Victoria History of the Counties of England makes these remarks on bees, Devon, vol. 1, page 400—“There is only a single notice of bee-keeping in Devon. At Lustleigh were five honeyers who paid seven sestiers of honey. No certain conclusion can be arrived at from this entry. Either bee-keeping was so common and taken such small account of as not to deserve mention, or bee-keeping was not practised at all, except at Lustleigh on the borders of Dartmoor.” It does not remark that there is only a single notice of donkey-keeping in Devon: there were two donkeys at Diptford.

Unluckily for Lustleigh, Domesday says these honeyers were at Sutreworda; and Sutreworda was clearly a much larger place than Lustleigh ever was, and in another district. By taking Sutreworda for Lustleigh and Wereia for Wrey, the Victoria History has made itself a nuisance in this valley.

As for Sutreworda, the argument is merely this—the Honour of Marshwood had estates that formerly belonged to Walter of Douai; and, as it had a Lustleigh and no Sutreworda, and he had a Sutreworda and no Lustleigh, Sutreworda must be Lustleigh under another name. But there were Marshwood estates in Devon that never belonged to Walter, and he had estates in Devon that never passed to Marshwood, whereas the argument supposes that the two sets were the same. There is a similar argument about the Honour of Gloucester and Godwin the Thane, to show that his Wereia is Wrey. But this is weaker still. No doubt, John de Umfravill held some of the Gloucester estates in Devon, and he held Wrey; but there is a document of about 1285 showing that he held it from the Crown direct.

There is yet another argument for putting Wereia here. Domesday says that Godwin had a virgate of land at Wereia free of tax, and the Inquest of the Geld says that he had a virgate in Teignbridge Hundred free of tax. No doubt, his Teignbridge virgate may be his virgate at Wereia; but it may just as well be his virgate in four other estates of his which had a virgate each, or two half-virgates in any two of his three estates with half a virgate each. And the equation does not work out, as he has a quarter of a virgate more in Domesday than in the Inquest of the Geld.

There were two Wreys on the river Wrey, just as there are two Boveys on the river Bovey not far off. They are distinguished as North Bovey and South Bovey or Bovey Tracey, and the Wreys were distinguished as Wreyford and Wreycombe. In the old title-deeds this place is Wrey or Wreyford as far as 1529 and Wrey or Wreyland in 1544 and onwards; but I do not know the reason for the change. There are several families called Wreyford or Wreford or Wrayford, and I presume their ancestors all came from here. But, so far as I know, there is not any family called Wreyland; and this tempts me to say that families had ceased (by 1544) to take their surnames from the places whence they came. There is, however, a family called Rellend; and sometimes Wreyland is pronounced like that.

Writers on Devon show a curious reticence about its good old name—Damnonium. There are writers like Moore and Lysons who give it correctly in Greek letters when they are quoting Ptolemy, and yet transpose the m and n on putting it into English, as if they could not face the Damn. Think of the lines in Carrington’s Dartmoor—“Erstwhile here the fierce Danmonii dwelt.” The softening takes off half its strength.

In his poem Of the courtier’s life, probably written in 1541, Sir Thomas Wyatt contrasts his country life with life at court, and says “In lusty leas at liberty I walk.” He was not at Lustleigh—he says “but I am here in Kent and Christendom”—but his verse gives the true meaning of the name. The ‘leas’ are fields and meadows, and ‘lusty’ is pleasant, the old English ‘lusty’ answering to the modern German ‘lustig.’ Lustleigh Cleave is Lustleigh Cliff, as ‘cleave’ and ‘cliff’ are really the same word. Other steep hillsides have the name—Caseleigh Cleave, Wrey Cleave, Neadon Cleave, and so on. And sometimes it is spelt the other way, as in a note of my grandfather’s, 31 May 1863, that he is laying in a stock of firewood—“all the oak wood on Casely Cliff at eight shillings per hundred faggots.”