SMALL TALK AT WREYLAND
II
This valley has seen another innovation since I last wrote things down. An aeroplane passed over here, 9 September 1918. It was only a friendly aeroplane, just out for exercise; but nothing of the kind had ever been seen from here before, not even a balloon.
The first time that a motor-car was seen here (which was not so very long ago) it stopped just opposite the cottage of an invalid old man. He heard somethin’ there a-buzzin’ like a swarm o’ bees, and he went out to look, although he had not been outside his door since Martinmas. It was a big car, and he said that it was like a railway-carriage on wheels. I can myself remember the first railway-train that came here—that was in 1866—and I knew old people who said that they remembered the first cart. Before the days of carts, they carried things on horses with pack-saddles.
These old people’s recollections are confirmed by Moore. His History of Devonshire came out in 1829, and he says there, vol. I, page 426—“Fifty years ago a pair of wheels was scarcely to be seen on a farm in the county, and at present the use of pack-horses still prevails, though on the decline.... Hay, corn, fuel, stones, dung, lime, etc., and the produce of the fields, are all conveyed on horseback: sledges, or sledge-carts, are also used in harvest time, drawn chiefly by oxen.” The pack-saddles have vanished now, and the oxen also; but sledges may still be seen at work on very steep fields.
Rights of way “with all manner of carriages” are mentioned in 1719 and 1729 in title-deeds of land here; but ‘carriages’ was then a word of wider meaning, and would include all instruments of transport. I would not even argue from those deeds that there were carriages of any kind down here so long ago, any more than I would argue that hawking was still practised here as late as 1752, merely because there is a deed of that date reserving rights “to hunt, hawk, fish, or fowle.” A lawyer will copy clauses into documents without considering whether they apply. I know a lease that binds the tenant to maintain the thatching on a roof which had its thatch replaced by slate quite thirty years ago, and another one that binds the tenant to clear out the gutterings, down-pipes, drains and gullies of buildings which have never had such things at all.
The old pack-saddle roads were paved for a width of about two feet in the middle, to give foothold for the horses, and then sloped up on either side, just giving room enough for the packs but none to spare for anyone to pass. One of these roads runs up the hill behind this house, and is of some antiquity, as it leads past the remnants of a way-side cross with the coat-of-arms of bishop Grandisson, who held the see of Exeter from 1327 to 1369. In 1437, and perhaps a good deal earlier, there was a King’s Highway passing through the end of Wreyland Manor at Kelly, and thus coinciding with the present road from Newton up to Moreton. On the Court Rolls of the Manor there are complaints that it required repair, 11 October 1437 and many later dates. Possibly the highway was not used for wheels until long after it was made. But the old Roman Road would have been built to carry wheels.
There is a Roman milestone at Saint Hilary, about fifteen miles this side of Land’s End, and there is another at Tintagel; and these, I believe, are the only Roman milestones west of Exeter. The inscription is clear enough on the Saint Hilary stone, and shows that it was erected in the reign of Constantine. On the Tintagel stone there is not much inscription left, but the name of Licinius is unmistakeable. He reigned concurrently with Constantine from 307 to 323, and probably the road was made then. In the Antonine Itinerary, which is a few years earlier, there is no road west of Exeter.
These milestones are not in their original places: one is built into the lich-gate of Tintagel churchyard, and the other was built into Saint Hilary church, and did not come to light until that was burnt down in 1853. Assuming that they were not fetched from any great distances, there is a question of whether Tintagel was on the Land’s End road or on a branch from it. In one case the road would probably go round the north of Dartmoor and of Bodmin Moor, and in the other it would keep south of them. The southern line seems more likely for a road from Exeter to Land’s End; but it implies a branch road to Tintagel, and there was not much to tempt the Romans there. No doubt, Tintagel was a strong position; but it commanded nothing and could only be a base for a retreating force, not a base for an invading force, as there was no sufficient harbour. Possibly some Britons stood out against the Romans there, and thus gave it importance.
There is a road from Exeter to Teignbridge that would lead on round the south of Dartmoor, and parts of this are marked upon the Ordnance map as Roman Road. I do not myself know of any clear proof that it was Roman, or that Teignbridge was Roman either. The present bridge was built in 1815; and underneath the old bridge there were the remains of an older bridge, built of red sandstone, and underneath this the remains of a still older bridge, built of fine white freestone, but there were not any Roman bricks or other things to show conclusively that it was Roman. However that may be, the bridge itself and those pieces of the road from Exeter are on a line that would just suit the Roman road to Land’s End.
There was a bridge there in 1086 at any rate: it comes into Domesday as Taignebrige or Tanebrige. It is six or seven miles from here, below the confluence of the Teign and Bovey; and within a mile of here, above the confluence of the Bovey and Wrey, there is a bridge across the Bovey carrying wheeled traffic. This appears as Drakeford bridge in documents, but is known to everyone as New bridge. And there is an inscription on it, showing how very new it is—“This bridg was repared 1684.” Some other bridges in this district were ‘repared’ soon after this, and these all take traffic on wheels.