Small Talk at Wreyland. Third Series

by Cecil Torr

The fault may not be in the tea itself, but in the way of making it and leaving it to ‘stand’ or ‘draw.’ A cynic said that tea was the salvation of the people here; it so damaged their digestions that they could not assimilate the food they ate; and this really was a mercy, as they over-ate themselves so much. Even in this house, I fear, tea was allowed to stand too long. I remember my grandmother being chaffed about a letter she had written, “Jane has drunk tea here. Poor soul, she has drained the cup of bitterness to the very dregs.”

In my early days here the cottagers all kept pigs; and the sties abutted on the cottages and drained into the lanes. There were sties on each side of the lane between Bowhouse and the Tallet; and as the lane is steep, the drainage made a stream downhill and joined the drainage from a sty at Souther Wreyland just outside the kitchen door. Then came a time when pig-sties were prohibited within a certain distance of a house; and the old granite pig-sties were utilized in other ways—that Souther Wreyland sty became a coal-cellar, and a double sty at Lower Wreyland has now become a sitting-room. But in War-time all restrictions were removed; and pig-sties could be set up close to dwellings, as before. Restrictions on building also were removed. Some years before the War I wanted to turn a barn into a house; but this was not allowed, although the barn had well-built granite walls—few houses have as good. And now a barn near here, not built so well as that, has just been turned into a house. If restrictions were necessary, they should not have been removed: if they were capricious, they should never have been made.

In those good old pig-sty days there were some powerful smells here, but they did not carry far, and the air was always fresh; and there were much worse smells in towns, with no fresh air to counteract them. A builder writes to my father about a house in London, 12 October 1862, “I beg to acquaint you that the works are going on, and on opening the ground I find a large cess-pool in the front area under the steps, a most improper situation for such a place.” That house was not built till 1820, and older houses usually were worse.

There were no sewers here, at Wreyland or at Lustleigh, until 1892, when a joint sewer was laid down for the sewage of both places. A joint water-supply was included in the scheme; but that part of the scheme fell through, and sewer-gas was thus laid on to every house that had no water of its own. This state of things continued for ten years, although there was no practical difficulty about the joint supply. The great Torquay reservoir is less than two miles off; and the engineers were ready to lay the water on, just as they had laid it on to other places between here and Torquay. But water-supply is in the jurisdiction of the Rural District Council; and the Council appointed Parochial Committees without experience of anything much bigger than a parish pump. The joint supply was rejected, as Wreyland is not in Lustleigh parish. A separate supply was found for Lustleigh; and when that failed, a further supply was found, as far off as the Torquay reservoir. Being in Bovey parish, Wreyland was supplied from a Bovey reservoir as far off on the other side; and this reservoir was a futile thing—intended as storage to supplement a small supply in drought, needless when a big supply was brought in from another source, and ineffective now, because the mains are nearly choked with rust. With their ineffective schemes and alterations and additions, these two rural parishes incurred a debt of about £24,000 for water-supply, besides about £8000 for sewage; and there are special-expenses rates for interest and sinking-fund, and water rates as well.

Moretonhampstead was provided with a sewer in 1905. The main part of the town is on a hill between two little valleys that converge into the valley of the Wrey; and a nine-inch sewer-pipe was carried down each valley to the junction of the two, and a nine-inch sewer-pipe from that point to the sewage-tanks some way further on, as if one nine-inch pipe would take the full contents of two of that same size. Moreton is a great place for thunderstorms—the conformation of the country brings the clouds that way—and the storm-water comes rushing down the sewer-pipes and drives the sewage along; and of course the sewer-pipes were always bursting where these torrents met. Instead of laying a larger pipe from the junction to the tanks (which would have been a costly thing) the District Council placed a sort of safety-valve above the junction; and now, whenever the pressure is sufficient, the sewage throws up a fountain there. I have gone to see the fountains at Versailles and Peterhof and other places celebrated for them, but I have never seen another fountain quite like this. And nobody need go out of his way to see it, as it splashes out on the high road from Moreton here.

In going from Moreton to Hurston, I pass a guide-post with an arm that says, ‘Chagford. 1½ miles.’ Taking that direction, I pass another guide-post (at Stiniel cross) less than a hundred yards away; and this has an arm that says, ‘Chagford. 2 miles.’ A foreigner noticed it and said, “Aha, you advance one hundred metres and you retreat one half-mile? How shall you arrive?” I said, of course, “We muddle through,” and he said “You are a wonderful people”; and he said it as if he meant it as a compliment, but I think he had some reservations in his mind.

There is a new guide-post at Lustleigh. Instead of getting a larch pole that might have cost about five shillings, the District Council got an iron post that cost five pounds; and on that post the sockets for the arms are at right-angles to each other. One arm is marked ‘Cleave,’ and points along the road there. The other is marked ‘Station,’ but (being at right-angles to the first) it points along the path to Wreyland, which path does not go anywhere near the Station. Hence, many objurgations from excursionists when they have missed the train. With a larch pole, the arm could be nailed on to point the proper way; but our Council would not be satisfied with anything that did not combine extravagance with inefficiency.

Inefficiency is said to be a sign of honesty in public bodies. When a public body is corrupt, the members take good care that everything is managed so efficiently that nobody would like to turn them out—they take no risks of losing a position that they find so profitable. On this hypothesis the Local Authorities in Devon cannot possibly be corrupt; and yet I sometimes feel a passing doubt when I see what schemes they sanction and what tenders they accept.

Corruption may be beneficial if it implies efficiency. The amount of money that is misappropriated will seldom be as much as would be muddled away by honest, inefficient men. We usually have some very able men in Devon, astute financiers whose abilities are thrown away in the routine of penal servitude on Dartmoor. We might entrust our Local Government affairs to them, not quite with a free hand, but with a reasonably laxity allowed in matters of finance.

Our present system of Local Government has the defects of bureaucracy without its merits. There are County Councils and District Councils and Parish Councils. These are elected by the ratepayers; and the people who are elected have not always got the necessary ability, and those who have the ability cannot always give the necessary time. The result is that the clerks and other officials have to do the Councils’ work, if it is going to be done at all; and they are not invariably the sort of men to whom such work would be entrusted. Under the bureaucratic system the Councils would be abolished and their work entrusted to officials of high standing, who would be qualified men; and they would do their best, as they would have full credit for successful work and be responsible if things went wrong. The officials have no such incentive now, as their acts are nominally the Councils’ acts, and they have neither credit nor blame.