Lee Abbey, occupying the site of the old manor-house of the Wichehalse family, is an abbey only in name and venerable only in appearance, having been built in 1850. But although “Abbey” be merely a fanciful name, and although there yet remain people who have seen the building of the entire range of mansion and outworks, the ivied entrance-tower and enclosing walls have so truly mediæval an appearance, that many people are entirely deceived, and, not seeking to inform themselves, dream wonderfully romantic dreams of “the old monks” and their religious life in this secluded spot, and live ever afterwards in happy ignorance of the deception. Lee “Abbey” is, in fact, nothing more than a very charming country residence, designed to fit an exceptionally beautiful site.
High above it is the woody hill with look-out tower overhanging that spot on Duty Point called “Jennifrid’s Leap,” of which we have already heard, and down below is the loveliest little bay—Lee Bay—with Wooda Bay opening out beyond it, and the little tumbled headland of Crock Point and the swelling, scrub-covered hillside of Bonhill Top in between. To style the little promontory Crock Point is entirely correct, for it was the scene of a landslip somewhere about 1796, when, one Sunday morning, the hillside fields, with their standing crops of wheat, suddenly slid down to the sea in utter ruin. This was due partly to the percolation of landsprings acting upon the clay, and the clay-digging that had for some while been in progress, for shipment to Holland. The names, “Crock Point” and “Crock Meads,” probably allude to this old digging for pottery uses.
LEE “ABBEY.”
Lee Bay looks like the choicest site in some delectable Land of Heart’s Desire. Down goes the road, through another gate and past the most entirely picturesque and well-constructed lodge I have ever seen, and so out of this private domain. Here a shady valley welcomes the heated traveller; a valley where everything but the generous trees, and the cool shade they spread, is in miniature. A little stream comes running swiftly down from the hilltops, as though it, too, were eager to enter from sunburnt heights into this place, where mossy tree-trunks radiate a welcome coolness, and hart’s-tongue ferns grow in lichened walls and look refreshing. The little stream presently falls over a ledge of rock and becomes a little waterfall, whose purring voice fills the narrow space; and everything is delightful. And there are not any of those horse-stingers, which generally infest the most desirable spots and, instead of confining themselves strictly to horse-stinging, interfere with inoffensive explorers.
The tiny bay that opens out from this twilight lane is a quiet spot, where boulders are scattered about amid the sand and shingle, with that look of studied abandon customary in stage-carpenters’ versions of the seaside; and surely we can give no higher praise than that! It is a spot where one might fitly converse with some not too forward young mermaid (keep your eye off her tail, and such, by all accounts, should be presentable enough); to be auditor of strange, uncanny legends; a thousand fearful wrecks “full fathom five,” and dead-men’s bones and drowned treasure.
But for tales of drowned treasure, or “money sunk” and lost, which, after all, is much the same to the owner of it—one need not go far, nor seek the dangerous society of mermaids. Wooda Bay, yonder, across the intervening neck of land, has a modern story of some interest. It was somewhere about 1895 that Benjamin Greene Lake, of the London firm of solicitors, Lake and Lake, conceived the idea of “developing” this secluded and extremely lovely spot, and of making it, as it were, a newer Lynmouth. He purchased much land, caused many roads to be made to the bay, and built an elaborate timber landing-stage for steamers. A few houses were indeed built here and there: among them the “Glen” Hotel, but Wooda Bay has not developed to any extent, in the building-estate sense. How many thousands of pounds were lost here, seems uncertain; according to some accounts, £25,000, or by others, much more. Unfortunately, this was one of Benjamin Greene Lake’s many speculations financed with other people’s money—without their knowledge or consent. He was sentenced in January 1901 to twelve years’ imprisonment, for converting trust funds to his own use. He had in various projects made away with no less than £170,000 of his clients’ money.
So there was an end of this great development idea. Only a few scattered houses and the roads gashed in the hill-tops remain to tell of it, for the sea speedily washed away every fragment of the timber pier.
The name of Wooda Bay, therefore, falls ill on the ears of not a few defrauded persons. It is a pity, for it is one of the loveliest bays on an exceptionally lovely coast. The Post Office authorities have adopted the new-fangled spelling, “Woody,” instead of “Wooda,” as appears by the tree-shaded post-office here; and the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway, which has a station for it, set down in a far-off wilderness, appears to spell the name, with a fine air of impartiality, in both styles. But the old rustic Devonian way was “Wooda”; a form characteristic of innumerable place-names throughout the country, and exemplified near by, in “Parracombe,” “Challacombe,” “Fullaford,” “Buzzacott,” and innumerable others.
Delightful lanes lead round the shores of the bay, amid woods, with here and there a waterfall; notably at a point where a bridge carrying a lane over a little stream is inscribed Inkerman Bridge, 1857.