CHAPTER XI
PILTON—BARNSTAPLE BRIDGE—OLD COUNTRY WAYS—BARUM—HISTORY AND COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE—OLD HOUSES—“SEVEN BRETHREN BANK”—FREMINGTON—INSTOW AND THE LOVELY TORRIDGE
Barnstaple is heralded by its suburb, Pilton, on a creek (or “pill” as the word is here) of the river Yeo. The people of Pilton, who were among the earliest to manufacture cotton fabrics in a district that made only woollens, were in the early part of the seventeenth century looked upon in much the same way as the makers of base coin are regarded. “Woe unto ye, Piltonians,” exclaimed Westcote (1620), “who make cloth without wool!”
The churchyard of Pilton is entered in a singular manner, under an archway between almshouses. Here stood Pilton Priory, said to have been founded by Athelstan so early as the tenth century. Of that, however, there are no traces. The church, a very fine and interesting building, is largely Perpendicular. A curious and well-preserved grinning head with jester’s cap forms a stop to one of the window hood-mouldings, and a tablet over the south porch, now somewhat illegible, refers to “... late unhappy wars. Anno Dom. 1646,” and proceeds to record that it, or the tower, was rebuilt in 1696. The church, in fact, was injured during the operations attending the various takings and retakings of Barnstaple by Roundheads and Royalists. A long metrical epitaph will be observed in the churchyard, to John Hayne, d. 1797, aged forty, huntsman and servant for twenty-five years to William Barber, of Fremington.
THE JESTER’S HEAD.
The interior of the church is very beautiful. A fine fourteenth-century oak screen divides nave and chancel, and the font is surmounted by a sixteenth-century canopy, said to have formerly been the canopy of the Prior of Pilton’s chair. On one side is the staple to which the Bible was once chained. Among the relics in the church is an old pitch-pipe for the choir. But the most singular thing is the Jacobean hour-glass for the pulpit, held out by a projecting arm fashioned in sheet-iron and painted white. This fantastic object has acquired a very considerable celebrity in these days when every other tourist carries a photographic camera and hunts diligently for pictorial curiosities. The vicar and churchwardens of Pilton are also up-to-date, for they charge sixpence for the privilege of photographing the hour-glass and Pulpit: and see they get it.
Barnstaple is built along the north bank of the Taw estuary, at a point where it suddenly contracts, and where the river Yeo falls into it. In the tremendous language of the briefs sent out broadcast in the reign of Henry the Eighth, soliciting alms for the repair of Barnstaple bridge, crossing the estuary, the river is described as a “great, hugy, mighty perylous and dreadfull water, whereas salte water doth ebbe and flow foure tymes in the day and night.” This was “piling on the agony” with a vengeance: a prodigious swashing about with sounding adjectives that seems to the modern traveller singularly overdone.
Barnstaple, it is quite evident by this appeal for aid, had not yet arrived upon the threshold of that era of abounding prosperity which was so soon to come. In a few years more the town was well able to maintain its bridge, but in the meanwhile had to beg through the land! It was a very old bridge, even then, and incorporated portions built so early as the thirteenth century. There were then thirteen arches, three being added later; but even so late as 1796 it remained so narrow that the roadway was scarcely practicable for wheeled traffic. It was, in short, little other than a pack-horse bridge in all those centuries. There was then no space left for foot-passengers when the pack-horses were crossing, and all such were fain to take refuge in the V-shaped sanctuaries that opened out on either side on the piers of the arches, and to wait there until the long, laden pack-horse trains had passed. But it must be recollected that the roads leading up to the bridge were of the like complexion and were roads only by courtesy. Wheels were out of place on them, too; and pack-horses and that peculiar old Devonshire contrivance known as a “truckamuck” were almost the only ways of conveying goods. The truckamuck was just a rough cart without wheels, dragged by a horse along those uneven ways—a kind of larger and clumsier sleigh-like affair, combining the maximum of weight and friction with a minimum of convenience.
