Presently Oare church appears, on the left hand, almost wholly hidden in a circle of tall, spindly trees, and neighboured only by one farm. It is a grey, sad-toned building, this centre of interest in Lorna’s tragedy. Chiefly in the Perpendicular style, it consists of an embattled western tower and a nave without aisles. The chancel is a modern addition. All day and every day in the summer an old man sits in the little north porch, with the key of the church on a bench beside him, and if, not seeing the key, you try the door, and, finding it locked, ask him, he will give it you, and leave you to let yourself in: mutely remaining there, a living hint for a tip. “Lorna Doone” has done this. “Parish clerk, he be, an’ used to be saxon,” remarked an old road-mender. “He do mek’ a dale o’ money,” is the rustic opinion; but what amount may be represented by “a deal of money” in this estimate does not appear. Also, “Dree an’ saxpunz a wik,” he gets from the parish: so there is no old age pension for him; and unless the parish of Oare, in a fit of wild extravagance, springs another eighteenpence, he will be a loser.
The interior of Oare church is, truth to tell, lamentably uninteresting, and architecturally deplorable. A something wooden, that does duty for chancel screen, divides nave from sanctuary, and a few characterless marble and slate tablets are affixed to the walls: one of them to the memory of a Nicholas Snow, 1791. A tablet to various members of the Spurryer family exhibits a curious uncertainty as to how the name should be spelled. “Spurre” and “Spurry” are the two other versions given. The name of “Peter Spurryer, Warden, 1717,” appears under one of a couple of fearsome paintings in the tower, representing Moses and Aaron; the work of one “Mervine Cooke, Painter.”
INTERIOR OF OARE CHURCH.
Under a deplorable representation of the triple Prince of Wales’ feathers, placed on the wall near the pulpit, to commemorate a visit of the Prince of Wales in 1863 will be found the only interesting object in the church: a rudely carved stone bracket supporting what was once a piscina. Shaped in the form of a head, the expressionless face is flanked by two hands. Very few visitors can have any notion of the meaning of this grotesque object, and most people set it down as a mere fantasy; but the thing is symbolical, and really typifies the Divine gift of speech. Other examples are found throughout England: notably in the churches of Bere Regis, in Dorsetshire, and Gotham, Nottinghamshire.[[8]] This carving is by far the oldest thing in Oare church, and is probably a relic from some earlier building.
[8]. See The Manchester and Glasgow Road, Vol. I., pp. 265-6; and The Hardy Country, p. 143.
From Oare we come directly to Malmsmead where the Badgworthy Water divides Somerset and Devon, and is spanned by a grey, timeworn, two-arched bridge.
The scene is sweet and idyllic. Here the bridge, grown thickly with ferns and moss, and stained red, brown, and orange with lichens, spans the water in hump-backed fashion, and on the opposite—that is to say, the Devonshire—shore, the three farmsteads of Malmsmead, Lorna Doone, and Badgworthy Farms stand side by side in seeming content, sheltered beneath swelling hills. Day by day in summer a long succession of brakes and flys bring visitors from Lynton and Lynmouth and set them down here for an afternoon’s exploration of the Badgworthy Valley, or drive them on to Oare.
To see one of these brake-drivers take the steep rise of the narrow bridge of Malmsmead at full speed, and so continue his reckless way along the narrow lanes, is to realise that death possibly awaits the cyclist who descends hills and rounds the sharp corners of these lanes at high speed at such times when these vehicles are about.
For the comfort and refreshment of these “Lorna Doone” pilgrims, the three farms, that were nothing but humble farmsteads in the days before Blackmore wrote that popular romance, have now become rustic restaurants, doing a very thriving and remunerative business, at prices which, calculated on the basis of their charge of twopence for a small glass of milk, must be rapidly earning a more than modest competence for these simple folk. Simple, did I say? Well, that, perhaps, is hardly the word. Nor is the content that seems to be pictured here, in every circumstance of running water, moss-grown bridge, and bird-haunted trees, more than a hollow mockery. Come with me over the bridge, into Devon, and I shall show you evidence of keen commercial rivalry, in the notice-board displayed from the hedge of Malmsmead Farm, which says “No connection with Lorna Doone and Badgworthy Farm.” Now it is a curious fact that the names of these rival rustic refreshment-providers are the same—French—but that does not by any means explain the hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness that are displayed between these neighbours; for few must be the pilgrims in these parts who acquire such trivial facts. The stranger coming from the direction of Oare and halting awhile on the bridge, to admire the beauty of the scene, will soon find himself invited, by one or other of these people, to patronise his establishment, and will thereby learn something not to the advantage of the rival. Hearing the tale of one, you are shocked at the depth of infamy with which the other is charged, but the people of the neighbourhood take it all philosophically enough. “I ’xpec’ they do saay ’most as bad o’ he,” is the general remark.