CHAPTER XXI
CULBONE AND ITS REVELS—WHORTLEBERRIES
The way parallel with the shore to Culbone lies at the back of the “Ship” inn at Porlock Weir, steeply up the wooded hillside that looks along down to the sea. The recluse situation of Culbone is shadowed forth, in company with those of two other lonely parishes of this neighbourhood, by the old local rhyme, often quoted:
To Culbone, Oare, and Stoke Pero,
Parishes three, no parson will go.
The reason for this old-time clerical distaste is found partly in these circumstances of solitude in which the opportunities for doing good must needs be small; but chiefly, perhaps, in the fact that the pay was not sufficient. The living of Culbone is stated by Crockford to be £41 net per annum; that of Oare, £93; Stoke Pero, £75. Culbone and Oare are, nowadays, held in conjunction by one parson, who thus enjoys an income of £134—if a person may correctly be said to “enjoy” these less than clerk’s wages.
The population of Culbone is thirty-four, and the spiritual care of them thus costs £1 4s. 1d. and an infinitesimal fraction of a farthing, per annum per head; but the spiritual shepherding of Stoke Pero, whose population is thirty-eight, comes to nearly £2 per head.
THE LODGE, ASHLEY COMBE.
The only way to Culbone lies past the entrance-lodge of the beautiful estate of Ashley Combe, the property of the Earl of Lovelace, but formerly that of Lord Chancellor King. The clock-tower of the house, in the likeness of an Italian campanile, is seen peering up from amid the massed woodlands. Ashley Combe is a place beautifully situated and finely appointed, and is splendidly situated for stag-hunting with the Devon and Somerset hounds. Until recently, and for a number of years past, it was rented, chiefly for hunting purposes, by the Baroness de Tainteignes.