“if any genteelman what likes a wark he can wark to the shoar At wembury an if they holds up there white pockethanchecuffs for a signal an ile cum off in me bote an fetch them to the island for two pence a pease an you furgot to say that there’s a bewtifull landin place dead easterd on the iland an sum stairs that i made to cum up for the ladeys an ile be verry mutch obliGe to put this in your booke you maid a mistake I be not fortey ears old i be only 39 an 6 munths.
“Samel warkeam”
“P.s. Youve a forgot to say that ive a got a bewtifull Kayl plat for the gentlemen an ladeys for To play to KeEls an shut rabets at nine pens A pease eccept the panches for me piggs an kip the jackits ov em
An my missus hasent got no hobjectsiuns to boyll the kittle an make the tay pon the Kayll Plat an hand the tay Pot out of the winder an put a tabell outside the winder on every thing hum Bell an comfortabell.”
There is no village at Wembury; only, down beneath the swelling contours of those hillside cornfields, a church, a farmstead, and a water-mill on the very verge of the beach: the whole so situated and of such a singularly unnatural loneliness and air of detachment that you feel sure whatever history may have to say of the place, or whatever it may leave unsaid—you feel sure, I say, that the sea has at some time come up and munched off a great piece of land and the village with it, and has long ago digested the whole. And indeed what is left of Wembury is situated in a little semi-circular bay, where the downs descend to low clifflets of friable earthy rock, which is now slaty, now gravelly, and again of the red Devonian sandstone, all by turns. It is as though that hungry sea had come suddenly and taken a mouthful, as you might bite a piece of bread and butter.
Descending to this strange spot, you look down upon the leads of the church tower and thence come by rough and steep tracks to the shore, where a little stream runs by the water-wheel of the old mill on to the shingle of the beach. So near is the wheel to the sea that in times of storm the salt water of the waves mingles with the fresh, and so close to the tide are the walls of the mill-house that when the winds lash the waters into foaming breakers the rooms smell of the salt spray, and are filled with the clamour of the elements.
Here the singular picturesqueness of the place is most fully revealed, and the church to which just now you descended is seen to stand high and boldly above the beach, on a commanding knoll, girt about with a circular brick retaining-wall heavily buttressed, lest it, as well as the church, and the churchyard it shores up from a sudden descent, should come toppling down in common ruin.
The age, the rugged beauty, and the interest of the church are almost completely hidden beneath a coating of plaster, and the grass grows rankly in the churchyard, where the odd epitaph may be noted:
Henry Kembil
died Nov. 25 1725
’Tis over with your friend
Mind That.
An arresting inscription, surely, and not a little puzzling until it is discovered that Henry Kembil was a ferryman of the Yealm and a portion of his epitaph is a play upon the word “over,” by which, shouting across the river, the would-be passenger who is versed in Devon ways still brings the ferryman to him.