Kingsbridge, once a flourishing port with a considerable Mediterranean trade, employing some two hundred vessels not a century ago, is no longer of much commercial importance. The way from Salcombe up to the further town is a muddy channel, almost devoid of picturesque scenery, and beset with mudbanks. But amongst the ancient things which survive at Kingsbridge is the custom of brewing and drinking “white ale,” of unprepossessing appearance and considerable potency, said to have been invented at Dodbroke, with which Kingsbridge is so closely connected. It is, indeed, a curious beverage of almost treacly consistency, made of malt, hops, eggs, and flour, fermented with grout, and is best avoided by the stranger.
KINGSBRIDGE QUAY
In the old Shambles erected in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, which form a picturesque element in the Fore Street, and in the Church of St Edmund, dating from the second decade of the fifteenth century, Kingsbridge holds out some inducement for the visits of antiquarians. In the quaint inscription on the memorial to one Robert Phillips, just outside the chancel door is clearly stated a truism for all who run to read.
Here lie I at the chancel door;
Here lie I because I’m poor:
The further in the more you’ll pay;
Here lie I as warm as they.
Bolt Head, rugged and forbidding of aspect, and the Mewstones which guard the western side of the Salcombe estuary must be rounded ere one’s course can be laid for Plymouth, along a rugged and wild coast deeply and dangerously fissured, in which are the mouths of the picturesque streams the Avon and Erme. Then come more Mewstones, the number of which along this coast has often caused us to wonder. These passed, Plymouth is right ahead.
As one passes up the wide expanse of that unequalled anchorage known as the Sound, where have floated almost from time immemorial the argosies and battle fleets of England, and into which so much of the wealth of the world has been borne in the past as now, the spoil of enterprise or of war, one realizes something at least of the spirit of ancient times. Plymouth has forged ahead whilst many of her sister ports of bygone ages have slowly decayed. Throughout the centuries there has been no rest, no idle contentment with things that are until they cease to be. And thus it is that Plymouth, of all the ancient ports of the West Country on the Channel, has increased in greatness as the years have rolled by.
Few more inspiring and beautiful pictures are to be found along the coast than those afforded by Plymouth Sound. Wedded to fine scenery is bustling commerce. Across the seaway lies the world-famous breakwater, and behind it all along up to Plymouth the sea is beset with craft of all kinds; huge trading vessels, mostly three and four masters, which have voyaged to the ends of the earth; fishing boats, which look like cockle shells in comparison; destroyers, and torpedo boats; tramp steamers belching out black clouds of smoke in rivalry with that of the tugs; and, more majestic than all, the ocean liners and occasional incoming battleships making their way slowly up the Sound.
There are few spots on blue water where is given so great a touch of life to things inanimate. And when one comes to an anchor off Drake’s long low isle, or in the shelter of the beautifully wooded Mount Edgcumbe, the ghosts of mighty seamen of the past seem to flit across the scene, and visions of long lost fleets, and adventurers’ galleons rise unbidden to the mind.