CHAPTER III
THE HINTERLAND
Although Culmstock and its immediate vicinity is somewhat deficient in what I have ventured to term “live” interests, it must not be inferred that the neighbourhood has nothing further to show; and among the objects that deserve to be scheduled as worthy of attention are the colossal stone quarries at Westleigh, which, whether viewed from the parallel line of railway or from the opposite height on which stands Burlescombe Church, present an imposing spectacle. For ages they have been the principal source of supply for the district, huge quantities of limestone having been drawn from them for building and agricultural purposes. Much of it was formerly conveyed to Tiverton in barges towed along the canal, the terminus of which was fitted with a number of kilns. These, in my boyhood, I have often seen burning, and regarded with no little awe, owing to stories that were circulated of persons having gone to sleep on the margin, fallen over into the glowing furnace, and been consumed to powder. They are now a picturesque ruin. Older men can recall a yet earlier time when pack-horses came to Westleigh from Tiverton and fetched lime in boxes. In front was a man riding a pony, and the horses followed without compulsion.
The string of pack-horses mentioned in chapter ii. of Lorna Doone, as arriving from Sampford Peverell, may be a reminiscence of this traffic.
Not far from the entrance to the Whiteball tunnel, and in the neighbourhood of the great limestone quarries, in a pleasant meadow facing south, are the ruins of Canonsleigh Abbey. To a connoisseur like Mr F. T. Elworthy, these remains tell their own story, and it is thanks to that gentleman’s investigations and researches that we are able to furnish a concise account of the ancient nunnery. A gateway yet stands, though unhappily disfigured by the desecrating touch of modern man, and near it is a doorway of red sandstone leading to a staircase doubtless belonging to the porter. In the upper storey, square-headed windows—wrought, we may believe, in the fourteenth century—command the approach in either direction; other features are less easy to determine, since there are modern walls and a modern roof, which have been added for the purpose of turning the place into a shed, and incidentally obscure the older architecture.
Without spending more time here, let us pass to a quadrangular building of massive construction, and supported at two of its angles by solid buttresses. Situated at the east end of the convent, this is considered to have been a great flanking tower communicating, by means of strong walls (fragments of which yet remain), at the angles opposite to the buttresses, with the residential portions. The outer or enclosing wall of the abbey precincts started from the middle of the east wall of the tower; and under the middle of the tower flowed a stream, which issued through a covered exit and continued its course outside the boundary wall, washing its base. The reason for this somewhat peculiar arrangement was a good one—the supply of the abbey stews; but its effect was to throw the tower out of line with the walls and the other buildings.
Inside the walls were two spaces, irregular in shape, and clearly open courtyards, from one of which a doorway led into the tower. The chief entrances seem to have been from the two or more floors of the domestic quarters. On the side next the convent, approached by a massive doorway, is a narrow chamber, conjectured to have been a “guard-room” for refractory nuns. Over this, but running the entire length of the building, and not, like the lower floor, divided by wall and doorway, is a floor supported by beams.
This tower, with the plaster clinging to its walls—how can we explain its survival when the rest of the once stately abbey has vanished? Probably the reason lies partly in its strength and partly in its plainness and the absence of wrought stone tempting human greed. As has been well said, “it still stands a picturesque and sturdy relic of an age of good lime-burners and honest masons.” The wrought stone of one or two windows in the adjacent walls has been removed, but what indications remain suggest the close of the twelfth century as that virtuous age.
The Priory of Leigh was founded, Dr Oliver says, in the latter half of the twelfth century, and Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph opines, before 1173. In its infant days, it seems to have been a dependency of Plympton Priory—at any rate, in the estimation of the latter monastery, whose head claimed the right to appoint the superior of Leigh. This demand was resisted, and in 1219 the then Bishop of Exeter composed the quarrel by deciding, as a sort of compromise, that the Prior of Plympton might, if he chose, be present at the election.
In the second half of the thirteenth century there were scandals at Leigh calling for episcopal cognisance and visitation; and these disorders proving incurable, Bishop Quivil went the length of ejecting the prior and canons, and transferring the monastery, with all its belongings, to a body of canonesses of the same rule of St Augustine. And Matilda de Tablere became the first Prioress of Leigh. Next year, Matilda de Clare, Countess of Gloucester and Hertford, presented the convent with the (then) great sum of six hundred marks, in acknowledgment of which Bishop Quivil erected the priory into an abbey, and appointed the countess its abbess.