It is now time to quit Dulverton, and one has to face the somewhat complex question in which direction one’s steps should next be turned. There are three main routes—by the railway to Barnstaple; by the “turnpike” to Dunster and Minehead; and by one of several roads to Simonsbath, the heart of the moor. All these ways lead to interesting places—places much too interesting to be passed by; and it is at one’s choice which to seek out first. That is assuming that one intends to establish Dulverton as one’s base, making longer or shorter excursions to the spots hereafter to be named. To recommend such a course, however, would be obviously impolite to other towns equally avid of patronage. They must all be visited in turn—so much is certain.
As a start must be made, and a selection may not be avoided, I will fall back on the line I always followed as a boy, and once more breast Mount Sydenham, with its chaplet of firs. When the panting and perspiring traveller reaches a turn of the road he may hap to espy a hollow in a field on the left. That is Granny’s Pit, where an old woman with dishevelled tresses has been viewed, bewailing her daughter. A few more paces bring us to the grove of firs, whence the sinuous Barle may be surveyed far below in all his sylvan glory. This may be Blackmore’s “corner of trees,” if Ridd followed this route, and not Hollam Lane, which runs parallel with it. Stepping back into the lane, one soon finds oneself on Court Down, which, though not of any great extent, is a genuine bit of moorland “debated” by green fern, and purple heather, and golden gorse, embosomed in which there may stand at gaze fleecy, white-faced sheep of the horned variety peculiar to Exmoor.
Nature’s “much-admired confusion,” however, is exhibited on a much grander scale in the undulating sweep of Winsford Hill, which, from Mountsey Hill Gate to Comer’s Gate, boasts four miles of continuous brake. This free and joyous expanse is the native heath of Sir Thomas Acland’s wild Exmoor ponies, which, in their shaggy deshabille may at times be seen grazing on the rough sward, or scampering playfully over moss and ling. They suffer none to approach.
At Spire Cross is a confluence of roads, that to the left being one way to Torr Steps, an old Keltic bridge formed of large, loose slabs laid athwart low piers, which bears a family likeness to Post Bridge on Dartmoor, but the latter is grooved for chariots. It is well to point out that this charming vestige of prehistoric civilisation—a gem in a lovely setting—is by no means isolated. The remains of several British castles are to be found in the neighbourhood, Mountsey Castle being quite near; and up on the hill, not far from Spire Cross, but in the opposite direction, is a menhir. The stone carries an inscription, which, though extremely rude and partially obliterated, is yet distinctly legible; and the monument is supposed to mark the burial-place of a Romanised British chieftain—the “grandson of Caractacus,” which is the English rendering of “Carataci Nepos.” Dr Murray recently took a “squeeze” of the face of the stone, from which a cast was made, now at Oxford; and both he and Professor Rhys, who accompanied him, were convinced of the genuineness of the scrawl. The actual lettering appears to be: CVRAACI EPVC. Moreover, beside the road to Comer’s Gate are three immense cairns, known as the Wambarrows. This is the highest point of Winsford Hill—1405 feet above the level of the sea.
Around all these spots cluster superstitions weird or bizarre. The menhir is an index of buried treasure. The Wambarrows are the haunt of a mysterious black dog. Round Mountsey Castle a spectral chariot races at midnight, to disappear into a cairn in a field at the foot of the hill. As for Torr Steps, the legend is that they were placed there by the devil, who menaced with dire penalties the first mortal that should presume to use them. The sable monarch took his seat on one bank of the stream, while the other was occupied by a parson, eager to try conclusions with him. The holy man was astute, and, as a preliminary measure, dispatched a cat across the bridge. On touching the opposite side she was ruthlessly rent in pieces, whereupon, the charm having been shattered, the parson boldly strode over the causeway and engaged the devil in a conflict of words, each abusing the other in good set terms. In the end the enemy of mankind retired vanquished, resigning the bridge to all and sundry. Close above these steps was one of the two homes of Mother Melldrum (see Lorna Doone, chapter xvii., where Blackmore alludes to the legend of their origin).
It appears that the Oxford cognoscenti went down into the stream in a vain search for more inscribed stones. This reminds me of a curious story of the Barle, the willows on whose banks, by the way, overhang its amber bed so as to form almost an arch. On a hill to the right, looking downstream, stands Hawkridge Church, and what is termed, in contradistinction to the parish, Hawkridge town. Well, once upon a time a villager was asked to take the place of the bass-singer in the choir for one Sunday only, and consented. A day or two later he was discovered by the incumbent, a well-known hunting parson, wading up and down the little river apparently without aim or object. The cleric drew rein, and, much amazed, inquired the meaning of this extraordinary procedure. “Plaze your honour,” was the reply, “I be trying to get a bit of a hooze on me.”
In other words, he was attempting to catch a cold, so that he might become hoarse, this being, as he thought, the best means of qualifying himself for the successful discharge of his duty.
“Where the swift Exe, by Somerset’s fair hills,
In curving eddies, borders pastures deep,
Near fern-fringed slope of lawn, where babbling rills
Sing sweetest music, mid thick foliage peep
Five bridges, and thatched roofs. The grey Church Tower
O’er all looks down on groves of oak and pine:
Red deer, red Devons, ponies of the moor,
Delight the traveller in this home of mine.”
This acrostic, in praise of a charming village, is the composition of the Rev. Prebendary W. P. Anderson, vicar of Winsford, who has resided there ever since 1857, and the lines show that his experience of the place has been like the place itself—happy. Far otherwise was it with one of his predecessors. In the church porch may be seen a list of the parish clergymen, not so dry as such lists are wont to be, from which it appears that early in the fourteenth century Winsford had a blind vicar—one Willelmus. Being unable to perform all the duties of his office, he was allowed two coadjutors, of whom it is recorded, to their eternal infamy, that they were deprived “for starving the Blind Vicar.” This conduct, inhuman at the best, was the more scandalous in that the Priory of Barlynch, to which the advowson belonged, had, in 1280, endowed the vicarage with the whole tithe of wool, lambs, chicken, calves, pigs, sucklings, cheese, butter, flax, honey, and all other small tithes and oblations and dues pertaining to the altar offerings. And yet he starved—the Blind Vicar!
Barlynch Priory, a community of Austin Friars stood, where its remains yet stand, some two or three miles down the Exe. Shaded by what the old charter calls “the mountain of the high wood of Berlic,” its situation was in the highest degree romantic; and if the prior had a lust for venery, his taste might easily be gratified, for in the adjacent woods or “copes,” the deer would have found abundant shelter, and thither they doubtless resorted to pass the long summer day under the dense foliage.