The proper name of Gallon House was the “Red Deer,” but Blackmore was evidently acquainted with the other description. John Fry is led by a shepherd to a “public-house near Exford,” where “nothing less than a gallon of ale and half a gammon of bacon” brings him to his right mind again (Lorna Doone, chapter xxxi.).
The associations of Gallon House and its vicinage are tragic, since it was in a cottage situated in the rear that William Burgess, in the fifties of the last century, murdered his little daughter. He then conveyed her body across the road and down into the valley, where he buried it; but, fearing detection, he again removed the poor child’s corpse and threw it down the shaft of the disused Wheal Eliza, a copper-mine. Here it remained undiscovered for months, but at last, through the untiring exertions of the Rev. W. H. Thornton, then curate of Exmoor, it was found, and the unnatural father expiated his crime on the gallows.
In his privately printed Reminiscences, Mr Thornton has given a detailed account of the whole episode.
The Wheal Eliza appears to have been the original of Uncle Ben’s gold-mine, so far as situation is concerned.
The next stage is to Honeymead Two Gates, with Honeymead Farm[13] lying away to the left. “Two Gates” is quite an Exmoor term. We meet with it again in Brendon Two Gates, and it stands for an arrangement whereby on both sides of the posts are suspended separate gates, so hung as to fall inwards. These effectually prevent stock from getting either in or out of the enclosures proprio motu, whilst the farmer, by crooking back the near gate with his whip, and pushing his horse against the other, can pass through without having to dismount. To judge from the maps, Simonsbath is the hub of the moor. In some senses this is true and soothfast, but as one travels along the excellent highway and looks across the country, there is little suggestion of either moor or forest. The land is evidently poor, but everywhere one’s glance falls on enclosed fields, and Winsford Hill harmonises much better with one’s preconceived ideas of Exmoor than this eminently civilised region. Doubtless the landscape presented a very different aspect before Mr Knight’s advent in 1818, and one hardly knows whether to thank him for his pioneer improvements or not. At all events, one would have preferred the dry-wall system that obtains in the North Forest, to fences that seem stable and permanent, though shivering sheep may be of a different opinion.
Cloven Rocks, the next point, has no obvious right to the name. Its situation, however, may be indicated by stating that it lies at a bend of the road, and a tiny stream trickles down through the bare turf. It may be needless to remind the reader that Cloven Rocks is twice mentioned in Lorna Doone as adjacent to the Wizard’s Slough, a perilous morass that has since been drained. Whether the story which appears in chapter lviii. of the romance is based on a real tradition, or is the offspring of Blackmore’s fertile imagination, I am unable to say. It has, at any rate, a genuine ring, and all Exmoor once teemed with strange legends, which the present “more enlightened” generation has chosen to forget.
Which reminds me. The little stream above referred to is called White Water, and joins the Barle at Cow Castle, an old British camp, which is situated on one of three hills. Cow Castle is the name of the principal eminence as given in the maps, and Cae Castle it is sometimes called by the learned. To the natives, however, it is known as Ring Castle, and is so described in a delightful article contributed by the Rev. George Tugwell, M.A., author of an excellent North Devon Handbook, to Frasers Magazine in 1857. His delineations of the scenery are worthy of a Blackmore or a Black, and would that I had room for some of them! As I have not, I must confine the quotation to the dialogue between the wanderer and a peasant, carried on by the blaze of the latter’s peat fire.
“‘Half an hour before we met you and little Nelly, we discovered an old British camp—a real discovery, an indubitable camp, with its line of earthworks as perfect, gateway and all, as when it was first piled—and to be found in no book or antiquarian memoir in all the three kingdoms. There it stood, a circular crown on the brow of a lonely conical hill, washed on three sides by the wanderings of the Barle, out of bow-shot from all the neighbouring heights, with plenty of water, and provisions in abundance, for three valleys trended from it in a triple direction, commanding a wide and glorious view of peak and ravine, centrally placed in the very heart of “the forest.” In truth, those old Britons knew something of the art of fastnesses, if they were not well skilled in the art of war. Did you ever see the stronghold of your ancestors, friend Jan?’
“‘I’m thinking we’re somehow about Ring Castle!’ quoth Jan, with sly good humour in his eye. ‘Camp indeed! I don’t know much about camps [we omit the Doric]; but all I know is, that it was something far different which built Ring Castle.’
“Hereupon, dropping his voice, he hurled up the broad chimney a whole series of mystery-betokening smoke cloudlets.