Motor Tours in the West Country

by Mrs. Rodolph Stawell

GATEHOUSE, LANHYDROCK.

We drive away by a magnificent double avenue of beeches and sycamores, and through a shady lane join the main road from Bodmin to Liskeard. This narrow valley of the Fowey is one of the loveliest strips of inland scenery in Cornwall. On every side of us are trees, close by the wayside, and hanging overhead, and clothing the high hills; and all the time, sometimes to left of us and sometimes to right, the brown stream hurries past us through the bracken. After we have crossed it for the second time the valley narrows and the woods close in, before we finally run out into open country. Between Liskeard and Callington, as we have seen before, there are some fine views, but the hilly road is rather badly kept; and the same may be said of the country beyond Callington, which has the same variable scenery, and the same wide but bumpy road. A long rise takes us into Launceston through the square tower of the south gate.

Age after age this hill has had a fortress on it. First the Celt and then the Saxon made a stronghold of it, and finally, when William the Conqueror gave it to his half-brother, Robert de Mortain, there arose the Norman castle that was called Terrible. Of its terror little is left now, for one of its three defending walls is gone, and the ruined keep is so unsteady that no one is allowed to climb its stairs. Yet this tower among the blazing geraniums has not altogether lost its romance, as is the fate of most ruins that stand in public gardens; and the Tudor gateway of the outer ward, with its portcullis-groove and prison-cell, is picturesque enough. If we peer through these bars we shall see a tiny cell with mossy floor and weed-grown walls—the “noisesome den” that George Fox the Quaker named Doomsdale, the prison in which he lay for months. “The commune gayle for all Cornwayle is yn this castel,” says Leland; and many distinguished prisoners have been here, though not all in this dark dungeon. Among these was Skellum Grenville, whose imprisonment had far-reaching results; for the men of Cornwall, as in the case of Trelawny, resolved “to know the reason why.” This was not because they liked him, but simply because he was a Cornishman. And a very good reason too.

In spite of all its strength Castle Terrible was several times taken in the Civil War. Finally it was seized by Fairfax, and kept. He came to Launceston at midnight, and many of the enemy escaped “by the darknesse of the night, and narrownesse and steepnesse of the wayes.” Those who were taken were amazed in the morning, when they were brought before the general, and “had twelve pence apeece given them, and passes to goe to their homes.”

TOWN GATE, LAUNCESTON.

When the Skellum’s brother Sir Bevill was here his troops were quartered in the church that is a few minutes’ walk from the castle, the church that is surely unique in its effect of richness. For every one of its granite stones bears a device, sacred or profane, and round the base is a course of shields, with letters carved upon them to form an inscription. Over the south door are St. George and the Dragon, and St. Martin and the Beggar; and at the east end is a prostrate figure of the Magdalen, at which, by a curious disregard of a certain great saying, it is considered lucky to throw stones. Within the church is a sixteenth-century pulpit, a Norman font, and a good deal of modern carving. Of the priory that Bishop Warelwast founded at Launceston hardly anything remains, except the Norman arch that has been set in the doorway of the “White Hart.”

We have a fine drive back to Bodmin over the moors, where the hills are many but the road is good. There is no heather here, but a great expanse of grass and waving fern, and scattered stones, and slopes of gorse, and now and then, impressive in its loneliness, an ancient Celtic cross of granite by the wayside. We enter Bodmin by an over-arching avenue, and pass out of it on the Wadebridge road, at the back of the asylum.

The short run to Wadebridge is through a lovely country of woods and valleys and rivers, on a road that is well-graded if hilly. There is little obvious attraction in Wadebridge itself, however, for at low tide the river winds through mud-flats that are not flat enough to be picturesque, and the famous bridge—“the longest, strongest, and fairest that the shire can muster”—is not as striking in fact as it appears in pictures. Like Bideford Bridge, it is said to be founded on sacks of wool. Its founder was one Lovibond, the vicar of this old church of Egloshayle that we see beside the river. We do not cross the bridge, but turn to the right on the road to Camelford; and a few minutes later pass near a British camp called Castle Killibury or Kelly Round. We are entering Arthur’s country—a land of shadowy legend, a land that has been peopled for us with a host of adorable, improbable figures, a land of disillusionment, but none the less of unconquerable romance. For this round encampment by which we drive is thought to be one of the few authentic relics of the authentic Arthur, the Kelliwic of the Welsh Triads, a stronghold and court of the British prince who truly lived, and fought, and died of a grievous wound—but not at Camelford.