Motor Tours in the West Country

by Mrs. Rodolph Stawell

CLOVELLY.

There are two ways into the village. The shortest way is by the path that drops almost from our feet, as we stand by the gate of the beautiful Drive that motorists may not enter. Very soon this path that winds down the face of the cliff merges into the village street, the famous street that we know so well, even if we have never seen it. For that very reason, because it is so well known, I would advise those who are here for the first time to follow the road to the left, and after a short walk that is almost painful—so steep is the way and so loose are the stones—to enter Clovelly at the bottom of the hill, near the quay. Here there is an unfamiliar and beautiful picture for one’s first impression of the loveliest village in England. Overhead are the trees that clothe all this hillside in sweeping draperies of green; the picture is framed in stems and ivy-grown rocks; clustered under the cliff are the irregular roofs of a group of cottages; a large boat is drawn up by the wayside; and towering in the distance is the soft mass of trees through which the Hobby Drive winds unseen. Almost at once we reach the little pier, and Clovelly, hanging between sky and sea, is facing us.

STREET IN CLOVELLY.

For some of its beauty one is prepared. The little white houses clambering up the precipitous hillside, the long, winding street of cobbled stairs, the curving pier with its nets and poles and nights of steps, the jerseyed fishermen and pretty Devon faces, the boats that fill the harbour and the donkeys that climb the street, are all things that one has been taught to expect. But neither pen nor brush can give, in a single picture as we have it here, the extraordinary variety and brilliancy of their setting: the clematis that trails about the verandahs, the fuchsias and hydrangeas, pink and blue, that guard the doors, the crimson valerian that runs riot on the walls, the brown cliffs and ruddy rocks, the woods that roll from the skyline to the shore, and at their feet the little shining pools and many-coloured seaweed, and beyond them the long curve of Bideford Bay and the sea, unutterably blue.

“Now that you have seen Clovelly,” said Kingsley to his wife, “you know what was the inspiration of my life before I met you.” Here on the little quay he heard his father, the rector, many a time read prayers for the fishermen before they put to sea; and it was the sad teaching of Clovelly, where he saw so many men work and so many women weep, that gave its pathos to the song of the Three Fishers. When his health was failing, it was the air of Clovelly that he pined for. He came to lodgings at the top of this winding street that we climb so laboriously, “the narrow, paved cranny of a street,” as he called it, and stayed there happily for weeks.

It would be easy to be happy here for weeks; but in the summer there is some difficulty in finding shelter even for one night. Fortunately Bideford is not far off, and when we have made our way slowly back to the high road there are only ten miles of a good surface between us and a comfortable hotel.

CLOVELLY HARBOUR.

To reach it we must cross the famous bridge. This “very stately piece,” as an old writer calls it, has played a very prominent part in the history of the town. “A poore preste” began it, we are told, being “animatid so to do by a vision. Then al the cuntery about sette their handes onto the performing of it.” Sir Theobald Grenville, Lord of Bideford and Kilkhampton, a young ruffler who had lately been in trouble with the Church, made common cause with the bishop who had ordered his excommunication, and after being duly absolved became “an especial furtherer” of the work. Grandison’s contribution took the form of indulgences; the rich gave their lands and the poor gave their time; and so the pride of Bideford arose on its foundation of woolsacks, and to this day gives distinction to a town that is otherwise rather in need of it. For wherever it was possible old things have been made new here. The old part of the Royal Hotel, once the house of a merchant prince, has been so carefully hidden that no one would guess it was there: the splendid panelling of the room where Kingsley wrote much of “Westward Ho!” has been painted: the church was rebuilt in the nineteenth century: even the tombstones have been tidied up and marshalled in rows round the churchyard wall. Within the church a few relics have survived: the Norman font, the remains of two screens, and the canopied altar-tomb of Sir Thomas Grenville, called the Venerable, who fought against Richard III. and was esquire of the body to Henry VII. The tombstone of the Indian who was brought home by the great Sir Richard seems to have been lost or obscured by the redistribution of graves in the churchyard; but there is a modern brass on the south wall to Sir Richard himself, who lived here when he was not upon the high seas.