A book of the west. Volume 1, Devon

by S. Baring-Gould

The church of Ashburton has been renovated, and is now very stately and beautiful. It is to be regretted that the architect, the late Mr. Street, was superior to restoring the screen from the fragments that remained, and instead evolved one out of his inner consciousness, quite out of character with the church, and entirely different in feeling from the work common throughout the neighbourhood, which is exquisite in beauty of design and in detail. But such is the way with architects. The Arlers of Gmünd designed Milan Cathedral, but were not allowed to complete it; it was given to sixteen different Italian architects to meddle with and to muddle it; the result is that the exterior is a bit of miserable frippery in marble. Happily the original design for the interior was not interfered with.

But something incomparably worse may be seen near Ashburton, in the interior of Bickington.

Ilsington Church retains a few poppy-head benches of rich work, unique in the county.

In Ilsington is Ingsdon, once the seat of the Pomeroy family, but no relics of the ancient house remain. According to tradition, the Pomeroy ancestor was jester to Robert the Magnificent, father of William the Conqueror. He was a dwarf, full of comical movements as well as of quips and quirks. As he came in with the dessert he was called Pomme-roy, the Apple King. His son became a faithful servant of William, and was rewarded by him with large manors in Devon and Somersetshire. A junior branch was settled at Ingsdon. The tradition is of course groundless, as the family derived from a place Pomeraye in Normandy, near Bayeux. It probably originated with a family tendency to jest, and to a certain grotesqueness of appearance. It is told by Miss Strickland in her History of the Queens of England. But the odd circumstance about it is that there are Pomeroys now in and about Ashburton of humble degree—the children, the plague of the schoolmaster and mistresses, as they are born humourists, and withal have such a droll appearance and expression as to inevitably provoke mirth.

Holne Church has a good painted screen, and the parsonage is the house in which Charles Kingsley was born. The view of the winding of the Dart from the parsonage garden is beautiful.

Dean Prior was long the place to which poor Robert Herrick was banished. He did not love it, nor did he relish the rude ways of his parishioners. It is to be feared he did not labour very hard to better them. He was buried here in the churchyard in 1674. Here also was laid his servant "Prue," recorded in his poems. Her burial is entered in the register as that of "Prudence Balden, an olde maid," and Herrick's trust that the violet might blossom on her grave is perhaps not unfulfilled, although her grassy mound is not now known.

The Abbey of Buckfast is within an easy walk, and should on all accounts be visited. It is the earliest foundation in Devon, going back to long before the Conquest, in fact no documents exist to show when it was founded. "Mr. Brooking Rowe has suggested that Buckfast Abbey probably existed before the coming of the Northmen; that would be before A.D. 787. It may be so, but, at least, it must be grouped with Bodmin and Glastonbury Abbey as one of a trio of monastic churches which had property in Devon before King Edgar's time, and is probably, with the exception of Exeter, the only monastery before that time existing in the county. Its extreme antiquity may be inferred from the fact that Buckfast itself was never assessed." That is, at the taking of Domesday.

Now I have an idea concerning it. Two of its churches were Harford and South Brent, and both are dedicated to S. Petrock. We find S. Petrock again, further down the Dart, at its mouth. Where we find a Celtic dedication, there we may be pretty certain that either the saint founded the church, or that it was given to him, not necessarily in his lifetime.

In Celtic monasteries, when a grant was made, it was not made to the community, but to the saint personally, who was supposed never to die, and all the lands and churches granted became his personal property. Now, as we find two of the churches belonging to this venerable abbey bearing S. Petrock's name, I think it quite possible that the original abbey may have been, like that of Padstow, a foundation of S. Petrock. When, however, the abbey was re-endowed and recast, and occupied by monks belonging to the Latin orders, S. Petrock would be ignored at Buckfast, and the only indication left of his having once owned the whole territory of Buckfast would be the lingering on of his name in some of the churches that belonged to that same territory.

I am not sure that we have not hard by traces of other Celtic saints, S. Wulvella in Gulwell, a Holywell at Ashburton, and her brother S. Paul of Leon at Staverton, though now supplanted by Paul the Apostle.