A book of the west. Volume 1, Devon

by S. Baring-Gould

We have, in the caves of France, evidence of the successive layers of civilisation, one superposed on the other, down to the reindeer hunter, who ate horses, represented by the cave-earth man of Kent's Hole; and in this latter we have this same man superposed on the traces of the still earlier man of the river-drift. To make all plainer, I will add here a summary of the deposits.

	{ Modern, Roman, etc.	}
	{ Iron Age, Celtic, bronze ornaments.	} Fauna, as
Neolithic	{ Bronze weapons, Ivernian, flint	} at present.
	{ tools.	}
	{ Flint and pottery.	}
	{ Flint and bone tools, cave-men.	} Hyena,
Palaeolithic	{ Rudest flint tools, river-drift	} cave-bear,
	{ men.	} reindeer,
		} mammoth.

There are remains of a cliff castle at Long Quarry Point; from its name one may conjecture that a church stood in Celtic times on Kilmarie. Almost certainly this was a cliff castle, but the traces have disappeared.

The old church of Tor Mohun is dedicated to S. Petrock, as is shown by a Bartlett will in Somerset House, in 1517. Tor Abbey has been crowded into a narrow space by encroaching buildings. Cockington House and church deserve a visit, as forming a charming group. Paignton Church contains a very fine but mutilated tomb with rich canopy and screenwork, showing that there must have been in the fifteenth century a native school of good figure sculptors. Marldon Church is also interesting, and in that parish is the curious Compton Castle, of which history has little to say. Haccombe, the seat of the Carews, has a church crowded with fine monumental effigies. The mansion is about the most hideous that could be conceived. It is said that a Carew pulled down his fine Elizabethan mansion and went to Italy, leaving instructions to an architect to build him a handsome house in the Georgian style.

When he returned and saw what had been erected: "Well," said he, "I believe that now I may take to myself the credit of possessing the very ugliest house in the county." The situation is of exquisite beauty. How lovely must have been the scene with a grave old Elizabethan manor-house, mottled with white and yellow lichen, embowered in trees, above which rose the hills, the evening sun glittering in its many mullioned windows, while the rooks wheeled and cawed about it.

The little combes that dip into the estuary of the Teign, rich with vegetation growing rank out of the red soil, are very lovely. Stoke-in-Teignhead not only has a good screen, but it is a parish that has never had a squire, but has been occupied from the sixteenth century by substantial yeomen, who have maintained themselves there against encroaching men of many acres. Combe-in-Teignhead has a very fine screen and equally good old benches.

Wolborough has a good church occupying a site that was once a camp, and contains an excellent screen, well restored and glittering with gold and colour. East Ogwell has also a screen, and the old manor mill is a picturesque object for the pencil. Denbury is a strong camp.

Torbrian, situated in a lovely spot, has fine screenwork and monuments of the Petres. The three Wells, Coffinswell, Kingskerswell, and Abbotskerswell, lie together. At Kingskerswell are some old monumental effigies of the Prowse family. At Abbotskerswell are a screen, and a large statue of the Blessed Virgin in a niche of the window splay. This latter had been plastered over into one great bulk; when the plaster was removed the statue was revealed. The very fine Jacobean altar-rails were removed at the "restoration," to make place for something utterly uninteresting. Here there is an early and interesting church-house. The church-house was the building in which the parishioners from a distance spent a rainy time between morning service and vespers. The house was divided by a floor into two storeys, that above for women, that below for the men. Here were also held the church ales, that is to say, the ale brewed by the wardens and sold to defray church expenses. The ale was also supplied on Sundays by the clerk to those who tarried for evensong, and so, little by little, most of these old church-houses degenerated into taverns.

Abbotskerswell is the seat of the Aller pottery art manufacture, started by the late Mr. John Phillips, with the object of providing the village young men with remunerative work at their own homes. But about this presently. The story of the inception of the work is interesting.

Coffinswell still possesses its holy well, that is called the "Lady Well," used by young girls for fortune-telling.