A book of the west. Volume 1, Devon

by S. Baring-Gould

At some little distance from this spring lies a nameless grave in unconsecrated ground, where is buried a lady banished holy ground for her sins. Every New Year's morn, after the stroke of midnight, she rises and takes "one cock's stride" towards the churchyard, which, when she reaches, she will find rest, and her hope is to be found therein—at the crack of doom.

The three well-parishes lie about the stream of the Aller (W. allwy, to pour forth, to stream), that flows into the Teign below Newton Abbot. But it was not always so. At some remote period, when the great Dartmoor peaks "stood up and took the morning," far higher than they do now, the mountain torrents that swept the detritus of quartz from Hey Tor and Rippon Tor not only filled the lake of Bovey with pure white china clay, till they had converted a basin into a plain, but they also poured between red sandstone and limestone cliffs into the sea at Torbay. Then came a convulsion of nature; these latter formations rose as a wall across the bed of the torrent, and the spill of the granite upland passed down the Teign valley. Then the little Aller was formed of the drainage of the combes of the upraised barrier, and, blushing at its insignificance, it stole through the ancient bottom, cutting its modest way through the beds of quartz clay left by the former occupant of the valley, and, of course, flowing in a direction precisely the reverse of the former flood. The deposits of the earlier stream remain in all the laps of the hills and folds of the valley. They consist of quartz clay, somewhat coloured by admixture of the later rocks that have been fretted by lateral streams.

The first to discover these beds were the gipsies. They were our early potters. These wandering people were wont to camp wherever there was clay, and wood suitable for baking the clay. They set their rude wheels to work, and erected their equally primitive kilns, and spent one half the year in making pots, and the other half in vending them from place to place. When the wood supply was exhausted, then the Bohemians set up their potteries on another spot that commended itself to them, to be again deserted when the wood supplies failed once more.

The reason why the potteries at Burslem and elsewhere in Staffordshire have become permanent is, that there the coal is ready at hand, and that there the native population has taken the trade out of the desultory hands of the gipsies, and has worked at it persistently, instead of intermittently. The old stations, the rude kilns, the heaps of broken and imperfectly baked crocks of the ancient potters, are often come upon in the woods of Aller vale, and among the heather and gorse brakes of Bovey Heathfield.

The Aller vale opens into the Teign, as already said, below Newton Abbot, and extends about four miles south to the village of Kingskerswell, that stands on the crest of the red rocky barrier which diverted the course of the flood from Dartmoor. A branch of the valley to the west terminates at a distance of two miles at the picturesque village of Abbotskerswell, and another branch to the east leads up to the village of Coffinswell. The deepest deposit of clay is at the point where the three parishes converge.

Just nineteen years ago the idea of an art school was mooted in the district. It was enthusiastically taken up by the village doctor at Kingskerswell, in association with an institute for the labourers and young men of the parish, and after a little difficulty he succeeded in getting hold of some premises for the purpose. This earnest-hearted and energetic man, Dr. Symons, did not live to see more than the initiation of his scheme. By many the idea of an art school among village bumpkins was viewed with mistrust, even with disfavour. It was argued, and with truth, that art schools had been started in country towns, and had failed to reach a class below the middle order. Sons and daughters of artisans and labourers would have none of it. Such had been the experience in Newton, such in Torquay. If the intelligent artisan of the town turned his back on the art school, was it likely that Hodge would favour it? When people have satisfied their minds that a certain venture is doomed to failure, they are very careful not to lend their names to it, nor to put out their finger-tips to help it in any way. It was so in this case.

The managers of the Board School, when asked to lend the room for the purpose, refused it. The promoters, failing in every other direction, turned to a poor widow left with two sons, struggling hard to keep soul and body together in a modest "cob" (clay-walled) cottage with thatched roof. She was asked the loan of her kitchen, a room measuring 21 feet by 18 feet, lighted by two small latticed windows, with low open-boarded and raftered ceiling of unhewn timber. Glad to earn a few pence, she consented, and the art classes were started on a career of unexpected success.

The school of art began with a few pupils. A Sunday-school teacher persuaded his class to go to the art school, and perhaps to humour him, rather than with any anticipation of profit, the boys accepted the invitation. The widow's kitchen was whitewashed and clean. On the hearth a log fire blazed. A few simple pictures hung on the walls, and a scarlet geranium glowed in a pot in the window. A couple of trestles supported a plank for a table, and a pair of forms served to seat the pupils. The ploughboy, with his stiff fingers, was set to draw straight lines, and wonderful were his productions. The lines danced, trembled, wriggled, halted, then rushed off the page. They were crackers in their gyrations at first, and then rockets. By degrees the lines became less random, more subdued and purposeful, and finally a crow of delight proclaimed to the whole class that the curly-headed ploughboy had succeeded in producing a musical bar of five fairly parallel lines. Then, with both hands plunged into his pockets, young Hodge leaned back and went off into a roar of laughter. It had dawned on his mind that he could draw a line with a pencil on paper as true as he could with a ploughshare in a field. He had come to the school for a lark, and had found that the self-satisfaction acquired by the discovery of his powers was a lark better than he had expected. The question presented itself from the outset—How was the art school to be maintained? The fires must be kept in full glow, the lamps must be supplied with oil, the widow must be paid to clean her floor after the boys had brought over it the red mud from the lanes. As so much mistrust as to the advantage and prospect of success of the classes was entertained, it was from the first resolved by the promoters not to solicit subscriptions. The whole thing was to be self-supporting. This was represented to the pupils, and they readily accepted the situation. They undertook to organise and keep going through the winter a series of fortnightly entertainments; they would invite some outsiders, but for the most part they would do their best themselves to entertain. The evenings would be made lively with recitations, readings, and songs. Doubtful whether such performance would deserve a fixed charge for admission, the young fellows on putting their heads together determined to make none, but to hold a cap at the door when the "pleasant evening" was over, and let those who had been entertained show their appreciation as they chose.

These fortnightly cottage entertainments became a recognised institution and a source of profit, besides serving as a means of interesting and occupying the pupils. A thing that begins in a small way on right principles, a thing that "hath the seed in itself," is bound to succeed.