A stone was marked with his blood where he was killed. He got up and carried his head to where now stands the church. But "they all did it." These Celtic saints had a remarkable faculty for not only losing their heads, but finding them again.
There is a grand screen painted and gilt in the church.
At Hartland Point, the promontory of Hercules of the ancients, is a lighthouse. When the wind is from the west the Atlantic thunders and foams on one side of the headland, whilst on the other in the bay the sea lies glassy, and reflects the purple-red slaty cliffs. The point rises 300 feet out of the sea, and was probably at one time occupied by a cliff-castle. A visit to Hartland Quay reveals the most extraordinary contortions in the slate rock. The cliffs are sombre, the strata thrust up at right angles to the sea, and over them foam streamlets that discharge themselves into the ocean.
Hartland Abbey was founded by Gytha, the wife of Earl Godwin, and mother of Harold, in honour of S. Nectan, who, she believed, had come to the assistance of her husband in a storm and saved him from shipwreck—as if a true Celtic saint would put out his little finger to help a Saxon! But there was unquestionably a monastery here long before—from the sixth century, when S. Nectan settled on this wild headland.
The large parish was at one time studded with chapels, but these have all disappeared, or been converted into barns. The church is two miles from the village of Hartland.
A walk along the cliffs may be carried to Wellcombe, another foundation of S. Nectan, where is his holy well, recently repaired. The church contains a screen earlier in character than is usually found. There were interesting bench-ends with very curious heads. At the "restoration" a few of the ends were plastered against the screen, and their unique heads sawn away so as to make them fit the place into which they were thrust, but never designed to occupy. Their places were taken by mean deal benches. I suppose as the patron, S. Nectan, lost his head, these chief ornaments of the church were doomed to the same fate.
Wellcombe Mouth is worth a visit; a narrow glen descending to the sea, which here rages against precipitous cliffs.
Another excursion from Bideford should be made to Wear Gifford, where is one of the finest oak-roofed halls in England.
The mansion stands on a slope, rising gently from the meadows near the Torridge, yet rears itself into the semblance of a stronghold by a scarped terrace, which extends along the south front.