Urith: A Tale of Dartmoor

by S. Baring-Gould

Peter Tavy Church, or the Church of St. Peter on the Tavy, is a grey granite edifice, mottled with lichen, with moorstone pinnacles, and a cluster of fine old trees in the yard. Externally the church is eminently picturesque, it was beautiful within at the time of our tale, in spite of the havoc wrought in the period of the Directory; of more recent times it has undergone a so-called restoration which has destroyed what remained of charm.

For a long time it has been matter of felicitation that the old opprobrium attaching to the men of the West Country of being wreckers has ceased to apply; the inhumanity of destroying vessels and their crews for the sake of the spoil that could be got from them has certainly ceased. But we are mistaken if we suppose that wrecking as a profession or pastime has come to an end altogether. The complaint has been driven inwards, or rather, wrecking is no longer practised on ships, which the law has taken under its protection, but on the defenceless parish churches.

The havoc that has been wrought in our churches within the last thirty years is indescribable. In Cornwall, with ruthless and relentless activity, the parish churches have, with rare exceptions, been attacked one after another, and robbed of all that could charm and interest, and have been left cold and hideous skeletons. I know nothing that more reminds one (speaking ecclesiologically) of the desert strewn with the bones of what were once living and beautiful creatures, scraped of every particle of flesh, the marrow picked out of their bones, the soul, the divine spark of beauty and life, expelled for ever.

No sooner does a zealous incumbent find himself in the way of collecting money to do up his church, than he rubs his hands over it and says, "Embowelled will I see thee by and by." Falstaff was fortunately able to get away from the knife. Alas! not so our beautiful old churches. The architect and the contractor are called in, and the embowelling goes on apace. All the old fittings are cast forth, the monumental slabs broken up, the walls are scraped and painted, plaster everywhere peeled off, just as the skin was taken off St. Bartholomew, and the shells are exulted over by architect, contractor, parson, and parishioners, as shells from which the bright soul has been expelled—sans beauty, sans interest, sans poetry, sans everything. The man of taste and feeling crosses the threshold, and falls back with the same sense as comes on the reader of a young lady's novel, as at a mouthful of bread from which the salt has been omitted, of something inexpressibly flat and insipid. Before its restoration, Peter Tavy Church had the remains of a beautiful roodscreen nicely painted and gilt, and an unique pew of magnificent carved oak for the manorial lord to sit in, with twisted columns at the angles supporting heraldic lions.

Anthony Cleverdon dismounted from his horse at the church-yard, hitched up his beast, and entered the graveyard. He saw the sexton there, and talking to him was an old woman in threadbare dress, grey hair, very dark piercing eyes, bent, and leaning on a staff. She was a stranger, at all events, he did not know her, and yet there was a something in her features that seemed peculiar to him. The sexton said something to her, and she at once came down the church path to meet Anthony, extending to him her hand.

"Ah!" she said. "I can see, I can see my Margaret in your face—you have her eyes, her features, and the same toss of head. I know you. You have never, maybe, heard of me, and yet I am your grandmother. Have you come here to see your mother's grave? I am glad, I am glad it is cared for, not, I ween, by your father. Which of you thinks of the mother, and has set flowers on the grave—see, it is alight with primroses?"

"I believe that was Bessie's doing," answered Anthony; then involuntarily he looked at her shabby gown, patched and worn.

"I would like to see Bessie. Is she like you? If so—she is like your mother. Ah! my Margaret was the handsomest girl in all the West of England. You have not forgotten your mother, I hope, young man."

"I do not remember her—you forget she died shortly after I was born."

"How should I know?" The old woman took his hand, and held it fast as she peered into his face with eager eyes. "How should I know, when your father never took the trouble to let me know that my own, my dear and only child, was dead? If I had known she was ill, I would have come to her, though he took, as he threatened to take, the pitchfork to me, if I crossed his threshold. I would have come and nursed her; then, maybe, she would not have died. But he did not tell me. He did not ask me to her burial, and not till long after did I hear she was no more. He was a hard and a cruel man."