Photo: H. T. Cousins, Exmouth.
EXMOUTH, FROM THE BEACON (p. [34]).
Of Twy-ford-town—for so the place was called in former days, in allusion to its fords across the Exe and the Loman at the points where now the streams are spanned by bridges—the most salient feature from the banks of the larger water is the Perpendicular tower of the Church of St. Peter. The body of the church was virtually reconstructed in the ’sixties, with the fortunate exception of its most interesting feature, the Greenaway Chapel, founded nearly four hundred years ago by the merchant whose name it shares with the quaint almshouses in Gold Street. What remains of the ancient castle, which stood hard by the church, has been converted into a modern dwelling and a farmhouse. The old Grammar School, too, on Loman Green, is now divided up into private houses, a more commodious structure, in the Tudor style, having been reared a mile or so out of the town to take its place. Who will begrudge good old Peter Blundell the immortality which this famous school has conferred upon his honest-sounding name? A native of Tiverton, he began life as an errand-boy. With his carefully-hoarded earnings, as Prince tells the story in his “Worthies,” he bought a piece of kersey, and got a friendly carrier to take it to London and there sell it to advantage. So he gradually extended his operations, until he was able to go to town himself, with as much stock-in-trade as a horse could carry. In London he continued to thrive, and in due course was able to fulfil the ambition of his life by establishing himself in the town of his birth as a manufacturer of kerseys; and here he remained until his death, at the ripe age of eighty.
“Though I am not myself a scholar,” the good old man would say with proud humility, “I will be the means of making more scholars than any scholar in England.” And the school founded under his will in 1604 has not failed to justify his boast. The roll of “Blundell’s boys” includes a brace of bishops and an archbishop, the present occupant of the throne of Canterbury, who, before his translation to London, ruled with abundant vigour the diocese to which Tiverton belongs. Yet, without disrespect to spiritual dignities, one may be pardoned for remembering with deeper interest that it was here that “girt Jan Ridd” had his meagre schooling, and fought his great fight with Robin Snell. John, by the way, who left Blundell’s at the age of twelve, must have been considerably less stupid than he appeared to his contemporaries, for when long afterwards he came to describe the combat he was able to say that he replied to his antagonist “with all the weight and cadence of penthemimeral cæsura”; and although he modestly protests that he could “never make head or tail” of the expression, it is clear from his epithets that he knew perfectly well what he was writing about.
But we have paused at the town of the fords too long, and must gird up our loins to follow the Exe southwards to the county town, through scenery which, if on the whole less picturesque than that above Tiverton, is pleasing as one of the most fertile of Devonshire vales cannot but be. Four miles lower down we find ourselves at Bickleigh Bridge, one of the prettiest spots in this part of the Exe valley. Close by is Bickleigh Court, long a seat of the Devonshire Carews, and still belonging to members of the family, though sunk to the uses of a farmhouse. Bickleigh is of some note as the birthplace, towards the end of the seventeenth century, of Bampfylde Moore Carew, “King of the Beggars.” Son of the rector of the parish, he was sent to Blundell’s School, whence he ran away to avoid punishment for some trifling escapade, and threw in his lot with a tribe of gipsies. Next he emigrated to Newfoundland, but after a time came back, and soon signalised himself by eloping from Newcastle-on-Tyne with an apothecary’s daughter, whom, however, he was afterwards good enough to marry. Having rejoined the gipsies, he became their king, and ruled over them until he was transported to Maryland as an incorrigible vagrant. Before long he contrived to escape, and lived for a while with a band of Red Indians. When he returned to civilisation it was in the guise of a Quaker, a part which he successfully played until he grew weary of it, and once more came back to his native land and his nomadic life. Some say that he was afterwards prevailed upon to adopt more settled habits, but of his closing years little is known.
The hill to the right, a little below Bickleigh Bridge, is known as Cadbury Castle, a Roman encampment, and from its summit may be seen, away to the south-east, athwart the river, Dolbury Hill, which, according to the legend, shares with Cadbury a treasure of gold, guarded by a fiery dragon, who spends his nights flying from one hoard to the other. Now the Exe, flowing with a dignity befitting its maturity, receives the tribute of the Culm, which comes from the Blackdown Hills, on the Somerset border, passing Culmstock and Cullompton, and Killerton Park, a finely placed and magnificently wooded demesne of one of the most honourable of Devonshire houses, the Aclands. Over against the point of junction is Pynes, the seat of another family of high repute, the Northcotes, now Earls of Iddesleigh, looking down on the one side upon the valley of the Exe, and on the other upon that of the Creedy, a western affluent after which the town of Crediton is named.
As it approaches the ever-faithful city, lying like Tiverton on the left bank, the Exe is bordered by a green strath, with swelling hills on either hand. No sooner is the suburb of St. David passed than there comes into view the eminence which formed the limits of the ancient Exeter, its summit crowned with trees that half conceal the meagre remains of the Norman castle, while from its southern slope rise the mighty towers of the Cathedral. Pointing out that, although surrounded by hills higher than itself, Exeter is seated on a height far above river or railway, Freeman remarks that we have here “what we find so commonly in Gaul, so rarely in Britain, the Celtic hill-fort, which has grown into the Roman city, which has lived on through the Teutonic conquest, and which still, after all changes, keeps to its place as the undoubted head of its own district. In Wessex such a history is unique. In all Southern England London is the only parallel, and that but an imperfect one.” And he goes on to say that the name teaches the same lesson of continuity that is taught by the site. It has been changed in form but not in meaning. Caerwise, “the fortress on the water,” as it was in the beginning of things, “has been Latinised into Isca, it has been Teutonised into Exanceaster, and cut short into modern Exeter; but the city by the Exe has through all conquests, through all changes of language, proclaimed itself by its name as the city on the Exe.”
Photo: E. D. Percival, Ilfracombe.