DITTISHAM.
Dartmouth, rising from the bank in terraces, wears an aspect hardly less ancient than that of Totnes. It was incorporated in the fourteenth century, but for hundreds of years before that was of note as a harbour. William the Conqueror is said to have sailed herefrom on his expedition for the relief of Mans; a century later the English fleet, or a part of it, gathered here for the third Crusade; and did not Chaucer think that probably his shipman “was of Dertemuthe”? The castle, close to the water’s edge, at the mouth of the harbour, is something more than the picturesque remnant of an ancient fortress, for the wall and foss which surround it enclose also a casemated battery of heavy guns. On the crest of the hill behind are the ruins of Gallant’s Bower Fort. Nearly opposite is Kingswear Castle, which claims an even more remote origin; and crowning the hill at whose base it lies are some remains of Fort Ridley, which, like Gallant’s Bower, was wrested from the Parliamentarians by Prince Maurice, both strongholds, however, being afterwards stormed by Fairfax. The harbour, though a fine, broad sheet of water, is almost landlocked, and the entrance to it is through a strait channel known as “The Jawbones,” which in more primitive days than these was protected by a strong chain stretching from one bank to the other.
MOUTH OF THE DART.
Of the two remaining streams that rise in the morasses around Cranmere Pool, the TAVY runs a course which, though not long, is remarkable for the grandeur and the richness of its scenery. Did space permit, one would be glad to follow it from its peaty spring under Great Kneeset Tor, through the grand defile known as Tavy Cleave, on between Peter Tavy and Mary Tavy to Tavistock, with its statue of Drake, who was born hard by, and its associations with the author of the “Pastorals”; thence past Buckland Abbey, rich in memories of Sir Francis and of the Cistercian monks from whom the neighbouring village of Buckland Monachorum gets its distinctive appellation, and so to Tavy’s confluence with the Tamar. Pleasant also would it be to trace its principal tributary, the Walkham, down its romantic valley, nor less so to track the Lid from its source, a few miles above Lidford, through its magnificent gorge, and onwards to its union with Tamar. But the sands are fast running out, and we must pass on to sketch very rapidly the career of the Taw as it flows first north-eastwards, then north-westwards, to meet the Torridge in Barnstaple Bay.
In the first part of its course the TAW, which the Exe exceeds in length by only five miles, is as frisky and headstrong as the rest of the moorland streams, but as soon as it has got well within the line of civilisation it sobers down, and thereafter demeans itself sedately enough. The first place of interest which it passes is South Tawton, where is Oxenham, now a farmhouse, but formerly the seat of a family of this name who lived here from the time of Henry III. until early in the present century. Of these Oxenhams it is an ancient tradition that a white-breasted bird is seen when the time has come for one of them to be gathered to his fathers. The last appearance of the portent was in 1873, when Mr. G. N. Oxenham, then the head of the house, lay dying at 17, Earl’s Terrace, Kensington. His daughter and a friend, the latter of whom knew nothing of the legend, were sitting in the room underneath the chamber of death when, to quote from Murray’s “Handbook,” their attention “was suddenly roused by a shouting outside the house, and on looking out they saw a large white bird perched on a thorn tree outside the window, where it remained for several minutes, although some workmen on the opposite side of the road were throwing their hats at it in the vain effort to drive it away.” An interesting occurrence, certainly; but if we are to see in it more than a coincidence, what is to be said of the puffin, the only one of its tribe ever recorded to have visited London, which, having found its way so far inland, flew into the rooms of the President of the British Ornithologists’ Union? Must we believe that the adventurous bird was moved to call there in order that its feat might be duly recorded in the Proceedings of the Institution?
Photo: Photo: Vickery Bros., Barnstaple.