BARNSTAPLE, FROM THE SOUTH WALK (p. [47]).
It is below Nymet Rowland that Taw changes its course. Thenceforward it placidly flows amid rich meadows agreeably diversified with woodland. At Eggesford it is overlooked by the Earl of Portsmouth’s seat, peeping out from the trees which climb the left bank. At Chulmleigh it gathers up the Little Dart; and beyond South Molton Road Station the Mole, which gives name to North Molton and South Molton, brings in its tribute from the border of Exmoor. Having laved the foot of Coddon Hill, from whose rounded top one may have far views of the valley in both directions, the Taw flows by the cosy little village of Bishop’s Tawton on the right; along the other bank stretches Tawstock Park, the demesne of the Bourchier-Wreys, set about with fine old oaks. Then with a sudden bend it comes within sight of Barnstaple Bridge, and beyond the South Walk, on the right bank, bordering a pretty little park, appear the graceful tower of Holy Trinity Church—an unusually effective piece of modern Perpendicular work—and the ugly warped spire of the mother church.
The “metropolis of North Devon,” as this comely and lusty little town proudly styles itself, is a very ancient place, which had a castle and a priory at least as far back as the time of the Conqueror; but these have long since vanished, and save for a row of cloistered almshouses dating from 1627, and its bridge of sixteen arches, built in the thirteenth century, it is indebted for its savour of antiquity mainly to the venerable usages that have survived the changes and chances of the centuries. Like Bideford, long its rival among North Devon towns, it fitted out ships for the fleet which gave so good an account of the Spanish Armada. During the Civil War it declared for the popular cause, but was captured by the king’s forces in 1643; and although it soon succeeded in flinging off the royal yoke, it was re-captured, and remained in the king’s hands until nearly the close of the war.
Just below the hideous bridge which carries the South Western line across the Taw is the Quay, on the right bank, and beyond it, lined by an avenue of ancient elms, is the North Walk, now unhappily cut up for the purposes of the new railway from Lynton. The stream, by this time of considerable breadth, widens out yet more during the five or six remaining miles of its course; but its channel is tortuous and shifting, and only by small vessels is it navigable. A few more bends, and Instow and Appledore are reached, and Torridge is sighted as it comes up from the south to blend its waters with those of the sister stream. Then far away over the curling foam of Barnstaple Bar we get a full view of Lundy, its cliffs at this distance looking suave enough, though in truth they are not less jagged than when the Spanish galleon fleeing from Amyas Leigh’s Vengeance was impaled upon their granite spines; while on the left Hartland Point boldly plants its foot in the Atlantic, and on the right Baggy Point marks the northern limit of Barnstaple Bay.
THE TORRIDGE NEAR TORRINGTON (p. [47]).
It is at no great distance from Hartland Point that the TORRIDGE, most circuitous of Devonshire rivers, rises. First flowing in a south-easterly direction past Newton St. Petrock and Shebbear and Sheepwash, it presently makes a bend and follows an almost precisely opposite course north-westwards. In about the middle of the loop which it forms in preparing to stultify itself, it is augmented by the Okement, which has come almost due north from Cranmere Pool, brawling down a valley which, near Okehampton and elsewhere, is finely wooded. Past Yew Bridge and Dolton and Beaford, Torridge continues its sinuous course; and as it approaches Great Torrington, set on a hill some 300 feet above its right bank, its valley presents the combination of smooth haugh and precipitous rock shown in our view (page [49]). Torrington has a history, and little besides. Even the church, enclosed in a notably pretty God’s acre, graced with avenues of beeches and chestnuts, has no special interest save that it contains the carved oak pulpit in which the great John Howe preached before his ejectment in 1662; for it had to be rebuilt after the Civil War, having been blown up by the accidental explosion of a large quantity of gunpowder while it was being used as a magazine and prison. Two hundred Royalists were confined in the building at the time, and these, with their guards, all perished. Winding round Torrington Common, gay in due season with gorse and bracken, our river glides on past Wear Gifford—an idyllically beautiful spot incongruously associated with a melancholy tragedy—to the “little white town” described by Charles Kingsley in the opening paragraph of his one great story. White it hardly is in these days, but this is the only qualification that strict accuracy requires. The famous bridge of four-and-twenty arches dates from about the same period as that at Barnstaple, which it considerably exceeds in length. The town itself lays claim to a much higher antiquity, for it traces its origin to a cousin of the Conqueror, founder of the illustrious line which came to full flower in the Richard Grenville who, as he lay a-dying, after having matched the Revenge against the whole Spanish fleet of three-and-fifty sail, was able proudly to say, in a spirit not unlike that of a later naval hero, that he was leaving behind him “an everlasting fame of a valiant and true soldier, that hath done his duty as he was bound to do.” He it was who revived the fortunes of Bideford after a period of decline, and so increased its prosperity by attracting to it trade from the settlements in the New World that it was able to send seven ships to join the fleet that gathered in Plymouth Harbour to fight the Spaniard. With memories such as these, the town may surely abate its eagerness to have accepted as Armada trophies the old guns which have been unearthed from its dustheap.
Pleasant the course of the stream continues to be, past “the charmed rock of Hubbastone,” where sleeps an old Norse pirate, with his crown of gold, till, with Instow on the right and Appledore on the left, Torridge meets her sister Taw, and the two with one accord turn westward and roll towards “the everlasting thunder of the long Atlantic swell.”
Of the streams that have their fountains on Dartmoor, the longer ones rise, as we have seen, in the northern division of the “forest”; the shorter ones, the Avon, the Erme, the Yealm, and the Plym, come to being in the southern division, at no great distance from each other, and amid surroundings not unlike those of Cranmere Pool; and all of them flow into the Channel on the western side of Bolt Head. Neither of them is without charms of its own; but the PLYM is easily chief among them, and with a rapid sketch of its course from Plym Head, some three miles south of Princetown, to the Sound, the present chapter must end. Flowing by rugged, flat-topped Sheepstor on the right, and Trowlesworthy Tor on the left, Plym presently reaches Cadaford Bridge, where it plunges into a rocky ravine, the precipitous hillside on the left crowned by the church of Shaugh Prior, while from the hill on the right, smothered with oak coppice, projects a huge crag of ivy-clad granite, the Dewerstone, celebrated for its views. At Shaugh Bridge the stream is swollen by the Meavy, which, not far from its source on the moorland, is tapped to supply Plymouth Leat—a work for which the Plymouth folk are indebted to Sir Francis Drake. Afterwards the Meavy runs by the grey granite church of Sheepstor, where, under the shadow of a noble beech, is the massive tomb of Sir James Brooke, of Sarawak fame. Richly-wooded Bickleigh Vale is one of the beauty spots of the Plym; another lovely scene is that at Plym Bridge, where, close to the mossy bridge, is the ruined arch of a tiny chantry, built by the monks of Plympton Priory that travellers might here pray to Heaven for protection before adventuring into the wilds beyond. Of the Priory, founded in the twelfth century to replace a Saxon college of secular canons, nothing remains but the refectory and a kitchen and a moss-grown orchard, which may be seen close to the lichened church of Plympton St. Mary, if we care to wander a little eastwards from the river. Not far off is the other Plympton, with its scanty fragments of a castle of the de Redvers, Earls of Devon. More memorable is Plympton Earl from its association with Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was born here, and sat at his father’s feet in the quaint cloistered Grammar School, where, too, three other painters of note were educated—Sir Joshua’s pupil and biographer, Northcote, the luckless Haydon, and the fortune-favoured Eastlake. Reynolds was not without honour in his own country, at any rate during his life. The Corporation of Plympton once chose him mayor, and he declared to George III. that the election was an honour which gave him more pleasure than any other which had ever come to him—“except,” he added as an afterthought, “that conferred on me by your Majesty.” A portrait of himself, which he painted for his native town, was long treasured in the ancient Guildhall, but the virtue of the Corporation was not permanently proof against temptation, and at last the picture was sold, for £150. This happened a good many years ago.