the little coach that runs daily from dartmouth to kingsbridge has a steep climb up out of dartmouth. here the pedestrian certainly has the advantage, for, tracing his coastwise way round through the woods of warfleet creek, where a disused limekiln by the waterside looks very like an ancient defensible tower, he comes at last upon the strangely grouped church of st. petrox, the castle, and the abandoned modern battery, all standing in a position of romantic beauty, where the sea dashes in violence upon the dark rocks. the “garrison” of dartmouth castle in these days is generally a sergeant of garrison artillery retired from active service, or in some condition of military suspended animation not readily to be understood by a logically minded civilian. it is a situation worthy of comic opera: in which you perceive the war office erecting batteries for defending the entrance to the harbour, and then, having completed them, furnishing the works with obsolete muzzle-loaders, capable of impressing no one save the most ignorant of[195] persons. then, these popguns having been demonstrated useless, even to the least instructed, they are removed at great expense, and their places left empty: it having occurred in the meanwhile to the wiseacres ruling the army that, in any case, under modern conditions, a hostile fleet would be able to keep well off shore and to throw shells into dartmouth, without coming in range of any ordnance ever likely to be placed at the castle.
so the sergeant-in-charge, who lives here with his wife and family, and is apparently given free quarters and no pay, on the implied condition that he makes what he can out of tips given by tourists, is not burdened with military responsibilities. the present incumbent appears to have developed strong antiquarian tastes, is learned in the local military operations of cromwell’s era, and a successful seeker after old-time cannonballs and other relics of strange, unsettled times.
you cannot choose but explore the interior of the castle, for as you approach there is, although you may not suspect it, an eye noting the fact. the eye is the sergeant’s, and there is that way about old soldiers which admits of no denial when he proposes that he shall show you over. you are shepherded from one little room to another, peer from what the sergeant calls the “embershaws” (by which he means embrasures), and then, offering the expected tribute for seeing very little, depart.
the coastguard path ascends steeply from[196] dartmouth castle and follows a rough course along a deeply indented headland of dark slate-rock, that plunges almost everywhere, without hesitation, into deep water. patches of sands are few and inaccessible; and, confronting every good ship making from the south-west for dartmouth, the black ham stone rises with an ugly menace from sunshiny seas, ringed around with its own little circle of foam. thus you come, round hollowcombe head and redlap cove to stoke fleming, past rocky bastions, where the rival yellows of sea-poppy and yellow toad-flax enliven the dark slate, and the devon “wall-flower” the spur valerian, not the gilly-flower—flourishes bravely in occasional masonry walls.
stoke fleming, standing high and wind-swept, is of a cornish sternness, and its great dark church tower is so bleak-looking, that not even the sunniest day can put a cheerful complexion upon it. it was built in the perpendicular period, and is just about as complete an example of long-drawn perpendicularity as can be imagined, rising, stage upon stage, until at last it ends, for all the world as though the old-time architect of it had gone on, like a child building with a “box of bricks,” as far as he dared. a perky little banneret vane on the roof aids this impression. ferns grow plentifully in the joints of the masonry, to the very summit, and are every now and then removed, but they always reappear. the tower is said to have been built as a mark for sailors, but however that may be, it is certainly one of a very numerous type in south devon, and own brother to that of halwell, quite six miles from the sea.
below stoke fleming lies the charmingly sequestered glen of blackpool, where a little stream comes out of an emerald valley and oozes away through a perfect semicircle of sands, guarded by pinnacled rocks. dense masses of trees, some of them strangely exotic in appearance, overhang the road. this quiet and beautiful spot was the scene of a descent by the bretons in 1403. an expedition set out from across the channel, under the command of one du chatel, and after raiding tenby and plymouth came ashore at blackpool with the object of taking dartmouth in the rear. unfortunately for them, the devonshire folk had got[198] wind of what was in store, and when the raiders landed they happened unexpectedly upon some six hundred defenders, lying hid until the supreme moment, behind entrenchments. among these valiant defenders of hearth and home were many women, who fought like devils and slew great numbers of breton knights and men-at-arms with catapults. only a sorry remnant of the invaders escaped those gentle creatures, and dartmouth was on that occasion saved. but, bolder and with the reward of boldness, others came the next year and sailed in to dartmouth town and burnt it to the ground.
blackpool sands were destined to witness a yet more historic landing, for it was here that the great earl of warwick, the “kingmaker,” who had made edward the fourth king, and then quarrelled with his handiwork, came back from exile in 1471, with an armed expedition, intent upon unmaking him. it was warwick’s last throw, and ended[199] a few weeks later with his defeat and death at the battle of barnet.
sunday-school treats are held nowadays on the golden sands of blackpool; sands that in more than a figurative sense have been found golden, for a discovery was made here in modern times of gold coins dating from that period, and doubtless lost in the confusion of the landing.
the entirely uninteresting hamlet of street passed, standing at the head of the next rise, the road goes, steep and winding, down to one of the most remarkable stretches of coast-line in devon; the famous slapton sands, a flat two miles of raised beach along which, ages ago, the present high road was formed. the sands take their name from the village of slapton, a mile inland, and consist of small shingle thrown up by the sea, and banking back the outflow of three streams, which thus forms a long and marshy freshwater lake, the whole length of this shingly bank. just as you come down-hill upon the finest view from above of the sea, the sands, the ley, as this freshwater lake is named, a long and lofty blank wall shuts out the scene and proclaims the malignant humour of the landowner who built it.
sparse and hungry-looking grass grows on the ridge of the shingle, but the yellow sea-poppy thrives, and so does the spurge, or milkwort, whose poisonous juice is milk-white and innocent-looking. here, too, on the inner face of the bank, looking upon the rush-grown waters of the ley, the purple blossoms and hairy leaves of the[200] mallow are abundant, while bordering the highway, and braving the dust of it, are masses of the thrift or sea-pink.
the ley, or lea, is one of the most noted resorts of wild birds in devon, and its two hundred acres are frequented in winter by sportsmen, whose headquarters are the lonely “sands hotel,” standing solitary, a mile from anywhere, on the shingly ridge, facing the sea one way, and on the other the highroad and the ley.
the waters of the ley are crowded with ferocious pike and other fish, and the vast banks of sedge and rush are peopled thickly, not only with the winter concourse of wild duck and geese, but with the shy birds of the fields and woods. inland, the marshy lowlands ascend gently, with white-faced cottages in little groups among the trees, and an old bridge spans the water at a favourable point and helps a bye-road on the way to slapton. the scene is not greatly disturbed; the midday coach comes by on the high road, with a cheerful tootling of its horn, and disappears, on the way to torcross; a wild bird pipes as it flies overhead, and a fish leaps up from the still water, after a fly; that is the summer aspect. but in winter the wild-fowler wakes the echoes of the hills with his sport, and when the gales blow strong out of the south-west there is a sea-wrack in the air and foam in the road, that make the enterprise of walking from street to torcross almost as wet a business as sea-bathing.
torcoss is a hamlet at the extremity of the[201] sands, where the road turns inland to charleton, stokenham, and kingsbridge. its back is to the slightly projecting headland that divides these sands from the further stretches of sand and shingle, extending towards the start, and with an air of wondering mildly at its own existence, and further wondering if it is really worth while to exist at all, it faces the long flat road along which we have come. of all the unlikely places, here is an hotel, and out of that hotel, as the present chronicler passed, there came a german waiter in a dress suit, and stood on the beach among the bronzed fishermen, watching the evolutions of a naval squadron, half a mile off-shore, in the deep water of start bay. thinking many things and strange, i passed upon my way.
the direct road to kingsbridge lies to the right hand, through stokenham. that the quiet of country life was in the long ago occasionally[202] broken by picturesque doings denied to us is evident in this extract from the parish records of the year 1581:
“henri muge, a pirat of the sea, was hanged in chains upon the start, the 28 day of september.”
another interesting record at stokenham—which, by the way, you must be careful not to pronounce “stok’n’am” but “stoke-en-ham,” as though it were a dish, like eggs-and-ham—is the epitaph upon:
“katherine randle, daughter of william richard randle, who was shot march 12th, 1646.
“kind reader, judge! here’s under laid
a hopeful, young and virtuous maid,
thrown from the top of earthly pleasure
headlong; by which she’s gained a treasure.
environed with heaven’s power,
rounded with angels from that hour
in which she fell: god took her home,
not by just law, but martyrdom.
each groan she fetched upon her bed
roar’d out aloud ‘i’m murdered!’
and shall this blood which here doth lye
in vain for right and vengeance cry?
do men not think, tho’ gone from hence,
avenge god can’t her innocence?
let bad men think, so learn ye good,
live each that’s here doth cry for blood.”
this is a relic of the siege of salcombe castle and the military operations between cavaliers and the parliament troops. it seems that the puritan soldiery, attacking a farm-house, were[203] met with a stout resistance and fired through a window, mortally wounding the farmer’s daughter.
to follow the coast from torcross to the start, it is necessary at this point to take to the sands, or, more strictly speaking, the shingle; extremely heavy walking, but endurable on account of the interesting rocks piled up in huge masses on the shore. the slaty cliffs have here fallen in ruins, with picturesque results. some of the great blocks twenty feet or more in height, have sides quite smooth and lustrous.
we are here in a district not indeed far removed from modern accommodation, but in the same primitive condition as it must have been a century, or even more, ago. the fine shingle gives place to a waste of laminated slate and then, where the cliffs die away for a space into a marshy bottom, to a scrubby flat piece of waste leading to the hamlet of beesands, marked on many maps as beeson cellar.
beesands has a perpetual air of rejoicing, for on every fine day the waste between the sea and the one row of fishermen’s cottages flies its banners to sea and sky. it is only the domestic wash hung out to dry, but the effect is one of festival.
there is a something irish in the look and the manners and customs of beesands. the drying-ground of washing and of fishing-nets is rich in old tins and brickbats, and is populated numerously with fowls, housed as a rule in decayed boats turned keel upward. they are the most trustful cocks and hens in the world, and follow[204] the fishermen into the inn and the cottages like dogs.
a tourist not preoccupied with the arts would inevitably style this a “miserable place,” a “wretched hole,” or other things uncomplimentary; but to a painter, wanting atmosphere and utter unconventionality, it is delightful. poor fisherfolk are its only inhabitants, and its one inn neither offers accommodation to the tourist, nor, if it did, would he be likely to accept it. for one thing, strangers, either here or at the sister hamlet of hall sands are rare, both places being innocent of roads of any kind. just a row of rude whitewashed cottages on the level: that is beesands, and just a double row of somewhat superior cottages on the cliffside; that is hall sands.
[205]
a mile of climbing up cliff paths and scrambling down, and then across another scrubby bottom where the white campions grow, brings the adventurous stranger to hall sands, built into the tall dark cliffs, just as the house-martens plaster their nests against the eaves. the hardihood—the foolhardihood, if you like it better—that ever induced mortal man to build houses in this perilous position under the threatening eaves of the cliffs and on the margin of the waves can only be appreciated by those who look upon the place itself. it beggars description.
the scene is one of a wild beauty, the cliffs rising dark and craggy overhead, draped thickly with ivy, the end of the street blocked with gigantic masses of fallen rock, and the sea at the very foot of some of the houses; with here and there a narrow strip of beach.
the hardy fisherfolk exist chiefly on seine-net fishing and crab and lobster-catching. the trained newfoundland dogs that are still a feature of this hamlet and of beesands are fewer than of yore. there were some seven or eight of them, taught to swim out through the particularly rough surf of this shore, to meet incoming boats and bring the end of a rope to the beach, so that the boats might be hauled in.
the later history of hall sands is somewhat thrilling. it seems that for some years past the shingle in front of hall sands has been dredged away by the contractors for the extension works at keyham dockyard, plymouth, for the purpose of making concrete, and that the government committed the incredible folly of allowing it. the inevitable and foretold result happened. in september 1903 most of the foreshore disappeared in a storm, and in the spring of 1904 the very existence of hall sands was threatened. the one inn of the place, the “london,” stood with other cottages on a piece of rock jutting out to sea. suddenly, one afternoon, a heavy ground-swell wrecked them. the landlady was making tea, when the side of the house disappeared, without warning. since then hall sands has been without an inn. to help build the new concrete sea-wall and the slipway, which have since been built in the effort to remove the danger[208] that ought never to have been incurred, the government granted £1,750, while the member of parliament for the county division subscribed £250, and the contractors contributed an unascertained sum. the whole miserable history would assure us, if we did not already know it, that governments—it matters not of what party—are entirely callous upon subjects that do not endanger their own existence. now if this had happened in ireland, the outcry against the “murdering saxon” would have been appalling.
