mothecombe is a place where explorers and visitors of any kind are severely discouraged, the local landowners, the mildmays of flete, a magnificent modern mansion whose park extends for several miles along the erme and the pamflete creek, having abolished the inns, while their tenants dare harbour no such chancey thing as a stranger. it seems rather mediæval. far from being aggrieved at this, the chance wayfarer is so impressed that he is only too grateful to be allowed to live, instead of being shot at sight. it is, in any case, a difficult matter to explore the coast at beautiful mothecombe, for the summer atmosphere is that of a stewpot, and merely to gently walk the shortest distance bathes one in perspiration. the only thing to do is to enquire the way to revelstoke, the next place marked on the map, and to make for it under as easy conditions as may be.
when at last, after leaving inhospitable mothecombe, the explorer comes to revelstoke, whose name, at any rate, promises something better, he[252] finds himself in rather worse case, and understands why it was the country-people, even within a few miles of it, put their heads together and consulted with one another so deeply, and with so little result. for, beyond a ruined church, solitary on[253] the verge of the cliffs, and at the end of a tangled footpath, overgrown with brambles and nettles, there is no revelstoke at all, and the hospitality foreshadowed by its name is seen to be a thing impossible. it is a very pleasant and romantic place to come to on a bright summer’s morning, but to come strange to it at night——! praise be to the powers that took me, after mothecombe, inland to holbeton instead.
this ruined church of st. peter, near stoke point, nearly overhangs the cliffs of a rocky inlet, but the building itself is so shrouded with ivy, even to the apex of its saddle-backed roof, that it is almost reduced to terms of vegetation, and is, moreover, so overhung with trees that neither from the sea nor from any distance inland is it visible.
the nice taste generally exhibited by newly ennobled personages in their selection of titles is worthy of all praise. when edward charles baring was created a baron, in 1885, he had a choice, among his surrounding properties, of such names as membland, battisborough, noss, newton, and worsewell. noss and worsewell, i should think, were, on the score of euphony, quite out of the question. but—in the phrasing of the newest slang—what was wrong with membland, newton, or battisborough? nothing at all; but there is doubtless a something about the sound of revelstoke that suggests aristocratic devilry and high jinks, infinitely pleasing. not that the name necessarily signifies anything of the kind, for[254] the middle-english meaning of “revel” was not so much a jollification as a disturbance; which seems to have been the inevitable result of those ancient drinking-bouts. the “revel” of this place-name is said to derive from reafful, meaning rapacious. the place, according to this view, is christened after some early reafere, rover, or robber, a progenitor, possibly of that “sir ralph (or rafe) the rover,” familiar to us in the poem of the inchcape rock, off the coast of scotland; and the “stoke” was his stockade, the defence of his robber’s lair. who this robbing rover was—or who they were, for there must needs have been a band of them—there can be little doubt. they were an isolated party of the marauding danes or vikings of the ninth century, whose main body was defeated in a.d. 851 at wembury.
there is no difficulty raised against the pedestrian following the private drive made by lord revelstoke round the coast. in this manner the great piled-up slabs of rock forming stoke point can be seen, with yealm head and the woodlands[257] on the way. but most pilgrims who have already made a long walk of it will undoubtedly feel disposed to cut that detour out and make for the modern church of revelstoke inland, overlooking a creek of the deep sea-channel of the yealm and the villages of noss mayo and newton ferrers. “newton” and “noss” those villages are familiarly styled. they confront one another like putney and fulham across the thames, the old church of newton ferrers in outline the fellow of the new one of revelstoke. but the new building is the veriest upstart. it was built by lord revelstoke in 1882, at a cost of £29,000, and is a very prominent example of great cost, much pretension, and little real art. less of the ecclesiastical furnishers’ work and more solid, if less showy, fittings would have made the church more worthy its beautiful site. that riches take to themselves wings is exemplified here; for in less than ten years from the completion of this church and the ornate rebuilding of membland hall, came the great baring financial crash, and with it the impoverishment of lord revelstoke.
the yealm runs up, as a deep, narrow and beautiful salt estuary for some three miles inland, and excursion steamers from plymouth penetrate so far as steer point, where kitley and coffleet creeks branch right and left to yealmpton—“yampton” locally—and brixton, and in the middle the smaller creek of puslinch. the fresh water stream of the yealm, like all the streams of south devon, comes from dartmoor. the[258] banks of the estuary are deeply wooded and extremely picturesque; presenting, more than any of those numerous inlets that are so notable a feature of this coast, the appearance of a gorge; noss mayo standing on its branch creek, deriving, indeed, the first part of its name from the projecting height—the “ness” or “nose”—on which it stands. noss in 1849 suffered terribly from cholera, and even more terribly two centuries ago, when only seven of its inhabitants survived.
by the row-boat ferry at yealm mouth the explorer is put to the tiring scramble towards wembury. descending the hillside fields of corn, the lonely church is seen, and over it, out to sea, the famous mewstone appears, rising, a huge, abrupt and angular mass of dark limestone rock, a mile off-shore. dangerous, and nearly inaccessible though it be at most times, it and its surrounding sea look so innocent and harmless under the sun of a still day in july that the evil reputation of that rock and these waters seems based on insubstantial grounds. yet the mewstone has amply occasioned the poetic tribute:
“the sullen crash, the shriek of wild despair,
one moment swell the gust that whistles by;
the next—no sound of living voice is there,
none, save the waken’d sea-mew’s dreary cry.”
the verse points to the origin of the name of this and the several other mewstones along this coast of devon; the sea-mew is of course the sea-gull, and these isolated reefs so many “sea-gull rocks.” references are often found in literature[259] to the “laughter of the gulls,” but the name of “sea-mew” more nearly indicates the sound of the peevish cry of those birds, which closely resembles the mew of a cat.
about 1836 the mewstone was inhabited by one samuel wakeham and his wife, who lived in a little rustic house and looked after squire calmady’s rabbits, which swarmed the seemingly lifeless rock. the mewstone was made the subject of an article in a local south devon magazine, and (according to the editor of it) drew the annexed reply from the “lord of the isles,” as the editor calls him. the thing is amusing, but smells suspiciously like an editorial invention:
“on bored the moostone septembur the fust sur, i ham verry mutch obliged to u for puttin a drawen of the moostone an mi howse into youre booke an i rite this to tel u that no won cant wark from the moostone to the shoar at lo warter for a six ore gig as i nose cud be toed over the roks without runnen fowl of it or a smawl bote mite sale over in good wether squire kill maid he nose the same i ave a been livin hear a long time an i never seed the hole beech all across dry at no time whatsumdever the see warshes over sum part of them for i nose all the roks an goes down their to pik sof crabs for bate gainst i goes a chad fishen an me wife youre hum bell servant
“to cum hand samel warkeam
“po. scrip
“if any genteelman what likes a wark he can wark[260] to the shoar at wembury an if they holds up there white pockethanchecuffs for a signal an ile cum off in me bote an fetch them to the island for two pence a pease an you furgot to say that there’s a bewtifull landin place dead easterd on the iland an sum stairs that i made to cum up for the ladeys an ile be verry mutch oblige to put this in your booke you maid a mistake i be not fortey ears old i be only 39 an 6 munths.
“samel warkeam”
“p.s. youve a forgot to say that ive a got a bewtifull kayl plat for the gentlemen an ladeys for to play to keels an shut rabets at nine pens a pease eccept the panches for me piggs an kip the jackits ov em
an my missus hasent got no hobjectsiuns to boyll the kittle an make the tay pon the kayll plat an hand the tay pot out of the winder an put a tabell outside the winder on every thing hum bell an comfortabell.”
there is no village at wembury; only, down beneath the swelling contours of those hillside cornfields, a church, a farmstead, and a water-mill on the very verge of the beach: the whole so situated and of such a singularly unnatural loneliness and air of detachment that you feel sure whatever history may have to say of the place, or whatever it may leave unsaid—you feel sure, i say, that the sea has at some time come up and munched off a great piece of land and the village with it, and has long ago digested the whole.[261] and indeed what is left of wembury is situated in a little semi-circular bay, where the downs descend to low clifflets of friable earthy rock, which is now slaty, now gravelly, and again of the red devonian sandstone, all by turns. it is as though that hungry sea had come suddenly and taken a mouthful, as you might bite a piece of bread and butter.
descending to this strange spot, you look down upon the leads of the church tower and thence come by rough and steep tracks to the shore, where a little stream runs by the water-wheel of the old mill on to the shingle of the beach. so near is the wheel to the sea that in times of storm the salt water of the waves mingles with the fresh, and so close to the tide are the walls of the mill-house that when the winds lash the waters into foaming breakers the rooms smell of the salt spray, and are filled with the clamour of the elements.
here the singular picturesqueness of the place is most fully revealed, and the church to which just now you descended is seen to stand high and boldly above the beach, on a commanding knoll, girt about with a circular brick retaining-wall heavily buttressed, lest it, as well as the church, and the churchyard it shores up from a sudden descent, should come toppling down in common ruin.
the age, the rugged beauty, and the interest of the church are almost completely hidden beneath a coating of plaster, and the grass grows[262] rankly in the churchyard, where the odd epitaph may be noted:
henry kembil
died nov. 25 1725
’tis over with your friend
mind that.
an arresting inscription, surely, and not a little puzzling until it is discovered that henry kembil was a ferryman of the yealm and a portion of his epitaph is a play upon the word “over,” by which, shouting across the river, the would-be passenger who is versed in devon ways still brings the ferryman to him.
save, indeed, for the hullabaloo created by the battleships out to sea and the forts off plymouth,[263] practising their heavy guns, wembury would scarce be associated with bloody war; yet if this place is really the “wicganbeorch” of the anglo-saxon chronicle—as by antiquaries it is supposed to be—it saw particularly hard fighting in a.d. 851, when “ceorl the ealdorman, with the men of devon fought against the heathen men (that is, the danes), and there made great slaughter and got the victory.”
those “heathen” men or danes were the vikings, of whom early history has so much to tell; but here we see the anglo-saxon chronicler, in writing “wicganbeorch,” which means wiking-bury—adopting the advice given so many centuries later by tony weller to his dutiful sam, and “spelling it with a ‘we.’”
the big gun practice of the battleships out in the channel, whose roaring is like that of several thunderstorms growling in concert across the water, is very impressive, and majestic, and altogether different from the sound of firing from the forts, producing a less resonant noise, like that of rude and impudent persons, very much out of temper, violently and continually slamming doors.
oh! it is good to stand on the beach of a primitive place like wembury when the sea breeze blows in strong, and the great curling waves come creaming up to the very walls of the mill-house, with the stinging salt particles on your face and an unutterable sense of vitality and freedom clothing you, and the giant waves spouting out yonder on the mewstone, and the hoarse jamboree[264] of the great guns bellowing yonder. but when the sea and the air are still and the august sun glares down upon the hilly coast, why then there is nothing for it but to either rest till sundown or plod on exhaustedly in a reeking moist heat, welcoming every little puff of wind on the rises, and almost sinking to the ground in the stew-pan of the hollows.
