Although Culmstock and its immediate vicinity is somewhat deficient in what I have ventured to term “live” interests, it must not be inferred that the neighbourhood has nothing further to show; and among the objects that deserve to be scheduled as worthy of attention are the colossal stone quarries at Westleigh, which, whether viewed from the parallel line of railway or from the opposite height on which stands Burlescombe Church, present an imposing spectacle. For ages they have been the principal source of supply for the district, huge quantities of limestone having been drawn from them for building and agricultural purposes. Much of it was formerly conveyed to Tiverton in barges towed along the canal, the terminus of which was fitted with a number of kilns. These, in my boyhood, I have often seen burning, and regarded with no little awe, owing to stories that were circulated of persons having gone to sleep on the margin, fallen over into the glowing furnace, and been consumed to powder. They are now a picturesque ruin. Older men can recall a yet earlier time when pack-horses came to Westleigh from Tiverton and fetched lime in boxes. In front was a man riding a pony, and the horses followed without compulsion.

The string of pack-horses mentioned in chapter ii. of Lorna Doone, as arriving from Sampford Peverell, may be a reminiscence of this traffic.

Not far from the entrance to the Whiteball tunnel, and in the neighbourhood of the great limestone quarries, in a pleasant meadow facing south, are the ruins of Canonsleigh Abbey. To a connoisseur like Mr F. T. Elworthy, these remains tell their own story, and it is thanks to that gentleman’s investigations and researches that we are able to furnish a concise account of the ancient nunnery. A gateway yet stands, though unhappily disfigured by the desecrating touch of modern man, and near it is a doorway of red sandstone leading to a staircase doubtless belonging to the porter. In the upper storey, square-headed windows—wrought, we may believe, in the fourteenth century—command the approach in either direction; other features are less easy to determine, since there are modern walls and a modern roof, which have been added for the purpose of turning the place into a shed, and incidentally obscure the older architecture.

Without spending more time here, let us pass to a quadrangular building of massive construction, and supported at two of its angles by solid buttresses. Situated at the east end of the convent, this is considered to have been a great flanking tower communicating, by means of strong walls (fragments of which yet remain), at the angles opposite to the buttresses, with the residential portions. The outer or enclosing wall of the abbey precincts started from the middle of the east wall of the tower; and under the middle of the tower flowed a stream, which issued through a covered exit and continued its course outside the boundary wall, washing its base. The reason for this somewhat peculiar arrangement was a good one—the supply of the abbey stews; but its effect was to throw the tower out of line with the walls and the other buildings.

Inside the walls were two spaces, irregular in shape, and clearly open courtyards, from one of which a doorway led into the tower. The chief entrances seem to have been from the two or more floors of the domestic quarters. On the side next the convent, approached by a massive doorway, is a narrow chamber, conjectured to have been a “guard-room” for refractory nuns. Over this, but running the entire length of the building, and not, like the lower floor, divided by wall and doorway, is a floor supported by beams.

This tower, with the plaster clinging to its walls—how can we explain its survival when the rest of the once stately abbey has vanished? Probably the reason lies partly in its strength and partly in its plainness and the absence of wrought stone tempting human greed. As has been well said, “it still stands a picturesque and sturdy relic of an age of good lime-burners and honest masons.” The wrought stone of one or two windows in the adjacent walls has been removed, but what indications remain suggest the close of the twelfth century as that virtuous age.

The Priory of Leigh was founded, Dr Oliver says, in the latter half of the twelfth century, and Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph opines, before 1173. In its infant days, it seems to have been a dependency of Plympton Priory—at any rate, in the estimation of the latter monastery, whose head claimed the right to appoint the superior of Leigh. This demand was resisted, and in 1219 the then Bishop of Exeter composed the quarrel by deciding, as a sort of compromise, that the Prior of Plympton might, if he chose, be present at the election.

In the second half of the thirteenth century there were scandals at Leigh calling for episcopal cognisance and visitation; and these disorders proving incurable, Bishop Quivil went the length of ejecting the prior and canons, and transferring the monastery, with all its belongings, to a body of canonesses of the same rule of St Augustine. And Matilda de Tablere became the first Prioress of Leigh. Next year, Matilda de Clare, Countess of Gloucester and Hertford, presented the convent with the (then) great sum of six hundred marks, in acknowledgment of which Bishop Quivil erected the priory into an abbey, and appointed the countess its abbess.

The patron saints, under the old rÉgime, had been the Blessed Virgin Mary and St John the Evangelist. St Ethelreda the Virgin was now added, and practically displaced St Mary, whose name is omitted in later descriptions. Another change affected the name of the place, “Mynchen” being often substituted for “Canon”-leigh. “Mynchen” is the old English feminine of “monk,” and therefore equivalent to the modern “nun.”

The indignant canons did not take their extrusion meekly. They appealed to the archbishop, and, through him, to the king, against the usurpation of the “little women,” but they appealed in vain.

Sad to relate, the ladies do not appear to have behaved much better than their predecessors. In 1314 Bishop Stapledon, Quivil’s successor, addressed a letter to his dear daughters in Christ, telling them in Norman-French that he had heard of many deshonestetes, and calling particular attention to the fact that there was an entrance into the cellar where a man brewed le braes, and another under the new chamber of the abbess! These he ordered to be closed by a stone wall before the following Easter.

The abbey was suppressed in February 1538, and at the end of the same year the king granted a lease of the site and precincts, with the tithes of sheaf and the rectories of Oakford and Burlescombe, to Thomas de Soulemont, of London. The inmates, however, were not turned adrift on the charity of the cold world. Each received a pension, and this, in the case of the abbess, Elisabeth Fowell, was considerable. There were eighteen sisters in all, and some of them, as is proved by their names—Fortescue, Coplestone, Sydenham, Carew, Pomeroy—were of good West-country extraction.

In course of time the property passed through various hands, and out of the spoils of the abbey a certain owner appears to have built a mansion, which was demolished in 1821.

From Canonsleigh let us away to Dunkeswell, about equidistant from Culmstock, but in another direction. On the journey we may look again at the grassy plateau which has Culmstock Beacon at one extremity and the Wellington Monument, set up in honour of the Iron Duke and his victories, at the other. This stretch of moorland is yet in its primitive state, and the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, whose property it is, exercise zealous supervision over it. Time was when the villagers depastured their donkeys thereon, but of late years the privilege seems to have been withdrawn.

The Blackdowns, generally, have been enclosed and turned into farms; and although one sometimes stumbles on desolate fields with patches of gorse, mindful of their ancient savagery, this does not affect, to any appreciable extent, the character of the country. On the whole, a ride or walk across the long level chines is not specially delightsome, save indeed for the wholesome air and an occasional glimpse of a fairy-like mappa mundi spread out at their base. It is only when one descends into charming little villages, like Hemyock, or Dunkeswell, or Broadhembury, with their orchards fair and hollyhocks, that complete satisfaction is attained, and then it is attained.

Amidst so much that is bare (and on this subject we have not said our last word) the ivied ruins of Dunkeswell Abbey, nearer Hemyock than Dunkeswell village, and lending its name to a very respectable hamlet, assuredly deserve remark. Situated in a charmingly secluded spot, they consist merely of parts of the gatehouse and fragments of walls. The latter have a blackened appearance as if the destruction of the buildings had been accelerated by fire; more probably, however, this is due to the mould of age. In its heyday the abbey boasted an imposing range of buildings, the outlines of which may still be traced in the grass, when, in the drought of summer, it withers, more rapidly than elsewhere, over the foundations.

The history of the abbey is almost as scanty as its remains. It was founded in 1201 by William Lord Briwere or Bruere, on land that had previously belonged to William Fitzwilliam, who, having borrowed from one Amadio, a Jew, was compelled to mortgage his manor of Dunkeswell. According to one version, Briwere redeemed the land from the Hebrew, but a charter of King John shows the vendor to have been Henry de la Pomeroy. There is clearly a tangle. Possibly Pomeroy bought Dunkeswell from the mortgagee and resold it to Briwere, who, in any case, bestowed it on the Cistercians of Ford.

Just outside the north wall of the modern church may be seen a stone coffin, with depressions for the head and heels. It is one of two that were discovered some thirty years ago covered with plain Purbeck slabs, and containing skeletons—a man’s and a woman’s; in all likelihood, those of the powerful Lord Briwere and his good lady. The body of the founder, it is known, was laid to rest in 1227 in the choir of the abbey church; and it is only natural to suppose, though there is no evidence to prove it, that husband and wife shared a common tomb. The bones, placed together in one of the coffins, were reinterred, while the other coffin, as I said, has been suffered to remain above-ground, a gazing-stock for posterity.

The abbey was richly endowed by its founder with lands and tenements, including the manor of Uffculme and the mill there; and his munificence was supplemented by liberal gifts from the monks of Ford and others. At the date of its surrender, February 14, 1539, the annual value of the property amounted to £300—a large income in those days.

Most of the notices relating to the abbey are drawn either from the Coroners’ or De Banco Rolls, and, as they are concerned with actions for debt or trespass, are anything but entertaining. The one exception is the account or accounts of the storming of Hackpen Manor by John Cogan, of Uffculme, his son Philip, and others, in the year of grace 1299. Entering the buildings vi et armis, they ejected the monks and lay brethren, who, after the custom of their order, were carrying on farming operations there; and beat and wounded two of the abbot’s servants to such purpose that he was deprived of their services for a year or longer. Moreover, they were said to have captured three score oxen and a score of cows, and driven them to Cogan’s manor of Uffculme, whither also they bore certain furcÆ, which were there burnt.

To this grave indictment Cogan replied, denying the trespass, and alleging that the two manors adjoined, and that the abbot desired to “lift” furcÆ, etc., the property of Cogan, whereupon he instructed his men to prevent him, which they did. Now as to those furcÆ. Writing aforetime on the subject, I fell into the pardonable error, if error it be, of supposing that the term, being employed in an agricultural or pastoral context, denoted “pitchforks.” It is my present

belief that these furcÆ were the kind of thing that gave its name to Forches Corner, just over the Somerset border—in other words, gallows. The abbot, as lord of Broadhembury, had not only assize of bread and beer in that manor, but, very certainly, a gallows. The Lady Amicia, Countess of Devon, had at least one gallows, and considering the extent of her domains, probably gallows galore; and apparently John Cogan had one. The Abbot of Dunkeswell, it seems to me, must have had at least two. If this reading be correct, the undignified squabble was all about that grisly symbol of mortality and power.

It is possible that a distorted version of this affair yet lingers in Culmstock tradition. I have heard from a Methuselah of the place that, according to an old tale, a band of freebooters named Sylvester made an eyry of Hackpen, whence they descended to the more fertile regions below, raiding the farms, and carrying off the fleecy spoil to their hold on the hill.

On the break-up of the monastery the site of the buildings, the home farm, and other lands were assigned by letters patent to John, Lord Russell, who showed himself an utter vandal. The lead of the roofs and the bells, of which there were four in the church tower, were the special objects of his rapacity; but all was grist that came to his mill, and, as the result, the fabric was left in a condition in which it was bound to become “to hastening ills a prey.” As there was never an abbey at Culmstock, either Canonsleigh or Dunkeswell probably served as a model for the ruins described in Perlycross. The latter is the more likely, owing to the presence of the “district” church built by Mrs Simcoe, close to the remains of the ancient abbey.

At the southern end of the Blackdowns is Hembury Fort, an old British encampment, of triple formation and considerable extent, which commands perhaps the finest view in the neighbourhood. It is believed by some to have been also a Roman station—the Moridunum (or Muridunum) of Antonine. On this point, however, there is considerable doubt, there being other claimants, of which High Peak on the coast is one, and Honiton another. The very latest view of the matter is that given by Canon Raven in The Antiquary of December 1904, in which he inclines to the opinion that the legion divided the year between a winter at Honiton and a summer at Hembury, with the advantage of a strong fort to retire upon in case of Dumnonian risings.

In writing of these distant ages, I have often felt how remote they are in another sense. Such a term as “Dumnonian,” for instance, though we know its geographical significance as referring to the inhabitants of south-west Britain—how little it conveys, and perhaps can be made to convey, to us of the life that people lived, even if we are sure that beneath their breasts beat human hearts like our own, with interests and affections strong and manifold! Much gratitude, therefore, is due to the late Rev. William Barnes, author of the classic Dorset poems, for his bold attempt to reconstruct for us the mode of existence and surroundings of those ancient Britons, of whom all have heard from their childhood. This also may be poetry, but it is worth perusing only as such. The picture he describes is that of a little pastoral settlement occupying a valley, and finding refuge in time of war in a great camp that crowns a neighbouring hill; and the season is the end of summer, after the reaping of oats and rye and the mowing of lawns and meadows round the homesteads.

“The cattle are on the downs, or in the hollows of the hills. Here and there are wide beds of fern, or breadths of gorse and patches of wild raspberry, with gleaming sheets of flowers. The swine are roaming in the woods and shady oak-glades, the nuts are studding the brown-leaved bushes. On the sunny side of some cluster of trees is the herdsman’s round wicker-house, with its brown conical roof and blue wreaths of smoke. In the meadows and basins of the sluggish streams stand clusters of tall elms waving with the nests of herons; the bittern, coot, and water-rail are busy among the rushes and flags of the reedy meres. Birds are ‘charming’ in the wood-girt clearings, wolves and foxes slinking to their covers, knots of maidens laughing at the water-spring, beating the white linen or flannel with their washing bats; the children play before the doors of the round straw-thatched houses of the homestead, the peaceful abode of the sons of the oaky vale. On the ridges of the downs rise the sharp cones of the barrows, some glistening in white chalk, or red, the mould of a new burial, and others green with the grass of long years.”

Close to Hembury Fort is a house built by Admiral Samuel Graves, whose best title to fame is that he invented the lifeboat. The fort is in the parish of Payhembury. The adjacent parish of Broadhembury, a picturesque village among the hills, could vaunt in ancient days a cell of Cluniac monks belonging to Montacute Priory, Somerset; and from 1768 to 1775 the incumbent was none other than Augustus Toplady, author of “Rock of Ages.” The Grange, a fine old Jacobean manor house, long the residence of the Drewes, was built in 1610 by an ancestor of theirs, who was sergeant-at-law to Queen Elizabeth—Edward Drewe. It was modernised about the middle of the last century.

At one time the Blackdowns must have presented a very different appearance from that which they do now, and the cause of the transformation may be found in a measure passed in the thirty-ninth year of His Majesty King George the Third, up to which time the commons of Church Staunton, Clayhidon, and Dunkeswell produced little but heath, fern, dwarf-furze,[5] and very coarse, tough and wiry herbage. At the beginning of the last century these lands were taken in hand with a view to cultivation or planting.

The Napoleon of the reclamation was General Simcoe, an officer who, having greatly distinguished himself in the American War, afterwards settled down on the Blackdowns. Altogether he enclosed about twelve thousand acres, and part of his design was to build two or three farmhouses, assigning to each of them about three hundred acres. The remaining allotments he portioned out to adjacent farms belonging to him, or converted into plantations. At Wolford Lodge—the name of his residence—he carried out some interesting experiments in arboriculture.

One practice adopted at Wolford, and apparently with success, was that of pruning the young oak, the stem being left clean to a height of twenty feet, and a proportionate top being allowed. The wounds soon healed and became covered with bark, and the result is said to have been a notable increase in the strength and substance of the stock.

General Simcoe paid much attention also to the culture of exotic trees. The black spruce of Newfoundland, the red spruce of Norway, the Weymouth pine, pineaster, stone and cluster pine, the American sycamore or butterwood, the black walnut, red oak, hiccory, sassafras, red bud, together with many small trees and shrubs of the sorts which, in the Western hemisphere, compose the undergrowth of the forests—all these different species were introduced and found to flourish at Dunkeswell.

The soil of Dunkeswell Common consisted chiefly of a brown and black peaty earth on beds of brown and yellow clay and fox-mould, all resting ultimately on a deep stratum of chip sand. Wherever the chip sand and marl emerged, the more retentive stratum of the latter held up the water, which burst forth into springs or formed “weeping ground”—“zogs,” as it is termed by the natives, who add that you must be careful where you plant your foot. Many of the morasses and peaty margins along the declivities and side-hills abounded with bog-timber. Out of a bed of peat near Wolford Lodge was raised an oak of this description, about twenty feet long and squaring thirteen inches at the butt. The whole of its sap was gone, and, to judge from its appearance, it might have been a fork of a much larger tree. Before it was taken up, General Simcoe received and refused an offer of five guineas for it. Local opinion favours Roughgrey Bottom, Dunkeswell, as the original of Blackmarsh or the Forbidden Land of Perlycross. The situation is fairly suitable; it was not far from the Blackborough quarries (see chapter xxxviii.).

There is probably still preserved at Wolford Lodge, which is a treasure-house of interesting curios, a specimen of the serpent stone, or cornu ammonis, found at the Blackborough quarries, which in their time have produced a large crop of fossilised shells, and delighted the geologist with instructive visions of the underworld. The specimen in question exceeded fourteen inches in diameter.

Once upon a time the Blackdowns were generally known as the Scythestone Hills, and travellers often digressed from the beaten track in order to pay a visit to the whetstone pits at Blackborough, which were justly regarded as a remarkable scene of industry, and, indeed, one of the sights of the West. These quarries were worked in the following way. A road or level about three feet wide and about five and a half feet high was driven from the side of the hill to a distance of three or four hundred yards. All the loose sandstones within eight or ten yards of the road were extracted, pillars being left to support the roof of the mine, until, having served their purpose, these also were gradually worked out and the whole excavation suffered to fall in. The size of the stones rarely exceeded that of a horse’s head; and all were more or less grooved and indented, their appearance suggesting that they had been subjected to the action of rills or running water. Many years have elapsed since the pits were in full working order. A little while ago there were two shafts remaining; to-day there is only one, and, most probably, by the time this paragraph is in print, the doom of the mines will be irrevocably sealed, and Finis appended to their history. Dr Fox’s strange adventure in this weird spot must be in the recollection of all readers of Perlycross (chapter xii.).

But there is another wonder at Blackborough besides the quarries, and that is Blackborough House—a great rambling mansion, with windows and doors innumerable. The building, which is rented by an aged lady and her daughter, is so utterly inconsequent as to inspire curiosity concerning its origin in this lonely out-of-the-way place. Well, a good many years ago, Dr Dickinson, of Uffculme, was in one of the eastern counties when he fell in with an old admiral who knew the spot, knew its former owner—the eccentric Lord Egremont—and told him all about it. Long before, the earl and the admiral were looking over the property, when the latter chanced to remark that it might be a good thing to erect a residence there. My lord was impressed with the notion, and the construction of this gigantic tenement—in its way almost as extraordinary as Silverton House, now demolished, which stamped him as an aedificator that neither reckoned nor finished—was his mode of giving effect to the idea.

In the middle of the last century Blackborough House was a warren of young students professedly reading with the Rev. William Cookesley Thompson, most of whom were of Irish nationality. They were a wild set, and enjoyed nothing so much as sharing in one of the country revels, which were then so common in Devonshire. On one occasion they made their way to Kentisbeare Revel, where an old woman had a gingerbread stall. Evening came on, and to avoid a slight sprinkling of rain, the dame took refuge in the doorway of the inn. At the same instant a wagonette or some such vehicle emerged from the adjoining passage, and turning a sharp corner, overturned the old woman’s stall, whose contents, tilted into the roadway, were eagerly scrambled for by children. Of course there were profuse, if not very sincere, apologies, and sympathetic promises of compensation, but whether they were ever honoured in the sequel my informant is inclined to query.

One great feature of a revel was wrestling, and this reminds me that at Kentisbeare there are about fifty acres of common, which were once the subject of debate between that parish and Broadhembury. After much bickering it was agreed to settle the point by “fair shoe and stocking,” with the result that the men of Kentisbeare were victorious, and acquired firm possession of the disputed territory.