A Book of the West. Volume I Devon. Baring-Gould Sabine

in the past, but the general taste was better than it is now. I was once in the shop of one of our foremost furniture dealers and decorators in town, when a young married couple came in to choose curtains and carpets for their new home. I had been talking with the head of the establishment about artistic furniture, and he had shown me carpets, curtains, and wall-papers, such as no designer in the fifteenth, sixteenth, or seventeenth centuries would have blushed to produce. The young couple passed all these samples by – blind to their merits, and pounced on and chose some atrocious stuff, bad in colour and bad in art. When they were gone, the proprietor turned to me: "You see," he said, "the public is still uncultivated; we are forced to keep rubbish in our trade to satisfy those whose taste does not rise above rubbish." Now it is the same with regard to lace. There is badly designed lace as well as that which is as good as anything drawn by a great master in the past. Let the public eye be discerning to choose the good and reject the evil, and then the poor lace-workers will not be set to produce stuff that never ought to have time, labour, eyesight devoted to it.

      There are some trades that are hurtful to those employed in them. The lace-making by machinery at Nottingham is said to induce decline.

      The following letter I have received on the subject of the Honiton lace-workers: —

      "They are most certainly not a short-lived lot – until within the last eight or nine years Mrs. Colley was the youngest worker I knew, and she is fifty-one; Mrs. Raymond is sixty-four. There are a good many over sixty, and several still at work over seventy. I have never had cases of decline come under my notice, and if there was any I must have known it. Until the fresh impetus was given to the trade by exhibitions, the younger workers stopped learning, and there was no school, so that the trade depended on the old ones, and all have to commence the work from five to seven years of age. I think it may fairly be assumed to be at any rate not injurious to health, and judging from the age to which they continue to work, not to the sight either."

      Thus the buyers of lace can do it with a safe conscience.

      There is a woman's name associated with Devon, who was a great landed proprietress and an heiress, and this was Isabella de Fortibus. She was sister of Baldwin, Earl of Devon, a De Redvers, and on his death, without issue, she inherited the splendid estates of the earls of Devon, and became Countess of Devon in her own right. She, however, also died without issue in 1292.

      On Farway Common, near Honiton, three parishes meet, and there were incessant disputes as to the boundary. Isabella decided it thus. She flung her ring into the air, and where it fell that was to be the point of junction for Gittisham, Farway, and Honiton. The spot is still called "Ring-in-the-Mere." Such at least is the local legend accounting for the name.

      In the neighbourhood of Honiton are the ruins of Dunkeswell Abbey, but they are reduced to a gateway only. It belongs to Mrs. Simcoe, of Walford Lodge, Dunkeswell, a handsome house built about the end of last century by General Simcoe, famous in the American Revolution as the commander of Simcoe's Rangers. He was Governor of San Domingo at the time of the insurrection, and afterwards Governor-General of Canada. Mrs. Simcoe possesses interesting relics connected with him, as well as Napoleonic relics that belonged to her father, Lieut. – General Jackson, aide-de-camp to Sir Hudson Lowe at St. Helena.

      Mohuns-Ottery, once a great seat of the Carews, was burnt down in the beginning of this century, and all that remains of the mansion are three arches. The Grange, Broadhembury, has been more fortunate; it has a magnificent oak-panelled room, with ghost stories attached, and there are those alive who declare that they have seen the ghost. The church possesses, among other points of interest, a curious window with projecting corbels that represent the spirits of the good in happiness within, and the spirits of the bad without in discomfort – not to put too fine a point on it, as Mr. Snagsby would say.

      There are several fine fortifications, as already said: Dumpden, accessible only on foot, and Hembury are the most important.

      Books to be consulted: —

      Rogers (W. H. H.), Memorials of the West. Exeter, 1888.

      Farquharson (A.), The History of Honiton. Exeter, n. d., but 1868 (scarce).

      For the Axe Valley: Pulman (G. P. R.), The Book of the Axe. London, 1875.

      CHAPTER IV.

      A LANDSLIP

      The chalk beds on sand – The subsidence of 1839 – The great chasm – Present conditions – The White Cliff – Beer quarries – Jack Rattenbury.

      There are a good many more curious things to be seen in England than is generally supposed, if we will but go out of the highways to look for them. Certainly one of the most extraordinary and impressive is the great landslip between the mouth of the Axe and Lyme Regis; one which even extended further west beyond the estuary. On this bit of coast, where Devonshire passes into Dorset, the cliff scenery is very fine. The White Cliff is a magnificent headland that possesses the peculiarity of appearing to lean over preparing to slide into the waves, owing to the inclination of the varicoloured strata of which it is composed. To understand the phenomenon which occasioned the subsidence of a whole tract of coast with the alteration of the coastline, something must be said of the cause of the catastrophe. The chalk bed striped with lines of glistening black flints is superposed upon a bed of what is locally termed fox earth, a bed of gravel or sand that intervenes between it and the clay beneath. Now the rain that falls on the chalk downs infiltrates and, reaching the sand and unable to sink through the clay, breaks out in land springs.

      But where the chalk cliffs start sheer out of the sea, there the springs ooze into the sea itself, and, dissolving the texture of the sandy bed, resolve it into a quicksand, liable at the time of great floods to be washed out from under the superincumbent chalk. Should this take place, there is no help for it, but down the chalk bed must go. If you were lying on a bed, and the mattress under your feather bed were pulled away, you would descend, sinking to a depth equivalent to the thickness of the subtracted mattress. That is plain enough.

      Now all along the coast to the east of Lyme Regis there is an undercliff – evident tokens of a subsidence of this description which has taken place at some time. When this undercliff has been eaten up by the sea, and a fresh face of crag exposed, then again there will occur a displacement, a pulling out of the mattress, and down will go the chalk above with all the houses and fields upon it. But the sea has not as yet done more than nibble at this undercliff.

      It was not quite so to the west of Lyme. There sheer cliffs of glistening white rose above the pebbly shore, so abruptly and with such slight undulations, that several miles ensued before it was possible for those on the height to descend to the beach. Naturally, where the rain-water percolated through the chalk it formed no valleys with streams.

      Thus the cliffs stood – for no one knows how long – till the end of December, 1839.

      Previous symptoms of the approaching convulsion were not altogether wanting. Cracks had been observed for more than a week opening along the brow of the Downs, but they were not sufficiently remarkable to attract much attention, as such fissures are by no means uncommon on this bit of coast. However, about midnight of December 24th, the labourers of Mr. Chappel, the farmer who occupied Dowlands (about a quarter of a mile inland from the brow of the cliff, and over half a mile from the nearest points of the approaching convulsion) were returning from a supper given them by their employer, whereat the ashen faggot had been burnt according to custom, and were making their way to their cottages, situated near the cliff. Then they noticed that a crack which crossed their path, and which they had observed on their way to the Christmas Eve supper, had widened, and that the land beyond had sunk slightly. Nevertheless they did not consider the matter of great importance, and they went to their homes and to bed. About four o'clock in the morning they were roused by their houses reeling, by the concrete floors bursting and gaping, and the walls being rent. They started from their beds in great alarm, and about six o'clock arrived at the farm to rouse their master; they had found their escape nearly cut off, as the crack had widened and the land on the sea side had sunk considerably, so that they had, with their wives and children, to scramble up – and that with difficulty, and, in the darkness, with no little danger.

      Happily all escaped in time.

      During