Devonshire - free ebook by Louie M. Knight Dutton

DEVONSHIRE

by FRANCIS A. KNIGHT AND LOUIE M. (KNIGHT) DUTTON With Maps, Diagrams and Illustrations Cambridge: at the University Press 1910 Cambridge: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS...

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PREFACE

I N preparing this book much use has been made of the Proceedings of the Devonshire Association and of the first volume of the Victoria History of Devon . The authors also desire to take this opportunity of recording their grateful thanks to Her Gracious Majesty Queen Alexandra for her kindness in providing one of the most interesting illustrations in the volume—the beautiful photograph of the Armada trophy preserved among the Royal plate in Windsor Castle, taken for the purpose of this volume b

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MAPS

The authors are indebted to Mr John S. Amery for leave to reproduce the pictures on pp. 154 , 157 and 158 ....

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1. County and Shire. The Name Devonshire.

The word "shire," which is probably derived, like "shear" and "share," from an Anglo-Saxon root meaning "to cut," was at one time used in a wider sense than it is at present, and was formerly applied to a division of a county or even of a town. Thus, there were once six small "shires" in Cornwall. The word shire was in use at the time of King Ina, and occurs in the code of laws which that monarch drew up about the year 709; but the actual division of England into shires was a gradual process, an

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2. General Characteristics.

Devonshire is a county in the extreme south-west of England, occupying the greater part of the peninsula between the English and Bristol Channels, and having a coast-line both on the south and on the north. Situated thus, on two seas, and possessing, especially on its southern sea-board, a remarkable number of bays and estuaries, it has always been noted as a maritime county. And although many of its harbours have, in the lapse of ages, become silted up with sand or shingle, and are now of compa

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3. Size. Shape. Boundaries.

Devonshire, which occupies rather more than one-twenty-second of the whole area of England and Wales, is one of the largest counties in the British Islands, being exceeded in size only by Yorkshire and Lincoln in England, by Inverness and Argyll in Scotland, and by Cork in Ireland. Its extreme length from east to west, measured along a horizontal line drawn through the middle of the county, starting at the Dorsetshire border half-way between Lyme Cobb and the Seven Rocks Point, passing close to

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4. Surface and General Features.

Devonshire is characterised by such great irregularity and unevenness of surface that practically the only level land in it is along the shores of its estuaries; with the almost inevitable result that it is one of the most picturesque and beautiful counties in England. Its scenery has been very greatly affected by subterranean movements, which have not only roughly shaped its hills and valleys, partly by upheaval and partly by the shrinkage of the earth's crust, but have been the principal cause

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5. Watershed. Rivers and the tracing of their courses. Lakes.

Devonshire is a well-watered county, a county of many rivers; and although not one of its multitudinous streams is of real commercial importance or of much value as a water-way, by their mere abundance and by the beauty of their scenery, especially of the magnificent ravines which many of them in the lapse of ages have worn deep in the rock, they form one of its most striking features. By far the most important watershed is the great upland of Dartmoor, where, with few exceptions, rise all the p

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6. Geology.

Three main points characterise the geological features of Devonshire; the simplicity of the system in the west, north-centre and south-west of the county; the comparative complexity and variety of the strata in the east and south; and, most remarkable of all, the extraordinary number of outcrops of igneous rock, from the great mass of Dartmoor granite, which has no parallel in England, to the hundreds of small dykes or elvans that are scattered chiefly over the southern region, although some occ

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7. Natural History.

It is generally believed by naturalists that the ancestors of most of our fauna and flora reached this country at a time when what we now call the British Isles formed part of the mainland of Europe, and when there was no intervening sea to bar the way. Before this colonisation was complete, however—that is, before all the different kinds of European beasts and birds had made their way to the extreme western districts—communication with the continent was broken off. The land of the north-western

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8. A Peregrination of the Coast: 1, The Bristol Channel.

Devonshire, like Cornwall and Kent, is remarkable in having both a northern and a southern seaboard; a peculiarity shared by no other English county. Its two shores present striking points of difference. The south coast-line is broken by many estuaries. On the other shore there is only one important river mouth. There are, it is true, many little coves and inlets on the Bristol Channel, some of them of great beauty; but they make little show upon the map of England, and the stern outline of the

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9. A Peregrination of the Coast: 2, The English Channel.

The points that specially characterise the southern seaboard of Devonshire, and distinguish it from the northern shore, are its many estuaries, its numerous bays and bold headlands, the strong, deep red, in some places, of its rugged cliffs, and, in a minor degree, the sandy beaches which lend an added charm to many of its seaside towns. No natural feature marks the spot, half-way between Lyme Cobb and the Seven Rocks Point, where the border-line between Dorsetshire and Devonshire begins. But al

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10. Coastal Gains and Losses. Sandbanks. Lighthouses.

There are parts of our island where, even within historic times, the coast-line has been greatly changed by the encroachment of the sea, usually through the wearing away of the cliffs along the shore. This is especially the case on the eastern coast of England, where, in the lapse of ages, villages, towns, and whole manors have been completely swept away. The old town of Ravenspur, for example, a place that in its time rivalled Hull as a sea-port, is to-day a mere sandbank far out from shore; an

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11. Climate and Rainfall.

The climate of any country, or in other words, its average weather, by which, again, we mean its temperature, rainfall, and hours of sunshine, as well as the dryness or otherwise of its air, depends upon various circumstances and conditions, but especially upon geographical position, that is to say, upon the nearness of the country to the equator, upon its distance from the sea and its height above sea-level; partly also upon its soil and vegetation. Speaking generally, the nearer we approach th

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12. People—Race. Dialects. Settlements. Population.

The earliest inhabitants of Devonshire, the people of the Palaeolithic or Early Stone Age, have left few traces beyond their weapons and implements of flint. They lived in caves or on the banks of rivers. They were hunters, and appear to have practised no craft but that of hunting, while their arts seem to have been almost if not entirely limited to the use of fire and to the making of rude instruments of stone. But during the Neolithic Period, as the Later Stone Age is called, the district, it

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13. Agriculture—Main Cultivations. Woodlands. Stock.

The area of all the land in England is, in round numbers, 32 ½ millions of acres, of which 24 ½ millions are under cultivation; 10 ¾ million acres being arable, and the greater part of the rest being devoted to permanent grass. For some years past the area of cultivation in the British Islands has been gradually growing less; and in 1908 the decrease in England alone was more than 25,000 acres, chiefly in the amount of land given up to barley and oats, but extending to almost all crops except wh

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14. Industries and Manufactures.

Devonshire, although in former ages famous even on the continent of Europe for its cloth-weaving, no longer ranks as a manufacturing county. Apart from agriculture and fishing, its industries are now mainly confined to the making of lace and cider, to ship-building, and to the manufacture of earthenware. The prevalence in the county of the names of Webber and Tucker is some evidence of the extent and antiquity of the woollen trade, which, from very early times, flourished all over Devonshire unt

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15. Mines and Minerals.

There was a time when mining, especially tin-mining, was the most important industry of Devonshire. Traces left all over Dartmoor show that at a very early period tin was obtained there by the process called "streaming," that is to say by the washing of grains of the metal out of the disintegrated and crumbling granite. Vast numbers of abandoned shafts sunk in search of tin, copper, iron, manganese, and even silver, remain, together with their too often ugly buildings, as evidence of the former

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16. Fisheries and Fishing Stations.

The fisheries of the British Islands form one of our most important industries, providing regular or occasional employment for nearly 100,000 men and boys in the catching of the fish; for a very great number of persons engaged in secondary occupations connected with the industry, who probably far outnumber the actual fishermen; and for innumerable people of all grades engaged in distributing the eight million pounds' worth of fish brought into the ports of England and Wales each year by British

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17. Shipping and Trade.

The ports of Devonshire once ranked among the first in England, and her sailors have for many centuries been famous for their enterprise and daring. It was from this county that the first English trading-expeditions sailed to Africa, Brazil, and North America. They were Devonshire men, who, by taking possession of Newfoundland, established the first English colony—in which most of the old families are of Devonshire descent. Devonshire ships were long the terror of the Spanish Main. Devonshire me

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18. History of Devonshire.

The history of our country begins with the Roman occupation. For although we have ample and striking traces, in the shape of earthworks and stone circles, tools and weapons, pottery and ornaments, of the successive races of men who lived here before Julius Caesar set foot in Britain, those ancient and primitive people left no written records, not so much as an inscription on a single coin, and our knowledge of them is in the highest degree vague and uncertain. Of many parts of our island the Rom

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19. Antiquities.

To the archaeologist and the antiquarian Devonshire is one of the most interesting counties in England. With the exception of Cornwall no other district is so rich in relics of the ancient inhabitants of Britain; and it was from the caves of this county that Pengelly obtained that clear evidence of the extreme antiquity of man in this island which proved that he lived here, unnumbered ages back, when such animals as the cave-lion, the hyaena, and the mammoth ran wild in what we now call England.

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20. Architecture—(a) Ecclesiastical.

The ecclesiastical buildings of Devonshire,—its magnificent cathedral, which is without doubt the finest example of the Decorated style in all England; its many noble churches, some of which, specially remarkable for their interest and beauty, are situated in remote and thinly-peopled rural parishes; and, in a minor degree, the picturesque fragments of its ruined abbeys—form altogether one of the most striking features of the county. Speaking generally, it may be said that Devonshire churches, a

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21. Architecture—(b) Military.

As has already been pointed out, there were in Devonshire a very great number of primitive castles or fortresses, generally on the tops of hills, and consisting simply of enclosures surrounded by ramparts of earth or of loose stones. After the Norman Conquest castles of a very different type, strongly built of stone, were erected in our county, as in many other parts of England, partly by order of the king himself, and partly by his knights and nobles, who found it necessary to defend themselves

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22. Architecture—(c) Domestic.

Scattered up and down over Devonshire are many fine old manor-houses, some of them, in parts at least, very ancient, some with picturesque and striking features, many set in very beautiful surroundings, and others of interest for the sake of their historic associations. Such houses are so numerous that only a few of them can here be even lightly touched upon. An Old Devon Farmhouse Chimney Corner Not one of the famous houses of Devonshire is entirely, or even in great part, as old as the thirtee

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23. Communications: Past and Present.

In prehistoric times Devonshire was crossed by a network of trackways, some of which are to-day broad and well-kept high roads. Others form those proverbially narrow, awkward, and frequently muddy Devonshire lanes which are so characteristic of the county, having become worn in the lapse of ages so deep below the level of the adjacent country, owing partly to the softness of the ground, and partly to the heavy rainfall, that their high banks, although often very beautiful, completely shut out th

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24. Administration and Divisions—Ancient and Modern.

In the days of our ancestors the Anglo-Saxons, Devonshire was governed much in the same way as it is governed now. That is to say, while the people had to obey the laws that were drawn up under the direction of the King, they had a great deal of what we now call self-government. Every little group of houses in Devonshire had its own "tun-moot" or village council, which made its own by-laws (from the Danish by , a town) and managed its own affairs. The large divisions of the county called Hundred

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25. The Roll of Honour of the County.

Famous as our county is for its beautiful scenery, its wealth of prehistoric antiquities, and the abundance and variety of its wild life, it is still more renowned for its long Roll of Honour, for the many great and distinguished men who were born in it, or who have been more or less closely associated with it by residence within its borders. There can be little doubt that the foremost man in the whole history of Devon is Sir Francis Drake, the greatest of Elizabethan seamen, the first English c

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26. THE CHIEF TOWNS AND VILLAGES OF DEVONSHIRE.

(The figures in brackets after each name give the population of the parish in 1901, from the official returns, and those at the end of each paragraph are references to the pages in the text.) Appledore (2625). A small sea-port at the mouth of the Torridge, wrongly supposed, through confusion with an Appledore in Kent, to have been the landing-place of Hubba the Dane. (pp. 27 , 61 , 130 , 131 .) Ashburton (2628). A market-town on the Yeo, eight miles south-west of Newton Abbot, one of the Stannar

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