Combemartin, Combmartin, or Combe Martin, for it is written in all these ways, according to individual fancy—derives the proprietary part of its name from the “Sieur Martin de Turon,” who came over with the Conqueror and obtained the grant of these lands, together with Martinhoe. Local story tells how the last of the Martins of Combemartin lived in a moated manor-house off the lane near the church, and had an only son. One day the son went off hunting, and as he had not returned by nightfall, the drawbridge across the moat was raised as usual. It was thought he had stayed late, enjoying the hospitality of friends, and would not return until next day; but at midnight he came home and fell, with his horse, into the moat; both being drowned. Unable to endure the place afterwards, the last of the Martins dismantled the manor-house and left Combemartin, never to return.
The manor has come, in turn, to a number of families, among them the Leys, one of whom built the extraordinary house, long since converted72 into an inn, known as the “King’s Arms,” which, after the parish church, is the principal sight in the place. According to local legend, “Squire Ley” won a fortune at cards, and so built his residence with fifty-two windows, the number of cards in a pack. Hence the alternative name of the house in the mouths of the people of Combemartin, “The Pack of Cards.” The interior discloses some panelled rooms, with beautifully decorated plaster ceilings of Renaissance character; but the exterior, covered with whitewashed rough-cast plaster, and designed in a freakish manner, is more curious than beautiful. No one can see the house without wondering and remarking about it. A sundial, inscribed “C. L. 1752,” on the south wall, was apparently placed there by one of the bygone Leys.
Combemartin is a long, long village, one mile and a quarter—length without breadth—lining the road that runs down to the sea at the bottom of a deep valley, and the inhabitants call it “Kuhmart’n.” Charles Kingsley in his time called it something else, something derogatory; nothing less offensive, if you please, than “mile-long man-stye.” They do not think much of Charles Kingsley at Combemartin.
THE “PACK OF CARDS,” COMBEMARTIN.
Perhaps it is not so squalid as in his day; at any rate, although the long-drawn street is not even now a pattern of neatness, it does not in these times merit quite so savage a description, even although the large population is made up chiefly of poor market-gardening folk. For Combemartin73 is the place whence come most of the early fruit and vegetables for the supply of the neighbouring towns. The hotels, not only of Ilfracombe, but also of Lynton and Lynmouth, depend largely upon Combemartin for their choicest supply, and the gardens round about are quite celebrated for their strawberries and gooseberries. No one in the strawberry season, passing through Combemartin, has the least excuse for remaining ignorant of the staple product of the neighbourhood, for numerous pertinacious women, girls, and small boys pervade that long street; offering bags of what is, perhaps, the most delicious fruit these isles produce. To purchase a basketful, you think, at one end of the street, is sufficient to pass you through its length without further challenge; but that is a vain thought. The Combemartin strawberry-vendors have the most generous conception of your capacity for their wares, and74 appear to think that every bagful purchased is an excuse for another. They are apt not to be cheap, but they are undeniably fresh, and undoubtedly refreshing under the sweltering sun that scorches the blazing street.
There was a time when Combemartin was busy in a far different way. The silver mines of this rugged valley were famous so far back as the time of Edward I., and with varying fortunes they continued at intervals to the early years of the nineteenth century. Not until 1848 was the last heard of them. At the beginning of these things, it is recorded, 337 miners were brought from the Peak district of Derbyshire, to work the silver, tin, and lead. In 1296 “was brought to London, in finest silver, in wedges, 704 lb. 3 dwt.; and the next year 260 miners were pressed out of the Peak and Wales—and great was the profit on silver and lead.” According to Camden, the silver mines here in the reigns of Edward III. and Henry V. were found very useful in defraying the costs of the wars in France; but for more than a century and a half afterwards the industry declined, to be revived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This revival was due to the enterprise of Adrian Gilbert and Sir Beavois Bulmer, who provided the working expenses and agreed with the landowner, one Richard Roberts, for half-profits. They realised ￡10,000 each; the fortunate Roberts therefore appears to have sat still and twiddled his thumbs, and received ￡20,000. Out of this unearned increment he provided what is described as a “rich75 and rare” cup of Combemartin silver, which he presented to William Bourchier, Earl of Bath, the Bourchiers being at that time great and powerful personages in these parts. It bore this whimsical inscription:
“In Martin’s Comb long lay I hiyd,
Obscur’d, deprest wth grossest soyle,
Debaséd much wth mixéd lead,
Till Bulmer came, whoes skill and toyle
Refinéd me so pure and cleen,
As rycher no wheer els is seene.
“And adding yet a farder grace,
By fashion he did inable
Me worthy for to take a place
To serve at any Prince’s table;
Comb Martyn gave the Oare alone,
Bulmer fyning and fashion.”
The mines were greatly troubled with the inrush of water; difficulties referred to in the verses inscribed upon a cup presented, like the other, in 1593, to Sir Richard Martin, Master of the Mint, and Lord Mayor of London. This weighed 137 ounces:
“When water workes in broaken wharfe
At first erected were,
And Beavis Bulmer wth his Art
The waters ’gan to reare,
Dispercéd I in earth did lye
Since all beginnings old,
In place cal’d Comb, wher Martin longe
Had hydd me in his molde,
I did no service on the earth,
Nor no man set me free,
Till Bulmer by his skill and charge
Did frame me this to be.”
76 Floods again drowned the works, and although a report was presented to Parliament in 1659, and other timid attempts made, nothing was accomplished until 1796. Operations were continued for six years, and over nine thousand tons of ore sent to South Wales, for smelting. In 1813, and on to 1817, more ore was mined, but the cost exceeding the value of the silver obtained, the enterprise was again discontinued. In 1833 a company was formed, with a capital of ￡30,000, and the works were once more reopened. About half this sum was spent in sinking new shafts, and in machinery, but some very good lodes were discovered, and three dividends were paid out of profits. But eventually the shares were rigged up to a high premium on the Stock Exchange, and those who were well informed of the likelihood that the lode would not prove a lasting one got out at a profit, while credulous purchasers were left to witness the prosperity of the undertaking speedily melt away. By 1850, the last chapter of silver-mining at Combemartin was ended. The miners’ rubbish-heaps still remain, and even at the present day the urchins paddling in the bay at low-water occasionally discover fragments of ore.
Hemp-growing and the manufacture of shoe-makers’ thread were also industries carried on very extensively in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but Combemartin has long been looked down upon as an abjectly poor place, and only its great church and the surrounding scenery save it from being77 passed by in contempt by the writers of guide-books. Combemartin church tower, indeed, finds mention in a North Devon folk-rhyme, in which it is placed, for due admiration, with those of Berrynarbor and Hartland:
“Hartland for length,
Berrynarbor for strength,
And Combemartin for beauty.”
COMBEMARTIN CHURCH.
It is a tall grey tower, in four stages, rising with some considerable impressiveness over an78 Early English and Perpendicular building that has long been but ill cared for. The interior discloses chancel with nave and north aisle only, the roofs of that waggon-headed type usual in the West of England; the walls daubed with a light blue wash. A fine fifteenth-century carved wooden rood-screen, in a much worn condition, has been shamefully used in the past, the frieze having been filled in with plaster in 1727, according to the date inscribed on the work. The initials, “J. P., T. H.,” probably those of the churchwardens who perpetrated the outrage, prove that, so far from being ashamed of themselves they even took pride in their work. A number of interesting bench-ends remain, among them a delightfully carved little lizard, who, unfortunately, has lost his head.
Some queer inscriptions in the churchyard, whose like, now that education penetrates every nook and corner, will no longer be perpetrated, arouse a passing smile: among them this extraordinary effort:—
Here Lyeth
IoHan Ash, she died in september
J668
loe here I slepe in dust till christ my deare
And Sweet Redeemer in the clouds Appeare
Here lyeth the Body of HnmphTy she who
died y 19 day of noVembER 1681.
Bacon-Shakespeare fanatics have made cryptograms out of less eccentric lettering than this.
In these latter days Combemartin is making a strenuous effort to be regarded as a “literary landmark.”79 It is all on account of Miss Marie Corelli’s novel, “The Mighty Atom,” and a certain class of visitors sometimes come over from Ilfracombe attracted by vague rumours of it. They are the kind of people who, content to remain below and idly examine the ever-open gates of the rood-screen, supposed on insufficient grounds to be symbolic of the heavenly gates, which “shall not be shut at all by day, for there shall be no night there,” say to their younger companions, desirous of climbing the tower: “I’ll stop down ’ere, while you go hup.”
The local photographer makes a brave display of picture-postcards of the village and of the sexton who appears in the book as “Reuben Dale,” but the thing seems to hang fire. James Norman was the original of “Reuben Dale,” and the present sexton is alert to show you his grave, whether you be interested or not. Norman died, aged 54, in 1898, and, it seems, the rector refused to allow the pseudonym to be placed on the epitaph, by way of advertising the novelist. You are told he declared that he “buried a man, not a miff” (?myth). Apparently the rector did not approve of “The Mighty Atom.”
Local gossip tells how Miss Corelli informed Norman he was to be made a prominent character in the story, and that the circumstance would make his fortune, as sexton. It proved the ruin of him, instead; for imagining himself a public character, he took himself and the increased tips he obtained from curious visitors, off to the80 “King’s Arms,” or, maybe, the “Castle”; and, what with too much drink and a consumptive tendency, he did not long remain to pose for the inquisitive. His knowledge of ancient ecclesiastical arrangements and the uses and purport of things, does not appear—judging from the novel, which is understood to report him “as nearly as possible” in his own words—to have been more reliable than that of the average sexton, or verger, and we all know what broken reeds they are, to rely upon for information.
According to his tale, sufficient for the many simple folk who are ready for any legend, the “altar gates”—he meant the doors in the rood-screen—“Do what ye will wi’ ’em, they won’t shut, see. That shows they was made ’fore the days o’ Cromwell. For in they times all the gates o’ th’ altars was copied arter the pattern o’ Scripture which sez: ‘An’ the gates o’ Heaven shall never be shut, either by day or by night.’” So now we know!
GREAT HANGMAN HILL, AND ENTRANCE TO COMBEMARTIN HARBOUR.
[After W. Daniell, R.A.
The road to Ilfracombe winds round Combemartin Bay, and, rising and falling abruptly, comes down to Watermouth. Here an almost land-locked bay, with a little strand, and hills on either side, partly wooded, forms a haven, where it is almost always calm, even when storms are raging and a heavy sea running outside Widemouth Head and Burrow Nose, the two enclosing points. The headlands are honeycombed with caves, prominent among them Smallmouth and Briary caves. Like most things in the neighbourhood81 of Ilfracombe, they are to be visited only by payment. In every respect the best way to reach them is by taking one of the rowing-boats that, with competitive boatmen, are always to be found here in summer. Watermouth Castle, looking grandly out from its sloping lawns upon the sea, should have a story. The ivy-clad, romantic-looking, turreted pile wears as genuine an air of antiquity as Lee “Abbey” itself, but candour—we must all be candid when the local guide-books are so explicit—obliges me to confess it was built in 1826, when feudal castellans were things of a remote past.
WIDEMOUTH BAY.
But stay, there is something of a story belonging to Watermouth Castle, for it was here that one of Miss Marie Corelli’s funny villains, the “Sir Charles Lascelles, Baronet,” of “The Mighty Atom,” stayed, as one of a house-party. You know82 at once, on being introduced to him in those pages, that he is a bad Bart. We must not blame him for that; the baronets of fiction are always bad: they can’t help it; it has to be. Moreover, he drawls, and acknowledges his “doosid habits of caprice”: so it is at once perceived that he is bad after the ancient formula of fifty years ago. Any modern wicked baronet would in the like circumstances describe himself, in up-to-date style, as an “erratic rotter.” Which is the better phrase, I will not pretend to say.
In between Widemouth Head and the succeeding headland of Rillage Point lies Samson’s Bay, followed by Hele Bay, enclosed on the side nearest Ilfracombe by Hillsborough, i.e., “Helesborough” Hill. Hele beach and its hamlet are now practically part of Ilfracombe town.
There is not, as a rule, much entertainment in local guide-books, but occasionally some precious ore may be mined, out of the extravagant but barren language they commonly employ. There are, however, very few pennyweights of amusement to be extracted from such tons of boredom. But here, for once in a way, is a little nugget, taken sparkling from an otherwise very empty vein, descriptive of Hele: “Hele, with its picturesque limekiln and cottages, almost hugging one another around the village school, deep down in a dell and surrounded by flourishing trees.” It is a pleasing picture, this, of the love of the amorous, but coy, limekiln, for the equally ardent but bashful cottages, and it moves me to83 lyrically celebrate the neglect of opportunities suggested:
Behind the school and trees they stood,
And almost hugged—the scene was so secluded;
Just as, in ferny grot, or flow’ry wood
(When we were younger, be it understood,
And ardent), sometimes I and you did.
The kiln was hot and eager, and
The cottages themselves were rather forward;
And, you must now most clearly understand,
It was a quiet, most secluded strand,
With none in sight, or land or shoreward.
When love and I roamed far away,
In quiet dell, I’d fondly kiss and squeeze her.
Did I refrain those tributes. Well-a-day!
There was the very deuce to pay:
I found my conversation failed to please her.
* * * * *
And yet I hear, with shoulders sharply shrugged,
They only—“almost hugged!”