Devon - Holiday on the North West coast and Cornwall (2)

Just two or three days left on this amazing coast. So onto Mowenstow beach and then the Church of St Morwenna and St John the Baptist.

But first the beach.

One of my abiding memories of the beach here, is the waterfall over the cliff edge onto the beach. The first image is from the top of the cliff, and then from beach level.

Then a couple of images of general beach views - left and right.

There are many rocks on the beach here and it is interesting to se the wave breaking around them as it receds.

The church of St Morwenna and St John The Baptist

Having not heard of St Morwenna, I looked in the guide book and also online.

Online , the story is:

Morwenna first appears in a 12th-century life of Saint Nectan that lists her alongside Endelient, Mabyn and Menfre (among many others) as a daughter of the Welsh king Brychan.

She was trained in Ireland before crossing over to Cornwall. Morwenna made her home in a little hermitage at Hennacliff (the Raven's Crag), afterwards called Morwenstow (meaning "Morwenna's holy-place"). It stands near the top of a high cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, where the sea is almost constantly stormy, and from where, in certain atmospheric conditions, the coast of Wales can be seen. She built a church there, for the local people, with her own hands. It is said that she carried the stone on her head from beneath the cliff and where she once stopped for a rest, a spring gushed forth to the west of the church.

However, the Church guide book says that the number of versions about her are many! So, almost impossible to know who she really was, or if she even existed.

The Norman doorway to the Church

The church itself is Grade I listed and features a Norman porch, a wagon roof, and a rood screen added by Parson Hawker - (more of him later). The earliest church preceded the current building by several centuries. Probable a Saxon church and even earlier than that, possible a Celtic church of 6th Century.

The font is believed to be from the late Saxon or Early Norman period, possibly dating back to the 11th or 12th centuries. It was originally located at the west end of the nave and was moved to its current position when the new organ was installed in 1977. The font is considered a significant historical artifact and has intrigued visitors and researchers for years.

The Altar and Reredos of dark oak were designed in 1908 by Edmund S Sedding, a well known architect and designer.

Another of the church features is a set of well-known and historically significant carved wooden bench ends. These bench ends are dated to around 1575 and are known for their intricate designs and imagery. They depict a variety of scenes and figures, including mythical creatures, Roman-inspired motifs, and depictions of wealth and trade.

The bench ends are a notable example of the decorative woodwork found in many West Country churches. They are characterized by their tracery designs, wyvern beasts, and quatrefoil patterns. The bench ends have survived for centuries, but their existence is a testament to the enduring nature of these historical artifacts, despite the potential threats from changing fashions and church restoration efforts.

One of the Church`s most famous Priests was R S Hawker, born in 1803, the son of a Cornish curate. The family was very hard up and Robert paid for his own education at Oxford by marrying a woman with a private income who was 20 years older than himself. He was ordained a priest in 1831, and was more than happy when the Bishop of Exeter offered him the rectorship in 1834 of Morwenstow Church. He had been there as a child, and loved the remoteness of the place, with the sea crashing on the rocks below the church. He served as vicar to the smugglers, wreckers and dissent of the area for the next forty years.

When Hawker arrived at Morwenstow there had not been a vicar in there for over a hundred years. Smugglers and wreckers were apparently numerous in the area. A contemporary report says the Morwenstow wreckers "allowed a fainting brother to perish in the sea without extending a hand of safety"

Hawker was a legendary eccentric. He is known to have dressed up as a mermaid and excommunicated his cat for mousing on Sundays. He dressed in claret-coloured coat, blue fisherman's jersey, long sea-boots, a pink brimless hat and a poncho made from a yellow horse blanket, which he claimed was the ancient habit of St Pardarn. He talked to birds, invited his nine cats into church. He kept a huge pig as a pet.

One of his big concerns was that the bodies of drowned men received a Christian burial, and would scramble down the cliffs, and carry back the bodies for a church grave. Until Hawker they were often buried on the beach where they were found, without Christian rites, as the belief was that it was not possible to tell if they were Christian or not.

In the early autumn of 1842, the Caledonia, a 200-ton brig from Arbroath in Scotland, was carrying a cargo of grain from Odessa to Gloucester, via Falmouth. On the night of September 7th she was caught in a gale off the north Cornish coast and driven onto the rocks at Sharpnose Point: of her crew of nine only one man survived. According to Hawker’s most frequently quoted account of the incident, published in 1865 in Charles Dickens’ periodical All the Year Round and later included in Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall, he was awoken by a young member of his household on 8th September at around daybreak with the news that there were ‘dead men on vicarage rocks’. In this version, written more than twenty years after the event, at a time when he was beset by financial worries and with a growing family to support, Hawker describes the terrible scene in vivid detail: the waters of the bay ‘tossing and seething with a tangled mass of rigging, sails, and broken fragments of a ship’, the billows rolling up ‘yellow with corn’, the bodies of two dead sailors lying ‘stiff and stark’ on the sand, and the frightful way in which ‘ever and anon there came up out of the water, as though stretched out with life, a human hand and arm’. For the reader the horror is mitigated slightly by the fortunate discovery of a lone survivor, collapsed on the ground at a place ‘just where a brook of fresh water fell towards the sea’. Hawker’s description of how, ‘He opened his eyes at our voices, and as he saw me leaning over him in my cassock-shaped dressing gown, he sobbed with a piteous cry, “O mon père, mon père!”‘ is almost convincing: the dressing gown certainly sounds plausible, though it might have presented a significant encumbrance during the climb down the ‘frightful descent of three hundred feet to the beach’. Writing anonymously for a London magazine, without mention of Morwenstow, and with so much time elapsed since the episode in question, Hawker was in fact providing an artistic and somewhat fictionalised version of what actually took place: the survivor, Edward Le Dain, was found not by Hawker as he later claimed, but by a Mr John Adams of Stanbury, and was cared for at Stanbury as well as at the Vicarage.

A letter written by Hawker and dated September 22, 1842, provides a far more sobering account of his immediate responses to the disaster and of the care which he took in carrying out what he saw as his Christian duty towards the dead men. To a bereaved relative of David MacDonald he writes:

The corpse was prepared for Burial by a very motherly woman, my Sexton’s wife. I did not suffer any of the bodies to be gazed at by the Common People, but they were treated with as much respect and decency as if they had died at home. The four found up to this date lie buried side by side in my Churchyard, and their graves have been dressed, as the custom is with us, with flowers. The Figure-head of their ship stands fixed in their midst. I have sent to the owners by this post le Dain’s statement of the voyage and wreck, to which I refer you for information. You will find much in it which should be a comfort to you. Le Dain frequently speaks of David, who with him used to attend on the Captain in the cabin more than the rest. He constantly says to me, ‘David was a good quiet lad as could be in a ship.’ I think the crew perished about half-past three on the morning of the 8th of September…

Life and Letters (p. 162)

For over a hundred and fifty years the figurehead survived in its position beside the graves, outlasting other similar monuments which had once been a feature of churchyards along the Cornish coast. However, in the autumn of 2004 a detailed inspection revealed serious internal damage caused by rot and decay, and a small team led by one of the UK’s leading conservers of carved wooden artefacts, Hugh Harrison, was commissioned to carry out a complete restoration. The project took several years to complete and although Morwenstow Parochial Church Council had at first hoped to return the restored figurehead to the churchyard, it was eventually decided that because of its fragility it should be mounted inside the church where it would be protected from the weather

The original figurehead.

If you walk along the coast path from the Vicarage today, you will find one of the National Trust's smallest buildings, Hawker's Hut, a small hut Rev Hawker had constructed of driftwood. Hawker is said to have spent much of his time there contemplating,writing poetry, and smoking opium. There are magnificent views from the hut down the coast to Cambeak, Tintagel, and Pentire, with Lundy Island visible in the distance.

Excentric to the last, lying paralysed in bed, Hawker sprang one last surprise on the Church of England. After years of doubts about the authenticity of Anglican orders, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church just before he died.

Last places we visited were around Hartland - first being Hartland Abbey itself.

Hartland Abbey is a former abbey and current family home to the Stucley family. It was built in 1157 and consecrated by Bartholomew Iscanus in 1160.

Hartland Abbey boasts a rich history spanning from its founding as an Augustinian monastery in 1157 to its current status as a lived-in family home. It was the last monastery in England to be dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539, who then gifted it to his Sergeant of the Wine Cellar, William Abbot.

The Abbey has undergone extensive remodeling, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, showcasing a blend of medieval, Queen Anne, Georgian, Regency, and Victorian styles.

It has served as a filming location for various productions, including BBC's "Sense and Sensibility" and Rosamunde Pilcher's "The Shell Seekers".

St Nectans Church, as seen from the Abbey grounds

Hartland Quay

It experiences some of the roughest seas in winter and is a former harbour.The harbour dated back to the time of Henry VIII until a storm led to the complete destruction of the pier head and later the whole pier wall in 1887. Parts of the old formation stones can be seen at low tide, as well as evidence of a counter pier.

St Nectans Church, Stoke near Hartland.

Saint Nectan was one of many Celtic hermits and missionaries associated with early Christian sites in south-west Britain, South Wales and Ireland in the fifth and sixth centuries. A well 100 metres from the church is the reputed site of his hermitage.

The history of the area is obscure; however, the first recorded building here was a collegiate church served by twelve secular canons founded ca. 1050 by Gytha, Countess of Wessex (mother of King Harold). Traditionally the church was founded in thanksgiving for the preservation of her husband's life in a storm at sea; a better tradition associates her husband Godwin, Earl of Wessex and holder of the royal manor of Harton, with the foundation.

Nothing is known of the earliest building nor whether it was rebuilt or enlarged when the collegiate church was replaced by a house of Augustinian regulars at Hartland Abbey in the twelfth century.

The current building, believed to date from 1360, replaced the earlier church on the site, of which only the font still remains and is thought to date from 1170. The 128 ft tower, rising in four stages, claimed to be the highest in Devon, has for centuries been a landmark to sailors at sea. It was built about sixty years after the rest of the church.

The statue depicts St. Nectan as a bishop, although the head of the statue is a later addition.

So that is it! Holiday over, now back to Suffolk.

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Devon - Holiday on the North West coast and Cornwall (1)

The home we booked for this holiday was larger than we needed, but the photos and reviews swayed our decision - we were not dissapointed! It was brilliant, possible one of the best we have stayed in.

A couple of images of Tidewood, our holiday home

A view from the balcony  - just fancy looking at that all the time!

A slightly zoomed image showing the Old Smithy, the lovely thatched inn which was our nearest neighbour, with the sea behind it.

On the wall of the local, the Old Smithy, was this Victorian post box. Not too many of those about now.

So now that we are here, where shall we go today? - Bude!

Like most of these places, we had visited here before, but we hadn`t walked along the beach in the direction we did today.

It was interesting, as the rock formations on the beach and the cliffs behind, give another dimention to the normal Bude image of loads of sunbathers and surfers. There were however a lot of surfers today as there was a competion on, but fewer people sunbathing.

The beach swimming pool that I had not seen before.

A house facing the beach front. What a spot!

Some of the rock formations in the cliffs

Some rock formations across part of the beach. One of the things about this area is the glorious cliffs and rock structures - its not just bathing beaches!

Now it is Sunday. A local walk was on the cards, so mid morning off we went.

On the walk toward the coast, on a nearby lane toward Marsland, a couple of images of the incline to the coast and a house near the bottom. It had been so steep this far so we turned back at this point and went to the local for lunch!

Oak Eggar caterpillar on the road nearby

Boscastle is our destination on this monday morning. The picturesque fishing village of Boscastle with its medieval past and distinctive natural harbour, is one of Cornwall’s most romantic places. It is a village steeped in history, associated with authors and artists who have been inspired by its remoteness and rugged beauty. Boscastle was once a favourite haunt of author, Thomas Hardy, and the setting for one of his novels, A Pair of Blue Eyes. It was here that he met his wife, Emma. It does have a rather sad past, if you don`t know the history of the floods here - read on.

On 16 August 2004 an estimated 440 million gallons of water swept through the picturesque West Country town and led to the bursting of banks and the convergence of three rivers.

A total of 58 properties were flooded while four others were completely destroyed.

Around 100 people had to be plucked to safety by emergency teams, after mounting their roofs to escape the rising waters.

The town suffered millions of pounds worth of damage but as residents will also say of that day – it was astounding that nobody died.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-28523053 for more details of the devastation of 2004 when heavy localised rainfall – 89 mm of rain - fell in an hour.

Following the devastation, 4.5 million pounds was spent locally on flood defences.

Looking at it today, you would never know.

Walking away from the village toward the Harbour

The quaint harbour

And here we are at the entrance with the Atlantic beyond, with a tower on the top of the left hand side.

The little tower known as the Willapark Lookout was built in the early 1800’s. It has been described as a ‘summer house’ and ‘prospect house’ because the site affords stunning views and was an ideal place for bringing the family for a picnic.

The man who owned it then was Mr Avery, or the “Squire”, as described in detail by William Francis Allen Burnard, an elderly resident of Boscastle. He was told that Avery, in his time, was a remarkable business man who employed many local men. Avery was Lord of the Manor of Boscastle and owned practically all of the nearby Delabole slate quarry.

According to Burnard although Thomas Rickard Avery was an outstanding man of business, he was known as ‘a notorious wrecker of ships and a receiver of contraband goods’.

Ironically, given its past, the Willapark Lookout was later leased to the government. The Board of Trade used its excellent position to keep watch on the coast in a bid to prevent smuggling. Then it was used by the coastguard up until the 1970’s. It then fell into disrepair.

Oh to be young! Some lads jumping of the rocks into the sea in various places. We watched them for a while as they seemed to having a great time

Cruising around them, and also enjoying themselves, these five young ladies.

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Rowden Holiday - Glastonbury

When the town of Glastonbury crops up in a conversation then the first thing that springs to mind is the famous music festival. However, there are other intersting things about the area - one being the TOR.

Having now been into the town, one has to ask "is it held actually in Glastonury?" and the answer is "No, the Glastonbury Festival is not actually in the town of Glastonbury. It's held on Worthy Farm in Pilton, a village about 7 miles (13 km) east of Glastonbury"

However, our daughter wanted to see and climb the Tor, which is what we did. She has been to the festival with her brother many moons ago!

Here are my daughter, wife and grandaughter posing at the bottom of the Tor, poised and ready to go.

Daughter and grandaughter, part way up, looking down to the start.

.... and the town of Glatonbury when we were part way up.

We had a good climb to the top and all enjoyed it. After a walk around the Tor we headed down. The 13th-century tower which forms a landmark on the summit of Glastonbury Tor, is all that remains of St Michael's Church. The original wooden church was destroyed by an earthquake in 1275, and the stone Church of St Michael was built on the site in the 14th century. Its tower remains, although it has been restored and partially rebuilt several times.

I was rather attracted to this image of the person sitting amongst the yellow flowers enjoying a drink. Taken at the bottom of the Tor.

Glastonbury is often described as a "superstitious" or "mystical" town, and for good reason. Its long history, rich in myth and legend, has contributed to its reputation as a spiritual hub and a place where mystical energies are believed to be strong. Glastonbury being home to Glastonbury Tor, which is believed to have been a site of Celtic pagan worship before Christianity and now a popular destination for spiritual seekers. The town also contains the Chalice Well, another site of historical and spiritual significance, with legends suggesting it is linked to the Holy Grail - another legend in itself!

The town is intertwined with both Arthurian legends (including the story of King Arthur's burial) and the early history of Christianity in England, and has a thriving counterculture and New Age community, with many independent shops and businesses reflecting this interest in spiritual practices and alternative beliefs.

Glastonbury also has a long tradition of being 'The Isle of Avalon' where King Arthur went after his last battle. The monks of Glastonbury Abbey claimed to have found his grave in 1191. The unfortunate thing is of course that no historical records exist from that time and the earliest mention of him was by a well known Catholic Cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth who supposedly copied details from earlier documents in the 12th century. Also no modern historian or researcher can find any positive indication that he even existed!

Even Jesus is said to have come to Glastonbury as a boy, travelling here with Joseph of Arimathea. Another realy bizzare claim. Glastonbury was part of the Celtic Kingdom of the Dumnonii at the time, the Romans invading later. Why on earth would they have come to the ancient land of the Celts from Israel? And of course `how?` - as most travelling by people was on a donkey! Also, there is no hint in the Gospels of the two knowing each other when Jesus was young.

Bottom line: All this of course really attracts the tourists!

While the family wandered the town, Rosey and I headed for the ruined abbey.  

One of the building we passed on the way was obviously where they used to collect Tolls from passing trade. Here is an explantion I found about turnpikes:

`They originated in the 17th century because local governments, specifically parishes, were unwilling or unable to invest in roads. The finances of turnpike trusts were distinctive because they levied tolls on road users and issued bonds mortgaged on these tolls. Also, they were locally managed and financed.`

And so onto the Abbey`s spectacular ruin.

The earliest historical evidence for the monastery at Glastonbury, including land grants and privileges, appears in the last 30 years of the 7th century. By the time of the coming of the Normans, the abbey was the wealthiest in England and its wealth only grew up until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century.

It was the second longest church in Britain at the time, with a total internal length of about 176m (580ft). Fountains Abbey being the largest.

The Lady Chapel is apparently one of the finest late 12th century monuments in Britain.

Bearing in mind the overall sceptisim around King Arthur, one wonders who was really buried here?

We didn`t go in this building but its the Abbot's Kitchen. This kitchen is situated to the south of the Abbey church ruins. It is one of the best preserved Medieval kitchens in Europe and the only substantial monastic building at Glastonbury. It was built in the 14th century.

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