Parracombe North Devon

Parracombe North Devon.

In 1876 Arthur Smyth, a Parracombe man, wrote a detailed account of his village, describing it farm by farm, house by house and adding a few revealing anecdotes of past and present inhabitants. A similar review written in, say, 1950 would have shown remarkably few changes. Most of the new houses and bungalows have appeared in the last thirty years.

At the time Parracombe Common had been recently enclosed: it had previously been part of the Manor of Parracombe Mill - the old manor of Pedrecombe. The Lord of the Manor then relinquished his title in exchange for a parcel of land: it was the end of an era. Four acres of the common were left unenclosed 'for exercise and recreation of the inhabitants of this parish.' It seems an unlikely gesture in a land-hungry age but Parliament had recently been throwing out Bills of Enclosure from too-greedy applicants; maybe the four acres served as a carefully calculated palliative. Despite an Inquiry in 1910. 'This is not used for any purpose and is quite unproductive' the 'Pleasure Ground' is still an unfenced tangle of bramble, gorse and Rose-bay Willow Herb.

Down in the village, meanwhile, the two inns were flourishing. The 'Fox and Goose' was then a low thatched building; it was to be rebuilt in 1894; it was already beginning to overshadow its rival, partly, at least, owing to the advent of wheeled traffic. Carriages were appearing as roads improved and carts were being used instead of the sledges which previously had been the standard conveyance on the moor. There was more room - and flatter ground - outside the 'Fox and Goose'. The Barnstaple - Lynton coach stopped there. But the other inn, too, had received a fillip. The Prince of Wales had called there for refreshment when he was following hounds locally. (He enjoyed hunting on Exmoor: a bog 'out over' from Oare still bears his name; regally ignoring advice, he tumbled into it). So the London Inn, as it had been called for years, became the 'Royal Hotel'.

The London Inn - Royal Hotel - stood (the house still stands) on one side of the small triangular patch of cobble-stones doggedly referred to as 'The Square'. Hard by was the Malt House, doing good business, and the recently built brewery, destined to produce mineral water as well as

Parracombe Ale until well into the next century. (When the foundations were being dug fine specimens of silver-lead ore were found; later a trial shaft was sunk in an adjoining field and a mining prospectus issued but the project came to nothing.) Across the street was the mill, its wheel turning steadily as the farmers rode in with sacks of corn across their ponies' backs. The millpond, fed by a leat from the River Heddon, was a little higher up the road, where the lane to the church turned off.

The new church had not yet been built but a year or two later the old church, St. Petrock's, was declared unsafe. Proposals to demolish it were denounced country-wide, particularly by John Ruskin, who donated ten pounds towards a new church in order to preserve the old. So preserved it was though used less and less frequently. It is a fascinating church. St Petrock, in the middle of the sixth century, built a structure of wood or wattle and daub.

It is likely that the Saxons erected a more permanent one, perhaps, again, of wood. The Norman William of Falaise, on acquiring the Manor, built what is now the nave of the present church. The tower was added in 1182 and the chancel in 1252. Some alterations were made in the fifteenth century, when the south aisle was added. (The fifteenth century was the great period of church rebuilding, owing to the increase in wealth from the wool trade; fortunately the Gothic had reached its peak in the Perpendicular style).

Various renovations have been made since, notably when lightning struck in 1908, but they have been made with care. Inside, the church is still more interesting; the fittings have been kept much as they were in George the Third's time screen, painted tympanum, box pews, musicians gallery and three decker pulpit. The font, probably Norman, has a curious history. It was found, half buried, in the rectory garden at Martinhoe in 1905 and was installed here.

The cottage by the church, altered again and again through the years, is the sixteenth - possibly fifteenth - century Church House. Church Houses were built during these two centuries as parochial meeting-places; they combined the functions of the parish hall and the 'pub' replacing the old manorial 'Lord's Brewhouse'. Parish Feasts were held there. Maybe they were rowdy places at times. Thomas Nashe, the Elizabethan dramatist and contentious writer, cried out, in his 'Christ's Tears over Jerusalem': 'Hath not the Divell hys Chapel close adjoining to God's Church?'

The rectory, in Arthur Smyth's day, stood below the church, in the shelter of the hill, surrounded by the glebe. (It is now, as Heddon Hall, in secular hands.) The extensive glebe (land appointed to the church) was culled from the Manor; its bounds were the lane from the church to the Lynton Road - Sentery, or Sentry, lane - the Lynton road itself, down to the millpond, and the lane - Church Lane - back to the church. The customary Sunday-afternoon walk, along the boundary, is still called 'Sentry Walk'. 'Sentry' perhaps in its obsolete form as a variant of 'Sanctuary": in the Middle Ages a fugitive from justice would be safe - for a time - if he could reach the church, or even grasp the iron ring - the Sanctuary Knocker - on the church door.

When the Rev. John Pyke was rector (1826 - 1868) the rectory must have been a very fine place indeed, with ornamental gardens, fish ponds and an 'Orchard House' for fruit. He converted the existing rectory into stables and built a new one - the present house.

The carriage drive for the Rectory met Church Lane at its junction with Bodley Lane by the school. There a few cottages formed the little settlement known as Prisonford - now, euphemistically, Prestonford. There is a trickle of a stream to provide the ford but the prison can only be guessed at. Thomas Westcote - 'A View of Devonshire', in 1630 - says of Parracombe Manor; 'To the Lord whereof belonged great power and privilege, and had a prison and execution of offenders within itself'. Maybe here.

Up the road, at Sunnyside Farm, there was formerly a Tucking Mill. The farm track is shown as 'Tucking Mill Lane' on old maps. Tucking was the finishing process by which the woven cloth was both cleansed and felted. Some sort of power was needed: here, it is said, it was provided by a heavy roller turned by a capstan bar to which a horse was harnessed, rather in the fashion of the cider presses commonly used in Normandy.

The lane affords a splendid view of Holwell Castle, down below, a 'motte and bailey', the earliest form of Norman castle construction. The motte the mound which would have boasted a wooden keep, the last bastion of defence - stands proud; the Inner Bailey - the apron-like enclosure in front of and around it, forming a large courtyard - has its banks intact and the Outer Bailey - the overall defence area down to the river - is at least traceable. From the castle a handful of men-at-arms and archers would have dominated the valley and, particularly, the way up from the sea at Heddon's Mouth.

Not far away, by contrast, stands the Wesleyan chapel, built in 1839, in the heady days of Wesleyanism. It is a comfortable, solid structure, its architecture early enough to be simple and unpretentious. The Wesleyan movement had a great influence on village life, perhaps particularly so in the West Country, but it may have hindered progressive reform by its doctrine of acceptance of what it saw as God's Will. It certainly created schisms, not only between the chapel and the public house, but between Chapel and Church. The effect lingered on, in Parracombe as elsewhere.

To the north of the village lies a more secluded part of the parish, known to few except those who farm it or hunt over it, the lands of the old manor of Middleton. It is essentially a high ridge terminating in the strangely named Vention - formerly Invention - Hill, whose wooded slopes run down to the Heddon and Trentishoe Water valleys. It harbours isolated farms: Voley, warm and sheltered, which may have been the 'bird place' and so may have housed the fowler who snared or shot them; Walner, neighbouring, in the woods: the little settlement tucked away at Heale: Bumsley Mill down by the river. Voley Castle, the enigmatic circular enclosure whose age is undetermined, lies, with its standing-stone, on the slope down to the Heddon.

Arthur Smyth mentions the Annual Fair for cattle, sheep and horses, first held in 1856, still well-attended in his day, and the Whitsun Revels, which apparently had lapsed. (They have now been revived, though not quite in the old style: Mr. Smyth notes drunkenness and wrestling matches as prominent features in the old days.) He does not mention another discontinued tradition though the Rev. J.F. Chanter, some time later, records being told of it: in the early years of the century a football match took place annually between Parracombe and Martinhoe, the pitch three miles of open moorland from Parracombe churchyard to Martinhoe church, the rules, one imagines, elementary.

Wrestling, as R.D. Blackmore indicates in 'Lorna Doone', was a West Country pastime, perhaps at its height in the first half of the last century. A native of Parracombe, over ninety years old when he died several years ago, used to talk of his grandfather, who would tell him of fearsome trips to Cornwall 'wrestling' and invite him to feel his shins, scarred and notched with frequent kickings. All the village lads would ride down together - 'tweren't safe, else'.

A more recent picture of village life can still be had, first-hand, from men who were boys after the First World War. The roads were unmetalled and gated. Cars are not mentioned but excursions by horse-drawn brake the precursor of the motor char-a-banc - were frequent. Pennies could be earned by fastening skids on the wheels at the top of the hill - and taking them off at the bottom - fetching water for the horses from the river in big wooden pails, opening gates......

The Barnstaple - Lynton railway was running on its narrow-gauge track. It puffed its way through the cutting, whose banks, early in the year, spelt 'Parracombe' in snowdrops, as it slowed down for the little station by the church.

The carpenter had a saw-pit up the Heale road; a long trench six foot deep straddled by beams. A tree-trunk, trimmed of branches, would be rolled on to them and marked out for cutting into planks. The top sawyer would take his massive coarse-toothed saw by its cross-handle and stand on the end beam while the bottom sawyer would scramble down into the flying saw-dust.

The Wheelwright worked up Holwell farm lane, beside the stream which was fed by the Holy well. The wheel's rim was formed of separate arcs of wood known as felloes or fellies - 'vallies' in the dialect; the spokes were slotted into them and into the hub. (Terms long-used, as in Hamlet: ,"Break all the Spokes and Fallies from her wheel'.) The iron tyre held them together; it was heated red-hot, carried with tongs by a man and a boy and dropped precisely over the circumference. Then cooled rapidly with water from the stream. The concrete platform on which all this took place was, until recently, still standing there.

At prescribed intervals the parish bounds would be beaten. The boys would be initiated, having the marks pointed out to them so that the knowledge would not be lost. There is still a stone (though no longer upright) on Beacon Hill, by the Iron Age rampart, with 'P' on one side and 'M' (for Martinhoe) on the other; from there the boundary ran down to 'a big thorn tree' and then straight down to the river, where was a large hollowed stone into which water from a spring flowed. The boundary-beaters solemnly drank from it. In 1952 the flood washed it away, with much else.

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Parracombe North Devon.