The Blackmore Country. F. J. Snell
to sleep on the margin, fallen over into the glowing furnace, and been consumed to powder. They are now a picturesque ruin. Older men can recall a yet earlier time when pack-horses came to Westleigh from Tiverton and fetched lime in boxes. In front was a man riding a pony, and the horses followed without compulsion.
The string of pack-horses mentioned in chapter ii. of Lorna Doone, as arriving from Sampford Peverell, may be a reminiscence of this traffic.
Not far from the entrance to the Whiteball tunnel, and in the neighbourhood of the great limestone quarries, in a pleasant meadow facing south, are the ruins of Canonsleigh Abbey. To a connoisseur like Mr. F. T. Elworthy, these remains tell their own story, and it is thanks to that gentleman’s investigations and researches that we are able to furnish a concise account of the ancient nunnery. A gateway yet stands, though unhappily disfigured by the desecrating touch of modern man, and near it is a doorway of red sandstone leading to a staircase doubtless belonging to the porter. In the upper storey, square-headed windows—wrought, we may believe, in the fourteenth century—command the approach in either direction; other features are less easy to determine, since there are modern walls and a modern roof, which have been added for the purpose of turning the place into a shed, and incidentally obscure the older architecture.
Without spending more time here, let us pass to a quadrangular building of massive construction, and supported at two of its angles by solid buttresses. Situated at the east end of the convent, this is considered to have been a great flanking tower communicating, by means of strong walls (fragments of which yet remain), at the angles opposite to the buttresses, with the residential portions. The outer or enclosing wall of the abbey precincts started from the middle of the east wall of the tower; and under the middle of the tower flowed a stream, which issued through a covered exit and continued its course outside the boundary wall, washing its base. The reason for this somewhat peculiar arrangement was a good one—the supply of the abbey stews; but its effect was to throw the tower out of line with the walls and the other buildings.
Inside the walls were two spaces, irregular in shape, and clearly open courtyards, from one of which a doorway led into the tower. The chief entrances seem to have been from the two or more floors of the domestic quarters. On the side next the convent, approached by a massive doorway, is a narrow chamber, conjectured to have been a “guard-room” for refractory nuns. Over this, but running the entire length of the building, and not, like the lower floor, divided by wall and doorway, is a floor supported by beams.
This tower, with the plaster clinging to its walls—how can we explain its survival when the rest of the once stately abbey has vanished? Probably the reason lies partly in its strength and partly in its plainness and the absence of wrought stone tempting human greed. As has been well said, “it still stands a picturesque and sturdy relic of an age of good lime-burners and honest masons.” The wrought stone of one or two windows in the adjacent walls has been removed, but what indications remain suggest the close of the twelfth century as that virtuous age.
The Priory of Leigh was founded, Dr. Oliver says, in the latter half of the twelfth century, and Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph opines, before 1173. In its infant days, it seems to have been a dependency of Plympton Priory—at any rate, in the estimation of the latter monastery, whose head claimed the right to appoint the superior of Leigh. This demand was resisted, and in 1219 the then Bishop of Exeter composed the quarrel by deciding, as a sort of compromise, that the Prior of Plympton might, if he chose, be present at the election.
In the second half of the thirteenth century there were scandals at Leigh calling for episcopal cognisance and visitation; and these disorders proving incurable, Bishop Quivil went the length of ejecting the prior and canons, and transferring the monastery, with all its belongings, to a body of canonesses of the same rule of St. Augustine. And Matilda de Tablere became the first Prioress of Leigh. Next year, Matilda de Clare, Countess of Gloucester and Hertford, presented the convent with the (then) great sum of six hundred marks, in acknowledgment of which Bishop Quivil erected the priory into an abbey, and appointed the countess its abbess.
The patron saints, under the old régime, had been the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. John the Evangelist. St. Ethelreda the Virgin was now added, and practically displaced St. Mary, whose name is omitted in later descriptions. Another change affected the name of the place, “Mynchen” being often substituted for “Canon”-leigh. “Mynchen” is the old English feminine of “monk,” and therefore equivalent to the modern “nun.”
The indignant canons did not take their extrusion meekly. They appealed to the archbishop, and, through him, to the king, against the usurpation of the “little women,” but they appealed in vain.
Sad to relate, the ladies do not appear to have behaved much better than their predecessors. In 1314 Bishop Stapledon, Quivil’s successor, addressed a letter to his dear daughters in Christ, telling them in Norman-French that he had heard of many deshonestetes, and calling particular attention to the fact that there was an entrance into the cellar where a man brewed le braes, and another under the new chamber of the abbess! These he ordered to be closed by a stone wall before the following Easter.
The abbey was suppressed in February 1538, and at the end of the same year the king granted a lease of the site and precincts, with the tithes of sheaf and the rectories of Oakford and Burlescombe, to Thomas de Soulemont, of London. The inmates, however, were not turned adrift on the charity of the cold world. Each received a pension, and this, in the case of the abbess, Elisabeth Fowell, was considerable. There were eighteen sisters in all, and some of them, as is proved by their names—Fortescue, Coplestone, Sydenham, Carew, Pomeroy—were of good West-country extraction.
In course of time the property passed through various hands, and out of the spoils of the abbey a certain owner appears to have built a mansion, which was demolished in 1821.
From Canonsleigh let us away to Dunkeswell, about equidistant from Culmstock, but in another direction. On the journey we may look again at the grassy plateau which has Culmstock Beacon at one extremity and the Wellington Monument, set up in honour of the Iron Duke and his victories, at the other. This stretch of moorland is yet in its primitive state, and the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, whose property it is, exercise zealous supervision over it. Time was when the villagers depastured their donkeys thereon, but of late years the privilege seems to have been withdrawn.
The Blackdowns, generally, have been enclosed and turned into farms; and although one sometimes stumbles on desolate fields with patches of gorse, mindful of their ancient savagery, this does not affect, to any appreciable extent, the character of the country. On the whole, a ride or walk across the long level chines is not specially delightsome, save indeed for the wholesome air and an occasional glimpse of a fairy-like mappa mundi spread out at their base. It is only when one descends into charming little villages, like Hemyock, or Dunkeswell, or Broadhembury, with their orchards fair and hollyhocks, that complete satisfaction is attained, and then it is attained.
Amidst so much that is bare (and on this subject we have not said our last word) the ivied ruins of Dunkeswell Abbey, nearer Hemyock than Dunkeswell village, and lending its name to a very respectable hamlet, assuredly deserve remark. Situated in a charmingly secluded spot, they consist merely of parts of the gatehouse and fragments of walls. The latter have a blackened appearance as if the destruction of the buildings had been accelerated by fire; more probably, however, this is due to the mould of age. In its heyday the abbey boasted an imposing range of buildings, the outlines of which may still be traced in the grass, when, in the drought of summer, it withers, more rapidly than elsewhere, over the foundations.
The history of the abbey is almost as scanty as its remains. It was founded in 1201 by William Lord Briwere or Bruere, on land that had previously belonged to William Fitzwilliam, who, having borrowed from one Amadio, a Jew, was compelled to mortgage his manor of Dunkeswell. According to one version, Briwere redeemed the land from the Hebrew, but a charter of King John shows the vendor to have been Henry de la Pomeroy. There is clearly a tangle. Possibly Pomeroy bought Dunkeswell from the mortgagee and resold it to Briwere, who, in any case, bestowed it on the Cistercians of Ford.
Just outside the north wall of the modern church may be seen a stone coffin,