All right my lovely? Ringing Devon style

You mean they just ring call changes?

No “just” about it!

Devon ringers are not some random ‘failed-to-learn-the-blue-line’ band of ringers. They take call changes seriously – very seriously.

Now the most obvious difference is NO HANDSTROKE GAP – the rhythm is continuous. While ringing on six bells in the rest of the country would be “123456123456gap123456123456”, in the west we ring “123456123456123456”. if you have learned how to ring upcountry then this sounds and feels strange – for all of a week, it comes naturally pretty soon.

The second difference is the speed of ringing – technically this is “RINGING BELOW THE BALANCE”. It creates an effect of a continuous tenor hum that underlies the whole round. To be really geeky then I’d tell you that we ring some 32 or 33 rounds per minute (on six bells)

Ah, yes, the number of bells is also significant – most towers in Devon are 6 bells (around 260+ towers), half as many 8 bells and then just a few with 10 or 12. Towers with more than 8 bells tend towards the standard mix of call changes and method ringing.

Before I moved to Devon I learned with “call changes” and progressed to “change ringing”. In Devon “change ringing”, that is following a particular pattern and learning “the blue line”, is very definitely called “Method” and if you confess to ringing Method they might give you a strange look or mutter something that is probably ”never mind”, but it will be with a Devon accent so don’t worry too much.

The ringing fraternity in the south west is every bit as friendly as in the rest of the country, but you will fit in more if you take some steps towards understanding proper Devon call changes.

So you enter the tower ….

What’s up with those ropes? they may be exceedingly long – its common for west country ringers to ring with loops or even elastic bands round the upper arm to hold the tail end in place (eeeks) – or they may not have a looped tail end: one local tower has what seems to be duck tape wrapped around the raw end to stop it fraying, no loops!

And some towers have notices expressly forbidding “knots” in ropes – ie if you are a visitor and the rope is too long for you they do not want you making it shorter by a knot, but expect you to ring with loops in hand – it takes a while to get used to it.

The captain announces “A band to raise”

And they step up. Then “On the third stroke..” None of those Bristol starts where one bell gets added at a time – nope, we all start together with perfect rounds from start to finish …. (maybe!)

A Devon raise will be quick . The probably reason for this is that striking competitions are common in Devon where the raise and lower are also part of the set piece and most faults will be gained in the raise or lower as it’s harder to strike these perfectly. So the quicker you get them up the fewer faults – that’s the idea anyhow, I needed some extra training to raise in rounds Devon-style.

As the bells slow down then the call is made “Upwards…” – isn’t that what I’m trying to do? This actually means “we are going to stand in a moment so be ready for it”. That’s if you are going to stand, commonly in our tower we do a few quick call changes and then a lower, just because.

The lower will also be faster than you might expect. In the mostly-method towers they probably only do one raise and lower per practice , and I admit I prefer this, and in my case repetition doesn’t always mean improvement.

We have competitions – lots of them. Now I have to confess, Bovey as a tower did not enter any competitions in the last few decades but it does have certificates from the early part of the 20th century and it seems was none too bad at this striking lark. With that in mind Bovey entered a band for a competition at Bow and Zeal Monachorum last year. We joined in for the fun of it – and for the tea and cakes (a requisite for a striking competition). We did not come last. OK, so we didn’t do particularly well but then Kingsteignton were there and they do ring rather well. The point is that we had a really good afternoon, came together as a team and left wanting to try again and try harder. Which we did – one or two competitions later, some changes to the competition band and we achieved sixth place out of nine in a novice striking competition just recently. I can’t repeat this enough – it was fun.

Since that first competition last year we have tried a few more. In one where we represented Kingskerswell we even came first – there were only two teams though 😂. The set piece is called “Sixty on thirds”, actually sixty six changes in all as you first need to get the order into “Queens” : 135246. Listening to the regular rhythm can be soporific. In the recent Six bell National Call Changes held in Birmingham half the teams were from Devon and Kingsteignton came first with Broadhempston a comfortable 4th. Both are local to us in Bovey and both are amazingly good. I’m not sure I’d have the dedication to do all that practice.

So whichever side your bread is buttered, call changes or method, Devon ringing has a lot to offer. Personally I enjoy both, probably will remain mediocre at both, but the bottom line is that bellringing, wherever it is, is good fun.

Listed Bovey: Town Hall Square

The Bell Inn

ID 1334106

No 14 Town Hall, this is a 17th century pub that was remodelled in the 19th century.

Originally it was probably built rather like my own home as a 3-room with passage design but subsequently doorways have been moved and the ground floor completely refitted to form a single bar with lounge room more suited to a public house. The listing suggests that the fireplace might be the original one but with a renewed wooden lintel. There are sash windows, some with six panes per panel and others with just two. When it was listed in 1986 only the downstairs was inspected which is sad because I am sure there are interesting historic features upstairs as well.

Sometime between the listing and the image on Historic England one of the entrances on the front aspect has been closed up – presumably it was situated under the hood with slated pent roof.

12 and 13 Town Hall Place

ID 1097411

This was probably a single residence when first built and it has undergone many changes. however it was listed to preserve the immediate area – most of the buildings in Town Hall Square are similarly listed. In 1986 the original front door was present at no 12 with a beaded wood architrave. It also had 8-paned sash windows in plain cement architraves.

3-4 Town Hall Place

Now 3 cottages this property was originally one farmhouse, built as a three-room with cross passage with later 16th and 17th century additions. Like my own home it is stone and cob which has been rendered. It also has three ashlar granite chimney stacks with tapered tops. It was listed in 1986. Behind the property is an early barn. Sadly the interior was not described in the listing. It seems around this time there were a large number of listings to properties without the full inspection or report.

15 Town Hall Place with 82 Fore Street

This building is a long narrow house, 3 rooms deep from Town Hall Place. It appears to have been built as a shop in the late 16th or early 17th century. The walls are solid, sone stone rubble, the lack of cob suggesting it is a later building than the pub next door. However the chimney stack with granite ashlar and tapered top puts the construction around the 16th/17th centuries. The house attached, no 82, has been significantly altered in the 20th century with the application of a hard render that may cover up interesting earlier features. Again these two were listed in 1986.

8 and 9 Town Hall Place

This building is late medieval, formerly one residence it is now a pair of houses and a shop. The interior roof structure had blackened timbers from smoke and the new roof has been constructed over the earlier roof. The walls are a mix of stone and cob, some of which has been cemented over. The shop front dates from the 19th century and there are 20th century casement windows.

The Town Hall

Built in 1866, at a cost of £1300, this building probably replaced earlier non-permanent structures where trade and social activities took place. It is constructed of granite and slate stone rubble with limestone ashlar dressings. The style has been copied from Italianate municipal buildings and has some Renaissance details – 19th century England created many similarly styled buildings. The main floor is a “piano nobile” with higher ceilings and larger windows, reached from the ground level by external staircases. During the 19th century this building functioned not only as a town hall but also had police cells on the ground floor and a small home for the constable.

The drain pipes are iron and at the NW and SE ends they are topped with fiery dragon heads.

The older photographic images are taken from my postcard collection. They aren’t dated and haven’t been used so its hard to date the buildings. If anyone has any ideas or comments they would be gratefully received!

Listed Bovey: Telephone box

K6 Telephone Kiosk

This might just be the strangest listed “building” in Bovey!

Situated outside the Town Hall at the top of Fore Street is a cast iron telephone box – instantly recognisable in red.

The K6 telephone box was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (of Battersea Power Station fame) in 1935 for King George V silver Jubilee. It was based on the earlier 1924 K2 design for phone boxes but had a more streamlined appearance with a shallow roof and horizontal glazing. There were 70,000 of the K6 design manufactured but many of these were replaced and destroyed during the 1960s. This particular example is in tact with some original glass. It now houses a defibrillator. One can’t help thinking that a more imaginative use would have been fun – elsewhere such kiosks have been transformed into a museum (West Yorkshire), a nightclub (Kingsbridge) and a big hotel (Brixham) – but a defibrillator is pretty useful, especially located near the top of a hill!

In 2011 the Town Council paid £1 under BT’s “adopt a kiosk” scheme. It clearly took quite a few months to decide what to do with this once purchased – in 2012 it is listed on a scavenger hunt for telephone kiosks as in poor condition without the phone and missing several glass panes.

It was given Grade 2 listing in April 2015. Then later that same year heated discussions broke out in the news ( it might even be in the archives of ” Whats on Bovey Tracey” ) about how much it cost to repaint the phone box – some £600. In 2018 it was apparently insured for replacement costs of one £8,000. I cannot find a current value for this – I wish the council website had an easier search facility!

If you ever wanted to undertake a Telephone Box Hunt then some quite close to Bovey are Lustleigh, Widdecombe, Chagford, and Poundsworthy. The Lustleigh one currently has a sad looking large soft toy inside for no obvious reason! One enterprising local photographer has made an image blog of all the red phone boxes in Dartmoor – of course Bovey lies just outside the Dartmoor National Park so our lovely listed box doesn’t appear on her blog 😦

I have absolutely no idea where the nearest payphone is now – a google search suggested Paignton! However if you are desperate and as long as you don’t need the defibrillator, then some of you know where I live!

Renaming our home

Living at “66-70” is not without its problems. Firstly it’s a mouthful of an address and I usually have to repeat it because it’s not what the person was expecting to hear. Then we often end up with deliveries and post for numbers 67 and 69 in addition to our own. Finally when it comes to pamphlets and circulars and free publications – well, we get three of each, or even more, one for each number of course!

Why and how did we end up with this address?

Way way back many centuries ago (I’m singing in my head – “ … not long after the Bible began…” If you are confused then look up the lyrics from Joseph and his technicolour dream coat )

Well maybe not quite that long ago, but a few hundred years back, our house was built as a single dwelling. Imagine a track through the small town leading from the church at the top of the hill down to the river, just a few buildings along the way and on your right there are orchards: pears, apples, plums and cherries. In one of the orchards, beside the track, a building of cob and granite was constructed. It had three main rooms and a through passage and with four windows along the front it was quite a substantial dwelling in a prominent part of the town.

We know that in the 19th century, from at least as early as 1812, the building was named Yew Tree House. How or when it acquired that name is unknown and where the yew tree itself stood, again unknown.

In reading around for this post I have learned a great deal about yew trees. I’ll box it for you in case you already know or aren’t that interested!

Taxus baccata; described by the Woodland Trust as “ Ancient. Morbid. Toxic.”

They are said to live for thousands of years, are commonly found in churchyards and are very very poisonous. It is unclear why yew trees were so often planted in churchyards – one suggestion is that it stopped commoners grazing their livestock in or around the churchyard because eating parts of the tree would kill the animals; another relates to the yew being a symbol of immortality from as long ago as Druid times. Either way, there are some yew trees in British churchyards that are older then the church buildings themselves. It is apparently quite hard to date a yew tree since the central parts of the trunk often die off, while drooping branches may touch the ground and themselves grow roots, as if the tree is walking across the land ever so slowly. Despite its toxic nature the yew tree has provided the medical arena with an anti-cancer drug, paclitaxel : first extracted from the bark of the Pacific yew in 1962 this took 30 years before it was developed into a drug licensed as a treatment for ovarian cancer. Surprisingly blackbirds will eat the red fleshy part of the fruit that surrounds the seed which is the only part of the tree that isn’t extremely toxic. It is said to taste like lychee but it’s a brave or foolish person who tasted it given that even eating mushrooms that grow around the base of a yew tree can be fatal.

Before the 16th century residential buildings would have been referred to as “Jack’s House” or “Tom’s Place”, the building having no lasting identity of its own, rather changing according to the current head of the household. Thereafter the occupation of the owner became the building identifier (The Bakery, The Tannery ), or the appearance of the building (The Roundhouse). One might think that a census (first carried out in UK in 1801) might clarify a house position or name but it seems that the people conducting the early censuses did not necessarily visit the houses in order!

Trees and flowers feature often in house names, with “Orchard” and “Rose” accounting for some 20,000 properties in UK in 2015. Yew Tree Cottage was 18th in the list of popularity, but no Yew Tree House. In my mind a cottage is smaller, with lower ceilings and probably not the term you would use for a building constructed in the design of a medieval hall house. However, in the 1970s when our home existed as two properties the upper end, no 70, was referred to as Yew Tree Cottage in the deeds. At that time the larger part of the building, nos 66/68, were in use as a restaurant and so took a name from that.

But I’m ahead of myself, I was about to explain how it came to have three numbers – 66, 68 and 70.

Several websites will tell you that numbering houses began in 1765 with a Postage Act

But I’ve read through the act and it says nothing about houses having numbers. I think Wikipedia might, on this occasion, be more accurate when it describes street numbering coming in piecemeal, first in cities and towns, in the early 1700s. Bovey would appear to have been late when it comes to acquiring numbers for the buildings. Fore Street must have been allocated numbers after the point at which our building was divided into 3 tenements. Hence 66, 68 and 70. We know that up until 1870 the house was occupied by a single family with two lodgers and it was probably between 1870 and 1890 that it was split up with separate entrances for each household.

The European system of street numbering dictates that even and odd numbers are on opposite sides of the street – according to Wikipedia it is customary for even to be on the right and odd on the left as you walk along the street in the direction of increasing numbers. Not sure I have explained that very well, but if this were so in Bovey, as you walk up Fore Street from the river you would expect the 66, 68 and 70 to be on the right hand side – they aren’t. Another wiki page says that it would be customary for numbering to begin at the Town Hall and to increase in the direction away from it – nope, that doesn’t work in this part of Bovey either.

So we found ourselves in 2018 reinstating the building to a single residential dwelling. Opening up the doorways between 68 and 70 was no mean feat – but that’s a topic for another post. Then we had to demonstrate to the council that we had only one kitchen (two kitchens and it remains two residences with two lots of council tax!) and they informed us the address would now be 66-70 …..

And that’s where I began.

I found myself reading through some of the older documents we had on the house (what else is there to do in lockdown?) and in the deeds we did have (sadly they are patchy and incomplete) the phrase “formerly known as Yew Tree House” cropped up several times. The seed was sown – if formerly known as then why not revert to that for a name? It would seem appropriate for a Grade 2* listed building to own a name and it restores a part of the house history.

So the process began. Some councils permit adding names to addresses free of charge, after all you still have to use the numbers in your official address, but Teignbridge ask for a not inconsiderable sum. Still, we’d once before lived in a house with a name and I realised that for inexplicable reasons I would quite like to do so again. Now the nice lady at the council has suggested we change the number to 66 as well as restoring the building name. Not sure if Royal Mail will agree to that but I’m hoping!

Is there anyone here?

Its a whole year since I wrote anything and you could reasonably assume that I’d fallen off the planet. Somehow living life got in the way of writing and since 2020 was a year most people struggled with I won’t dwell on the gap. I am back.

Tidying my computer this morning, trying to place every document into a relevant folder but distracted by the huge number of possible backgrounds and one hour later I have achieved very little.

However I did find this piece of writing which made me smile so I thought I’d share it as a diversion. It dates from a writing group I once belonged to and the task was to write 1000 words to include the words: spectacles, a policeman, allotment and cheese straws ….

Spectacles, a policeman, an allotment and cheese straws: 

aka: One Sunday morning in Church

The vicar mounted the small flight of stairs with a degree of difficulty that had us all holding our breath. Having negotiated the bend at the top he placed both his hands firmly on the lectern and peered over the top of his spectacles, counting his flock. 

I sat back in the pew, sucking a mint humbug. Sunday mornings were the favourite point of my week, a marked contrast to childhood Sundays of long drawn-out boredom culminating in getting ready for school and Sing Something Simple on the radio. I briefly tuned back in to the sermon, long enough to hear “… but this is not what God meant ….” and noted the vicars practiced 180 degree gaze over the heads of the congregation to reinforce his message, or maybe God’s message.  But Screwtape thoughts distracted me: ahead the green felt hat adorned with two plastic cherries on a faded maroon hatband – it was tilted at an angle that suggested the wearer was asleep, or maybe praying. Then, beside me on the pew, a zipped Bible, smooth leather covers holding onto tissue paper pages that surely must be typed in size 10 font to contain within the small volume the whole of both Testaments. Who brings their own Bible to church these days? There are free Bibles in stacks on each pew, Good News. Is it piety or just a stubborn rejection of anything after King James? The Bible’s owner had a real pocket handkerchief trimmed with Honiton lace. I decided piety goes with lace. 

I would never reach such angelic levels of Christianity.  Sunday-school had been all about collecting stickers for attendance, teenage-church for exploring the evangelicals, and married-life church faltered when our son started hiding beneath the pulpit aged two – at the post-service-coffeeinthecrypt we were advised “There is a creche you know” with disapproval served like biscuits. 

I never did find out “what God meant” as by the time I focussed on the pulpit again the topic had moved on. “….Allotments!  Each of us is nurturing an allotment for God, and when He sees the fruits of our labours….”   Really? God obviously doesn’t know about the long waiting list for allotments these days, longer than that for the golf club. We waited three years to be awarded our own 60 square feet of dirt.  When I filled out the application form I envisaged bushes of gooseberries and blackcurrants, rows of raspberries and peas on canes, alternating leaks and lettuce and rhubarb competing with marrows for the corner by the shed. Reality was rows of unidentifiable greenery going to seed. If God was looking down at the fruits of my labours he wasn’t going to give me many marks for my half-forgotten vegetables. 

This sermon was now competing with a party political broadcast for duration, and maybe for content as well. Note to self: bring two mint humbugs next Sunday. 

The hymn boards didn’t display the same numbers. It looked like the people to the left of the nave would be singing no 36 while we on the right are “Marching in the Light of God”, no 110. I discretely turned to no 36 and not so discretely let out a snigger, seeing it was “Joseph row your boat ashore”  – look out for seasonal floods, you in the left aisle.  

Sermons should be restricted to rules of Just a Minute: hesitation, deviation, repetition and comfort in knowing the end was near.  Our vicar was practiced in hesitation, with extra-long pauses, presumably when he noticed daydreaming parishioners. Whenever my attention found its way back to the front, he always seemed to be looking pointedly at me, as if I was the only one who deviated. 

Was that the end? Had I missed the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost? 

As it turned out, we sang neither 110 nor 36, but followed the overhead projector version of “When the Lord Gets Ready, You Got to Move”  – somehow the gospel spiritual song didn’t quite fit in our middle England style of worship, and I preferred the Rolling Stones version. But we tried …

You see that woman That walk the street

You see the policeman Out on his beat

But when the Lord gets ready, You got to move!

I had to admit, by the time the end came we were getting much better at the rhythm and maybe there was something uplifting in the African-American style. 

I was on the coffee rota so I used the fact that everyone was standing, swaying and clapping, to cover my clumpy walk to the back of the church – another note to self – boots make a loud noise on a stone church floor. The Church warden was already there minding the hot-water urn, organising her minions and counting the coffee granules teaspooned into each cup. Anglican tradition was sometimes enough to deter even the most faithful of followers and the ritual of the post-service coffee made me question why I hadn’t volunteered for the flower rota instead. Maybe my allotment could be put to better use with flowers, not vegetables.  I was told to get more cups, attendance was clearly going up. Cissie was in my way, pulling open and shutting the drawers, obviously searching for something. My enquiry was answered “Cheese straws, warden said to get cheese straws.” Like Cissie, I could see no cheese straws. Custard creams would have to suffice. It turned out later that all the warden had said was that someone needed to tidy these drawers, but Cissie didn’t often wear her hearing aid to church. 

Washing and drying the cups brought my religious devotion to a close and I walked down the hill towards home with the tune of “You Got To Move” adding cadence to my gait. I felt refreshed by the morning. And four things would stick in my mind. 

Back next month with something more Devon focussed.

Is it cob?

Concerning our home on Fore Street I was asked yesterday “Is it cob?” And the answer appears to be more than a simple yes/no.

The listing states

Stone and cob covered with old rough cast at the rear and sides and 20th century render at the front

So what is cob?

This question took me back to Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of Architecture 1833 – while the book isn’t currently available on Kindle (and it is probably not a title I would naturally download) sections of it are available scattered across the Internet. One such is from a Devon heritage website and although they mis-spell the author’s name they do quote extensively from the description of cob buildings.

As an aside, Loudon was a Scottish landscape architect but in later years his interest spread to buildings but mainly smaller cottages and farmsteads as opposed to the grand stately homes. His book was taken abroad by settlers and expats and used by them to design their new homes in places such as Australia and Canada.

Cob is described here as “clay and straw trodden together by oxen” Loudon gives further details which he ascribes to a “reverend gentleman’ born in a cob-walled parsonage who went on to build several houses with cob walls. The clergy of the 19th century were clearly multi-talented.

So cob walls are raised on a foundation of stone that protects the cob from damp. The cob will be around 2 feet thick. Openings for windows and doorways are cut out after the cob has dried and settled. The process was usually begun in early spring with the aim of completion by autumn and topped usually with a thatched roof. Quoted by Loudon “The durability of cob is said to depend on it having a good hat and a good pair of shoes” (roof and foundations).

Cob houses are considered remarkably warm and healthy

Loudon, 1833

From my gardening round the front of the house it is evident that our home has a pretty high stone foundation – the infilled section between the front wall of the house and the garden wall is sone 3 foot deep and the house wall at that point still appears to be stone. This does contrast with the back of the house – because of 20th century additions the original back wall is actually inside the house and at both ends the wall has large areas of cob that are indeed around 2 foot thick and impenetrable.

At the upper end of the house this lintel would have been a door but possibly not added until the building was divided into three cottages.

Cob overhang at the rear end of the through passage – original door to the building.

Modern surfacing over underlying cob wall

Inbuilt into the cob walls, however, are two large stone fireplaces, one in the main room and one in the lower room to the west end of the building. We have just this week used an endoscope-like device to look behind the internal plasterboard in the lower room and it appears that the stone from the fireplace extends up through the two stories meeting the stone and brick chimney on top and it would seem to me to be rather a heavy structure to be supported by cob alone. That might suggest that the end walls are in fact built of stone. Interestingly when we did the external painting we used a limewash paint on the lower end wall, having been told it was a cob wall, but the paint is not holding to the wall very well which leads us to believe the walls may in fact be stone after all with a more modern rendering on top.

In the early 1970s Michael Laithwaite, an architectural historian, wrote several papers on medieval houses in Devon. He included our home in Bovey Tracey, describing it as “an urban mansion of considerable importance in the town”. He was of the opinion that our house was built of stone and cob with internal wooden partitions. Indeed our internal walls are all more modern although the wooden screen is preserved along the passage. Laithwaite suggests most early cob houses did not have internal cob walls and where they exist they are probably later additions.

An extract from the Teignbridge Area Character Appraisal 2008, found while researching “Bovey Conservation Area” describes our house as being of “granite and dolerite rubble stone… incorporating sections of cob”. This would seem to be the closest description of the building, though I’m not so keen on the idea of it being based on rubble – but I guess it’s stood for several hundred years so far and “a wise man builds his house upon the stone”.

The answer?

Yes, in part, with a fair proportion of local stone.

Bigbury Bay and Lady Young

Last weekend we visited Bantham Beach, braving the risk of hot sticky traffic queues along the narrow approach road and the slightly expensive parking. It was a beautiful day with lots of sun, a cool breeze and expanses of flat sand.

Jumping back a couple of weeks, I picked up a book from a National Trust old book store entitled “West Country Shipwrecks” by John Behenna (ISBN 7153 6569)

I wish now I had looked at the book before our trip to Bigbury Bay because one of the shipwrecks occurred just off the rocky headland in the above photograph.

Bigbury Bay has seen more than 12 shipwrecks (https://www.bsac.com/document/2014-bigbury-bay-survey/2014-bigbury-bay-survey.pdf) One possible reason for this is that Burgh Island sitting just off the coast here can, in poor weather, be mistaken for Looe Island which is further west and so the ships mistakenly come too close to shore and find to their cost the water too shallow.

Wreck of the Lady Young, 1879

The Lady Young is listed in Lloyds register of 1875 as a 589 tonne sailing Barque built in Quebec in 1870 and registered in Liverpool. Her owners in 1875 were H Dinning and W Thomas. Her official number was 59947. The ship was 144 foot long and reportedly constructed from the finest wood in Quebec.

The Lady Young was launched in May 1870 and she earned her builder, H Dinning, a classification which was “the highest class that had been given to any colonial built vessel” (taken from the biography of Dinning: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/dinning_henry_11E.html )

Sadly she was wrecked in gales on “20 October 1879” (according to the book by John Behenna), just before midnight. She had been sailing from Hamburg to Cardiff, a crew of 13 men under command of Captain John Watkin. They all survived the actual shipwreck but one of the crew returned the next day to get his belongings and reportedly died after falling from the ship onto rocks.

There are no remains to be seen, most being broken to pieces in gales later that same year.

The Figurehead

(http://www.figureheads.co.uk/articles/43-news/88-the-lady-young-figurehead-for-sale)

The figurehead was retrieved by locals from the wreck in the early days:

And then restored to what was assumed to be its former glory and offered for sale at auction in 2015:

Well, that’s what I initially thought given my Google search…. Further research shows the first photograph used to illustrate a currently available figurehead claimed to be from the Lady Young with all the same details for the barque, but this one is not painted. It is listed for a price of almost $25,000.

http://americanaantiquesandfolkart.com/product/ships-figurehead-from-barque-lady-young/

The puzzle was solved by an amazingly prompt response from the antique dealer:

“They are one in the same. I had originally restored Lady Young with a painted surface of the British Jack. After much discussion and recommendation from experts,  she  has since been whitewashed and I am convinced she not only looks more natural, but actually much, much better. I can assure you this is the figurehead to the Lady Young. The leading figuehead historian, Richard Hunter has completed research on her.“

And he is selling the figurehead for around $15,000. (http://americanaantiquesandfolkart.com/product/ships-figurehead-from-barque-lady-young/)

Was it 20th or 27th October ?

The book I have states 20th October 1879.

The divers brochure form the Bigbury Bay Survey of 2014 states October 1880.

An auction site selling the original figurehead from the Lady Young gives the date as 27th October 1880.

Wikipedia lists it as 28th October 1880 but also states it was wrecked at the entrance to Brixham Harbour. (Wreck On The South Devon Coast”. The Cornishman (121). 4 November 1880. p. 7.)

Extract from The Cornishman 4th November 1880

Extract from Western Morning News 28th October 1880

So 1880 appears to be the year. One can forgive John Behenna for getting it wrong given in 1974 when he compiled the list of wrecks he didn’t have the benefit of either internet or online newspaper searches.

The Cornishman refers to it being a Wednesday and 27th October 1880 was a Wednesday.

Wikipedia have the correct year but have taken the date from the publication of the newspaper, the Western Morning News.

The antique site selling the figurehead have correct year and day – to be expected given it was researched by probably the only figurehead historian in existence!

So where is Bigbury Bay?

Landfall.co.uk

This amazing image is of a 3D nautical charts made by Peter Bolt. (https://www.landfall.co.uk/index.html) Bantham beach is roughly in the middle of the coast;one, just where the little island sits in the river estuary – zoom into the middle of the chart.

I would recommend it for an afternoon on the beach.

Forgive my sidetracked ramblings; there is more but maybe I’ll save that for a later post. After all, who WAS Lady Young?

Green Man 2019

You may recall we joined in last year? Well despite Storm Hannah we joined in this year too.

Listed Bovey: 66 – 70, Fore Street

When we began house hunting on our return from Bermuda, if a house was “Listed” I didn’t short-list it for viewing – the idea conjured up prolonged battles with planning offices, drafts, spiders and an endless need for money for repairs.  Two years down the line I find myself owning and living in a listed building, and still a little stunned as to how it happened.  I am pleased to say that my fears were not (quite) realised – we have discussions but not battles with the planning office, the drafts are kept out by thick curtains and we don’t have spiders – woodlice, yes but no 8-legged creatures. There is, I am afraid, a probably endless need for money for repairs!

 

So what is a “Listed” building? 

It began in 1882 when the need to protect England’s heritage was realised and powers to do so established in law. First listed were pre-historic monuments but then shortly after the war began a 25 year project to determine which buildings were of significant historic value.  The system of grading was introduced initially to help define whether a building damaged by bombs during the war was worth salvaging. This first survey resulted in some 120,000 listed buildings, most of them built pre-1750s.

Further surveys were undertaken in the 1960s and 1980s, increasing both the number and also the detail recorded for each property. In 2011 the full list was made available online and in 2016 a project to “enrich the list” began, where people are encouraged to add photographs and knowledge to listings.

The list can be found at Historic England 

 

Early 20th century

 

Grade 2* Listed

“Grade Two Star” – “particularly important” or “more than special interest”

Thats our home, and I confess to feeling a sense of pride as well as privilege that for a while we are tasked with caring for a nationally important property.  When in Bermuda I worked for the National Trust as a guide to three of their historic buildings – Verdmont, Tucker House and The Globe Hotel.  My favourite was Verdmont, built in the 1690s, home to a wealthy adventurer; when visitors waned then I sat in the hall imagining myself as owner dreaming in the smell of well polished cedar furniture and the creaks of  floorboards.  Living in our home in Devon is that dream – I have my own historic house, beams, creaks, oak and granite.

Yew Tree House, 1900

 

 

1990s

 

What makes it Grade 2*? 

Fistly it is old – built in early or mid-16th century, 1500-1550s.  In perspective: Henry VIII was crowned (1509), Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa(1505), Magellan was exploring the Pacific, Copernicus suggested the earth moved round the sun (1543).  Bermuda had not been discovered!

It is built of cob and stone, vernacular architecture, using granite from South Dartmoor and local mud!  It is thought to have been in the style of a medieval hall house with three rooms and a through passage.  The large granite fireplace in the rear wall was most likely built with the original house.

“The hall has large hollow-moulded granite fireplace with pyramid stops (at present concealed) at the foot; back of fireplace is of large ashlar blocks. Above the lintel, and partly blocked by the upper-floor beams, is a relieving arch of well-cut voussoirs, the space between it and the lintel filled with specially-cut pieces of granite.”

 

This original footprint is still apparent with a lower room, hall and upper room.  The through passage has to either side “stud and panel screens” – effectively wooden walls that are still standing almost 500 years after they were made. Some of the terms used to describe the features I still need to look up – for example the listing mentions “diagonal cut stops” and “ovolo moulding”.  Maybe I will tackle them in a later post.

stud and panel screen

chamfered to the passage

500 years old?

 

So we have the design, the wooden panels and the fireplace all adding “special interest” but it is upstairs where most of our visitors way “wow”. The room above the hall, the middle room of the house, is open to the roof so one can see all the beams, the jointed crucks, cranked collars and butt purlins.  At the lower end of this roof structure there is evidence of a previous wattle and daub partition, the stake holes being visible on the underside of the tie beam.  That partition would have been a wall for what is commonly called a “minstrels gallery”, the upper storey room above the lower end of the house.  The other upper rooms would have been floored in later times and later still staircases put in place for access.

 

…with nine trusses, seven of them side-pegged jointed crucks and the other two closed tie-beam trusses. The trusses had cranked collars and three sets of butt purlins, but no ridge. The hall and lower end had one tier of well-shaped windbraces. The closed trusses, which marked off the three-bay hall roof, had a central pegged strut from collar to tie-beam,

At the lower end a second central pegged strut ran from tie-beam to upper-floor beam. It formed the centre of a close-studded partition in the second storey; the other studs, however, were halved to the face of the tie-beam and had clearly replaced an earlier wattle-and-daub partition, the stake-holes of which could be seen on the underside of the tie-beam.

 

In the lower room there is a small door leading to the remains of a stone newel staircase set into the thick wall.  The steps are steep and have little space for placing your feet and the upper part has been lost to modernisation that occurred before listing.

 

The final notable feature of the house is its front door:

Four granite steps lead to what is described as an “original inner doorway” with a chamfered round-headed door frame with durn jambs and a plank door with short strap hinges.  It is what you might expect to find in a Hobbit House.

 

Post script: 

Woodlice – I will explain them later, but they are quite large and live in the parlour!

Cob – composed of earth and straw mixed with water like mortar , beaten and well-trodden, usually placed on a foundation of stonework some two feet thick.

Ovolo moulding is apparently just curved!

Crucks and Purlins  – now that will take a whole post to explain!

 

 

 

More of the Granite Tramway

 

The track rises from Holwell Quarry, going up about 150 feet, but then is a gentle downhill for 7 miles, a drop in height of 1300 feet.

These images are taken from the sections both West and East of Higher Terrace Drive

Carefully trimmed flange to take wheels of wagons

Grooved trackstones linked by an iron bracket

Branch Line – or points

For much of its route it is a single track, but there are extra connecting tracks to the quarry faces.

 

The main length of the tramway is scheduled as an ancient monument.

In the 1934-5 Ward, Lock and Co Illustrated Guide to Dartmoor, there is the description:

Haytor and the common immediately in front of it may be termed “the Hampstead Heath of Devon” for it attracts daily visitors from all over the South-Western counties and beyond.’

The volume then states that over 7 days in 1925 there was a daily average of 80 motor-coaches and 270 cars and around 50 motor-cycles.  The guide author does, however, bemoan the fact that most visitors just clambered over Haytor rocks and he urges the reader to “strike off to the right…skirting the clutter that lines the lower slopes ….noting the remains of the old grooved granite tramlines… fast disappearing“.  He would be pleased to see they have definitely not disappeared.