Stephen Reynolds in Sidmouth

An edited cross-post from the Devon History Society site: The Great War: Stephen Reynolds in Sidmouth was a Sid Vale Association talk by Dr Nigel Hyman, exploring the little-known contribution of Reynolds (best known for his semi-autobiographical account of Sidmouth fisher-folk, A Poor Man's House) to the organisation of the inshore fishing industry during World War One. I dug into some background about Reynolds' life and works, and found some nice images in his 1910 Alongshore.

Weston Plats revisited: part 2

Further to Weston Plats revisited: part 1, some photos of the remaining section of Wednesday's walk, from Weston Plats to Sidmouth, taking in the odd landscape of 'Dunscombe Humps'.

Devon: its Moorlands, Streams & Coasts

An out-take from The Dread Wrecker Featherstone: Lady Rosalind Northcote's 1908 Devon: its Moorlands, Streams & Coasts, an illustrated account of the landscape and history of Devon. It has extremely pleasant colour plates, from watercolours by Frederick John Widgery, who specialised in coastal art of Devon and Cornwall. The scenes range over the whole of Devon, but here I've selected a local sample from East Devon round to Torbay.

Lawson Wood's "Mr and Mrs" series

I just scanned these images for The Topsham Bookshop, but I doubt Lily will mind my reproducing them here. They come from a little compilation volume of Lawson Wood's "Mr" and "Mrs" series, 4"x4" children's books originally published in the 1920s and featuring the adventures and misadventures of a number of characterful anthropomorphised animals. There is a slight Devon connection: the brief obituary in The Times for Tuesday, Oct 29, 1957 mentions that the artist, born in 1878, died in Sidmouth, whose museum has a collection of his works.

Mrs Partington and her mop: Victorian meme

Left (click to enlarge) [Hutchison, William] 1820-1905 :Dame Partington and her mop. No. 44. Whitaker (loq) - I don't think you can manage it. Atkinson - I can mop up the water as well as you've mopped up the land. The "Wellington Advertiser" supplement [8 July 1882]. Reference Number: A-095-042. Reproduced with permission of National Library of New Zealand.

Wayland Wordsmith just mentioned an anecdote of East Devon interest: the story of Dame Partington. This, first told by the cleric and author Sydney Smith in 1831, is a clone of one version of the Canute story, telling of an elderly Sidmouth lady who tried in vain to keep back the encroaching waves during the storm surge of the 1824 'Great Storm'.

"I do not mean to be disrespectful but the attempt of the Lords to stop the progress of reform reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of Sidmouth and of the conduct of the excellent Mrs Partington on that occasion.

"In the winter of 1824, there set in a great flood upon that town - the tide rose to an incredible height - the waves rushed in upon the houses, and everything was threatened with destruction. In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea water and vigorously punching away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused.

"Mrs Partington's spirit was up; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs Partington. She was excellent with a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest."

The context is intereresting. The Rev. Smith's speech, delivered in Taunton in October 1831, was in support of the Reform Bill, whose aim was to reform the corrupt British electoral system of the time, particularly in its undemocratic domination by aristocratic landowners, many operating "rotten boroughs" with a tiny electorate. Smith was speaking at a particularly inflamed time that was seeing rioting after the second attempt to pass the Reform Bill , despite decisive support in the House of Commons, had been blocked by the House of Lords.

To be honest, I'm mildly doubtful of the particulars of the story - Smith's speech seems to be the first account of Mrs Partington - but it was a highly effective parable. The Bodleian Library collection has contemporary prints by "HB" (John Doyle) - the 1831 Dame Partington and the ocean (of reform) and the 1840 Mrs Partington and her mop - both depicting the Duke of Wellington, a noted opponent of reform, as Dame Partington.

The idea went viral, and continued for decades, Mrs Partington and her mop making an outing whenever the unstoppability of causes was being argued: there are currently 3670 hits in Google Books for Partington mop, and a number of other pictorial examples are findable online.

Mrs Partington got to California in 1856, in a "Letter sheet illustration showing satirical sentiments on the opponents of the 1856 Vigilance Committee, San Francisco" (California State Library record / detail). HarpWeek has other political examples: "Tidal Waves" (Thomas Nast, Harper's Weekly, October 17, 1868) where Mrs Partington is Democratic presidential nominee Horatio Seymour; "Mrs. Partington Hancock Struggling with the Republican Tide" (Thure de Thulstrup, Harper's Weekly, October 30, 1880), showing Democratic presidential nominee Winfield Hancock; and "Our Mrs. Partingtons and the Democratic Ocean" (Charles Jay Budd, Harper's Weekly, November 2, 1912), showing various Republicans attempting to sweep back the sea in the form of Woodrow Wilson.

Nor was it all US politics. The Wellington Advertiser, 8 July 1882, Dame Partington and her mop, showed Sir Harry Atkinson, Colonial Treasure (ie Minister of Finance) of New Zealand; and the Women's Library has nice examples of Mrs Partington in England trying to sweep back the tide of suffrage: this poster from c.1909, Mrs Partington, Coming in with the tide indeed I'll soon stop their tide! (detail) and a postcard from 1910, showing "The New Mrs Partington (of the Anti Suffrage Society)" (detail).

A footnote in the 1856 Wit and Wisdom of the Rev. Sydney Smith (ed. Evert Augustus Duyckinck, 1856) does raise the question of the original Mrs Partington's existence:

Did Sydney Smith invent Mrs. Partington? A communication in Notes and Queries (Nov. 16, 1850), may seem to establish Mrs. Partington as a real personage, but the evidence is not conclusive. The writer says, the original Mrs. P. was a respectable old lady, living at Sidmouth, in Devonshire, and her encounter with the ocean, when mop and broom failed, and she was driven to take refuge in the second story of her cottage on the beach, occurred, to the best of his recollection, during an awful storm in November, 1824, when some fifty or sixty ships were lost at Plymouth. He well recollects, he adds, reading in the Devonshire newspapers of the time *, an account of Mrs. Partington; but he may have read only Smith's speech, which he wrongly ascribes to Lord Brougham.

Mrs. Partington has acquired additional celebrity by the pleasant sayings in the vein of Mrs. Malaprop, which have been widely scattered over the world, in the newspapers. This peculiar pleasantry, a humourous dislocation of the English language, with grotesque associations of ideas, has had various imitators; but the original American Mrs. Partington owes her graces to Mr. B. P. Shillaber, for several years associated with the Boston Post, in which tho genuine sayings arc recorded. They were collected into a volume in 1854, with the title, "The Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington, and others of the Family."
- page 316, Wit and Wisdom of the Rev. Sydney Smith

* I can add to this that I can find no sign in the 19th Century British Library Newspapers archive of a reference to Mrs Partington before Sydney Smith's 1831 speech. Still, whether she existed or not, it was a durable meme.

There are some detailed contemporary accounts of Sidmouth in the Great Storm, neither of which mention Mrs Partington.

THE STORM OF NOVEMBER, 1824, AT SIDMOUTH.

The great storm of 23rd November, 1824, did much damage to Sidmouth. Bishop Kestell Cornish has forwarded us a manuscript from a diary of a relative of his which will be perused with interest, and Mr. J. Y. Anderson Morshead has sent us the account of the same storm by the late Peter Orlando Hutchinson from his manuscript History of Sidmouth.

Extract from an old diary, November 23rd, 1824:—

"A violent storm all night, quite a Hurricane! I never heard any-thing at all like it! The whole House shook, and our beds were rocked under us, as if they had felt the shock of an Earthquake! . . . (Nov. 24.) A most aweful scene presented itself to us this morning! Such a storm has not been Witnessed in the memory of man! . . . The sea poured in last night, and has very nearly destroyed the whole of the houses in front of it! The water came up as high as Harris'. The grocers, and people were taken out of their beds at night and conveyed in Boats to a place of Shelter: Everyone has lost something, and some poor people Every thing: never was there such a scene of devastation! All the Cottages under the Cliff were washed away: The Beach Walk is entirely destroyed, and covered with Shingle. Wallis' library is nearly knocked to pieces: and old Chit Rock, that gave its character to the Coast Scenery, is thrown down and nothing but its base remains. The rising of the sea was so sudden, that it almost appears to have been the effect of an earthquake! No language can describe the sad and desolate appearance which the Beach now presents, and the poor sufferers walking about, drenched in water, hardly knowing where to go or what to do, is enough to break one's heart

"A Subscription has been entered into, and £300 has been already subscribed, which I hope will relieve them in some degree. Tho' it is the poor Tradespeople and those above the reach of Common Charity that will suffer most. We have been spared any of the effects of this aweful visitation, with the exception of a few Trees, and Slates blown off the House we have lost little or nothing. . . .

"I never was more frightened in my life than during the night. I almost expected the House to have fallen down. ... It was impossible to sleep. ... I can hardly attempt to describe my feelings. . . . The noise of the wind was like incessant Thunder, but there was something in it still more aweful and supernatural. It seemed to rage so perfectly without controul—so wild and free— that nothing I ever heard before could be at all compared to it."

From P. 0. Hutchinson's History, vol. iii 146 :—

"The Chet-rock stood near the S. end of the reef. It was about 40 f high, much beloved by the fishermen as on steering in it was the first mark they made. Annually one of them was crowned as its king. At low tide he & his court marched out & scrambled to its top where they waved their caps, cheered, & drank to the King of diet (including the King of England) in smuggled brandy. Along the reef extended a labyrinth of stakes & nets called the 'Ram's horn.' At 8 a.m. on Tuesday, 22nd November the glass stood at 29-49. It was new moon, & the tide high at 11.45 a.m. The afternoon was fine & calm but freshened towards evening & the glass sank to 28.25. Mr. Stone, grocer Market place had a party, but it began to rain & blow from S.W. so that he offered them shake-downs. But they bundled on old shawls &c and left. There was only rainwater in the street then. So many slates were blown off he could not sleep & at 4 a.m. found his ground-floor full of water to the knees. He began clearing the shop but the enemy reached his armpits & washed papers off the mantelpiece. J. Pile, ironmonger (now Selleks) in Fore St saw it full of water & a door wash past. A bag of nails was rusted into a solid mass. Mrs Mogridge 7 York Terrace found boats &c battering her wall, & bored through a partition into No. 6 for escape. Lodgers at Mr. Pursey's (Canister house) were much distressed. A sick lady had to be taken from a warm bed into a wet boat. The York was much injured. Mr. Hall draper (now Fields) saw sailors row across the Market-place & rescue ladies from (Pepperells) opposite. The cottagers under Clifton-place escaped to the top 10 min. before the houses were washed away. Wallis Library (now the Bedford Hotel) had its Billiard-table broken ag(ain)st the fire-place, & a piano washed into the sitting room. The children were lowered into a drifting boat at the back by blankets—one by mistake into the water, of which he informed them in loud tones. May (gardener) saw it flow up to High St (now Veales) where it was met by a land-flood & a boat rowed up Old & round into New Fore St. The landlord of the London Hotel saw a specially big wave about 5 a.m. burst in the door of the chemist (now Penberthys) sweep round the shop & reappear laden with bottles & pill-boxes. Edmondson of Bond St had opened a shop for costly silks in Marine-place & the bales were found all over the town next day. Mr. Yeates at dawn dragged himself by the railings to the beach, & to his dismay Chet-rock was no longer to be seen. The familiar old mass had been knocked over in the night. Fragments lay about on the reef for two years after. A subscription of £3000 was raised for the sufferers of which Honiton gave the noble sum of £600.

"I only arrived in Jan. 1825 but the most beautiful watering place of England looked still like a bombarded city. A cart was backed against Marlborough place & men were shovelling pebbles out of the windows into it. A naval officer said the wind was stronger than W. Indian hurricanes. The effects long remained. The shrinkage of population (as shown by Registrar's return) & of popularity were due partly to the growth of Torquay, but more to this catastrophe. Depression weighed on our trade for 40 years till it slowly began to revive about 1865. Mr. Hubert Cornish's view of the Rock is inaccurate. It was more like Great-picket."

- page 101, Devonshire Association, Report and Transactions, Volume 35, Sidmouth, July 1903.

- Ray

"Victorian blogger" in Sidmouth

I just posted to the Devon History Society blog a news item Peter Orlando Hutchinson: "Victorian 'blogger" arising from Friday's Western Morning News piece about the cultural and historical landscape project In the Footsteps of Peter Orlando Hutchinson.

This Winchester-born polymath spent most of his adult life in Sidmouth, and meticulously documented the neighbouring landscape, as in the diary entry here with its nice sketch of the Ladram Bay coastline from High Peak on 31 December 1877. As a great fan of the East Devon coast, I look forward to seeing one of the projects planned end results, a fully searchable electronic document of the diaries.

A Sidmouth Herald article last year - Sidmouth antiquary’s diaries explored - quotes from Catherine Linehan's biography Peter Orlando Hutchinson of Sidmouth, Devon 1810-1897 describing what sounds an enviable if geeky lifestyle financed, as mentioned in the paper Peter Orlando Hutchinson (1810-1897) and the Geology of Sidmouth, by "a modest private income":

Among his many activities, Peter spent whole days on foot or by carriage in exploring the neighbourhood. A frequent companion was Mr N S Heineken 1, a retired Unitarian Minister. With a pocketful of sandwiches, or a hamper of provisions and tools, they visited, measured, sketched and mapped the hillforts, earthworks, tumuli, churches and ancient monuments within a 20 mile radius.

This Branscombe Project biographical play - Orlando Hutchinson in Branscombe - gives an informal run-down of his life and interests.

Some of Hutchinson's works are available online: The Geology of Sidmouth and of South-eastern Devon (1843); Chronicles of Gretna Green (1844: vol 1, vol 2) - the best bit of this completist parish history is the pi final chapter, Advice to young ladies, warning against elopement; and The diary and letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson : captain-general and governor-in-chief of his late Majesty's province of Massachusetts Bay in North America (1883) - this Thomas Hutchinson, his great-grandfather; along with various papers such as his Dissertation on the site of Moridunum (The Gentleman's Magazine, February 1849).

He also wrote some fiction, as in these rather laboured 1845 Metropolitan magazine pieces about imagined dialogues between statues:  No. I ("The Statue of Charles the First, at Charing Cross, to a large block of marble in Wyatt's Yard, at Paddington"), No. II ("Shakspere's Statue in Poet's Corner to Thorwaldsen's Statue of Lord Byron in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge"), No. III ("Queen Elizabeth at the Royal Exchange, to James the First at Temple Bar"); No. IV ("Dr. Johnson's Statue by Bacon, in St. Paul's Cathedral, to Sir Walter Scott's Bust by Chantry"); and No. V ("George the Third's Statue in Cockspur Street, by Wyatt, to George Washington's Statue in the State House, Boston, Massachusetts, by Chantry").

According to the above bio-play, he self-published a novel, Branscombe Cliffs, which would be interesting to see (I fear the worst: given POH's style and interests, I suspect it could be like Brief Encounter written by a trainspotter).

1. Google Books finds him to be a Unitarian minister into astronomy, photography and mechanics.

- Ray

Hooken Undercliff and beyond

Hooken Undercliff, East Devon

While the weather and walking mood lasted, we took a day off to walk the Beer-Sidmouth section of the South West Coast Path. I've been wanting to visit this part for a while, as it takes in yet another Undercliff (less known than the Dorset and Isle of Wight ones): the bijou but spectacular Hooken Undercliff (above).

Here a tract of chalk clifftop slipped, leaving an isolated (and now deeply overgrown) enclave between the cliffs and chalk pinnacles to seaward. Like the other southern English Undercliffs, it harbours a moist sheltered microclimate; today it smelt intensely of ivy in flower (a plant unusual in being autumn-blooming), clematis was seeding, and brambles and sloes were in fruit.  You can walk along the clifftop and admire it from above, but we took the other option of the path down through the slipped land - Under Hooken - which at the base takes an undulating route above the beach, through undergrowth on lesser slipped material, until you reach Branscombe Mouth.

The history of the Hooken Undercliff is interesting for its sheer recency, as documented in White's Devonshire and elsewhere:

A part of the high cliff facing the sea, between Beer and Branscombe, called Southdown, was the scene of a great landslip in 1790, when upwards of ten acres of land sunk down about 250 feet.
- History, gazetteer, and directory of Devonshire, William White, 1850

Woodward and Ussher's The Geology of the Country Near Sidmouth and Lyme Regis dates it more precisely to March 1790, quoting George Roberts (the historian of Lyme Regis) saying that two years before a fine stream had ceased to flow at the site, and that cracks had appeared long before the catastrophe. See the Geological Conservation Review for a detailed geological description of the site. This extract gives a graphic account of the event:

... in the middle of the night, a tract of from seven to ten acres, ranging along the brow of a steep cliff immediately overhanging the sea, suddenly sank down from 200 to 260 feet, presenting a striking group of shattered pinnacles and columns of chalk entangled with the sunken fragments of the fields thus torn away from their native site; the remains of hedges still traversed these fragments, and a stile was seen undisturbed on the summit of one of the subsided columnar masses. The subsided mass pressed forward into the sea … fishermen relate that points on which they had laid their crab-pots beneath the water, and over which they had sailed the night before … were raised … on a reef at a height of fifteen feet in the air
- W Dawson (Civil Engineer of Exeter) et al, 1840

Hooken Undercliff - descending toward Branscombe Mouth

See here for another geological account, which notes that a great deal of fallen material from the slip has been eroded by the sea. See the Westcountry Studies Library image - Rocks at Branscombe (1819) - which shows a deal of now-disappeared rock to seaward of the present-day pinnacles. Another interesting point is that it wasn't always as overgrown as today; we did notice one or two remnants of stone buildings in the undergrowth, and this sign of human presence is explained in Arthur William Clayden's 1906 The History of Devonshire Scenery; An Essay in Geographical Evolution:

There is a beautiful walk here along the sloping undercliff through the little fields where early young potatoes are raised in quantities. Tall pinnacles of fallen blocks stand out above the greensward of Under Hooken.

There's a better copy of the image (right) here; compare the visibility of the path with that in my photo above.  I'm glad to have visited the place, as it's going to be a short-lived feature on a geological, and even historical, time-scale. See seatonbay.com for a detailed route guide.

As to the Beer-Sidmouth walk in general, it's beautiful (see the photo below) and quite varied: chalk clifftop, overgrown undercliff,  woodland, and clifftop pasture. But it's definitely the most gruelling section of the Jurassic Coast to walk, even more so than the Lyme-Axmouth Undercliff. Although the route is only about 7.5 miles horizontally, the coast traverses the edge of a plateau with deeply-incised valleys cutting the 500-foot cliff down to sea level, so there's a total ascent (and corresponding descent) of around 2000 feet. Mountaineering-wise that's not much, I guess, but it's quite a lot for an afternoon walk in East Devon (it took us about six hours, counting a break for lunch at Branscombe Mouth). My knees are going to hurt tomorrow.

Cliffs between Branscombe Mouth and Sidmouth
- Ray

In Delderfield country

On Friday, Clare and I had a very pleasant afternoon under accidental circumstances. We planned to go to do some walking on the South West Coastal Path around Beer, but the X53 Jurassic Coast bus was taken out of service, so we opted for the Sidmouth-Budleigh section instead. We highly recommend the walk, which is a bit over seven miles. It starts with a stiff climb from Jacob's Ladder, at the western end of Sidmouth, up Peak Hill.

One literary point of interest on the way was the commemorative plaque to RF Delderfield on the Sidmouth side of Peak Hill ("On this hill lived Ronald F Delderfield, whose inspired writings gained him international fame. 1912-1972").  As I've mentioned before - see To Exmouth again and Delderfield papers - the Delderfields lived locally; William Delderfield was publisher of the Exmouth Chronicle from 1923, and his sons Ronald and Eric both became writers. However, from my experience, if customers at The Topsham Bookshop buy anything by a Delderfield, it's almost certain to be one of Eric Delderfield's travel books: Ronald has all but disappeared into obscurity.  As Sam Jordison wrote in the Guardian Books Blog - Who's Paul Auster, Dad? (11th April 2007) - it's not clear why.  He wrote highly readably, with a strong sense of social justice - but something about his works no longer hits the spot. Perhaps it's that they're a trifle emotionally distant; Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers (1990) said of them: "RF Delderfield's novels are not so much classic love stories as family sagas punctuated by strong romantic impulses".

Returning to the walk: from the forested summit of Peak Hill, which has occasional views back toward Sidmouth ...

... there's a slight dip across open heath/farmland before the path rises to a largely level walk through more forest at High Peak (you can take an optional detour to the summit).

Crossed-eye stereogram, High Peak: click to enlarge

Then there's a steep descent to Ladram Bay, which has a caravan site and impressive coastal rock stacks.

On the other side, the path continues with an undulating section along somewhat lower clifftops before it drops to near sea-level at Otter Head (a headland by the outlet of the River Otter) and takes a short detour north to the lowest crossing point before returning downstream to Budleigh alongside the Otter Estuary Nature Reserve.  See Geology of Sidmouth and Ladram Bay, Devon, for an interesting analysis of the terrain.

I find the East Devon and West Dorset coast immensely evocative, almost certainly because it so strongly resembles the southern coastline of the Isle of Wight, where I spent a lot of time in childhood and which I've recently had the opportunity to re-explore. The light is the same - all-day sun from the south-facing aspect - and the terrain, controlled by rather similar (and in some locations identical) geology, is also much the same: a coast of cliffs and chines and landslips, the clifftop hedgerows sculpted by the same prevailing wind direction, that gives me an intense feeling of familiarity.  With one or two places I genuinely couldn't tell the difference: for instance, parts of the Lyme-Axmouth Undercliff in Dorset/Devon look identical to parts of the Niton Undercliff, Isle of Wight.  It produces a strange double-exposure sensation: as if they were a 'shared space' where I could walk between the two locations.

Felix Grant and I have discussed a couple of times this sensation as it occurs in unreliable childhood memories: a memory splice that fits two locations together. I have, for instance, a distinct memory of visiting a cliff tunnel in childhood. I recall it as one visit, yet the memory is of the top of the tunnel being reached on a visit to Freshwater, Isle of Wight (there are such tunnels, but I can't place where or how I might have visited, since it was all MOD) but the bottom of it - a balcony emerging in the cliff face, to be at the Clifton Observatory, Avon Gorge, Bristol.  Perhaps I'm confusing it with Freshwater Redoubt?  Memory is odd.

Anyhow - returning to topic - so far we've walked all of the Coastal Path between Exmouth and Lyme Regis, in sections, except the part between Branscombe Mouth and Beer (where we were going to go prior to the bus mishap); that'll be the priority next time, as the Hooken Undercliff looks seriously interesting.

You might be interested in a companion piece I wrote for the Devon History Society weblog: Ladram Bay: time and tide, which focuses on the history of a lost geographical feature, Ladram Arch.

- Ray

Sidmouth slip poetry sighting

Sidmouth landslip: click to enlarge

This afternoon we went to Sidmouth to see the recent cliff slippage at Pennington Point, at the east end of Sidmouth seafront where Alma Bridge crosses the mouth of the River Sid (see the Sidmouth Herald: Sidmouth cliff fall closes link to town). An unknown poet has fixed to the bridge the following:

COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, Sept 3rd, 1802

Earth hath not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

COMPOSED UPON ALMA BRIDGE, March 1st 2010

These glowing cliffs reflect the Western light.
The eastern sky's a wash of pink and peach.
All Nature seems (yet merely seems) to prech
A seaside Paradise of calm delight.

A garden fallen is a fearful sight!
This path that's closed, this blockage on the beach.
This bridge to nowhere, anti-tourist fea-
ture's Nature's work as well? Well, no, not quite.

The rock revetments, and those groynes that keep
The Esplanade of Sidmouth free from ill
Effects of littoral drift, displaced the heap
Of eastern shingle. Now, these cliffs could kill!
Dear God! Our mighty leaders seem asleep;
Statistics on erosion? Lying! Still!

This is about the fairly contentious issue of cliff erosion and cliff protection in Sidmouth (see, for instance, Sidmouth Herald: "Time for action to slow Sidmouth cliff erosion"). I wouldn't know all the details, but the bottom line is that any protection measures would only slow cliff erosion. The soft and permeable Keuper Marl cliffs are observably riddled with springs and spectacularly eroded by water from inland. Chips Barber's Sidmouth Past and Present - page 11 - mentions that the cliffs to the east of Sidmouth have receded some 30 metres since 1928. The area has remarkable terrain; for instance, the erosion gullies in the cliffs below High Peak, west of Sidmouth (see below).

East Devon District Council's Pennington Point Cliff Erosion Review (PDF here) has some interesting background, particularly the existence of the Sidmouth Tunnel, a railway tunnel behind the cliff face dug to carry stone for a failed 1830s venture to build a harbour at Sidmouth. The tunnel is already breached by cliff falls: see The railway that never was and Peter Glanvill Photography. The Sidmouth Harbour Company of 1836 explores the background.

See the Devon History Society blog - Sidmouth: a harbour never built - for a more historical take on the subject.

- Ray

Seaton, slips and Sabine Baring-Gould

Further to Sidmouth and nearby, yesterday - showing the area to a friend on holiday - we took the bus to Beer, walked up and over to Seaton, then took the bus back to Sidmouth for a potter. Beautiful but rather odd day: hot sun but distinctly cold; and bright but very hazy, giving vivid near views but indistinct far ones, with a dazzle of misty headlands.

Seaton (or its eastmost end, Axmouth Harbour) is one end of the famous Axmouth-Lyme Regis landslip terrain, the Undercliff, a region bibliographically under the vast shadow of John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman. However, I didn't know until recently about Winefred, a story of the chalk cliffs (Sabine Baring-Gould, 1900) which looks rather fun as a romantic melodrama ("Love, iniquity, treachery, smuggling, redemption") set around the then hamlet of Seaton. The heroine Winefred Marley is torn between twin heritages, that of her gentleman father and her smuggler mother, and the novel features a Jack Rattenbury, implied to be a son of the famous Lyme Bay smuggler Jack Rattenbury (who is called Job Rattenbury in the book). Its climactic event is the great Bindon landslip on the Christmas Eve of 1839, where a huge tract of farmland slipped to produce the feature now called Goat Island. Toward the end of the book Jane Marley, Winefred's mother, is shown something worrying by a man working near her clifftop house:

"Missus," said he, "I advise you to budge. Something is going to take place; we don't know what, and I've had orders to give you warning."

"I do not understand you."

"Come and see for yourself."

Jane followed the ganger, and he led her from the house, through the bushes, to a point on the edge of the cliff that commanded the beach and the sea some three hundred feet below.

She was silent.

No wind was stirring. The moment was that of the turn of the tide. At a distance of half a mile from the shore the surface of the water heaved like the bosom of of a sleeper in rhythmic throb. There were no rollers, no white horses.

But nearer land the sea was boiling. Volumes of muddy water surged up in bells as from a great depth, and spread in glistening sheets, that threw out wavelets which clashed with the undulations of the tide. Moreover, there appeared something like a mighty monster of the deep, ruddy brown, heaving his back above the water.

"That which is coming in is sweet water," said the man. "One of our chaps has ventured down and tasted it. It is not the fountains of the deep that are broken up, but the land springs are feeding the ocean. Did you ever witness the like?"

"Yes," said Jane, "there was something of the kind took place, but only in a small way, before the crack formed when my old cottage was ruined."

"Exactly, missus. And there is going to happen something of the same sort here, but on a mighty scale, to which that was but as nothing. Where it will begin, how far it will extend, all that is what no mortal can guess. Now you know why I have been sent to tell you to clear out as fast as you can. If you want my help, you are welcome to it."

Oo-er. And furthermore, the birds and the rabbits have deserted the cliff. But in true movie-cliche style she goes back to the house alone, locking the door behind her to pack (because she has a secret stash of gold), but who should be hiding there but the villain, the evil ferryman Olver Dench, who attacks her, packs a carpet-bag with the gold, and leaves her tied up and locked in the house. She manages to get to the window in time to see the landslip starting:

Looking out she saw Dench standing irresolute — as one dazed. She saw something more. At that moment the house swayed like a ship. The surface of the land broke up, and seemed transmuted into fluid, for in one place it heaved like a mounting billow, and in another sank like the trough of a wave. It was to Jane, peering through the little window as though she were looking at a tumbling sea through the porthole of a cabin. Again the house lurched, and so suddenly and to such an acute angle, that Jane fell from the table.

(To be concluded) - The Graphic serialisation

Sabine Baring-Gould was an interesting character. Yet another prolific - see bibiliography - but largely forgotten novelist, he combined broad antiquarian and folklore interests, such as The Book of Were-Wolves (Gutenberg EText-No. 5324) and Curious myths of the Middle Ages (Internet Archive curiousmythsofmi00bariuoft), with hymn-writing, folksong collection and, it appears, general eccentricity (as told in the story of his failing to recognise his own small daughter at a children's party). The diverse contents of his library can be seen at Devon Libraries' Sabine Baring-Gould's library at Killerton list.

Judging by the description of Winefred, a story of the chalk cliffs by Seaton Visitor Centre Trust, Baring-Gould's overall geekiness is reflected in the wealth of geological and topographic detail. As The Pall Mall Gazette review said:

He doubtless knows his public, and his public doubtless enjoys the didactic manner in which he pauses in his story to give long passages on the geological formations of the cliffs of South Devonshire, wedges of informing discourse on the history of smuggling on the south coast, instructive scraps about bacon-curing and tinder-boxes, and long string of platitudes upon the general influence of education.

- The Pall Mall Gazette (London, England), Wednesday, December 19, 1900

It's still a good yarn, though. It was serialized in The Graphic in 1899, as I managed to find via the British Library (text as usual hacked via Google Books). I'm not sure why the book isn't online in its entirety; S B-G died in 1924 so it's out of copyright.

Of related interest, William S. Baring-Gould, the prominent Sherlock Holmes scholar and analyst, was one of Baring-Gould's grandsons, so it looks as if the cataloguing fervour ran in the family.

PS: I'm pleased to say I found the resolution to the cliffhanger in The Graphic. Spectators above, including Winefred Marley, see a running figure. It's not Jane Marley, but Olver Dench, carrying the carpet-bag. He runs in terror as the landscape tears itself to pieces around him, giant fissures opening.

Rendered crazy with fear he mounted a fragment of rock and saw about him the wreckage as of a world - prostrate trees, leaning pillars of rock, disrupted masses of soil, bushes draggling over to drop into the throats open to swallow them.

Dench makes a final attempt to escape by jumping one such chasm, but can't or won't leave the heavy bag of gold:

He ran, leaped, was flying in space over the chasm, touched the rock on the farther side, caught at the grass, but was overbalanced, dragged backward from the crest by the weight of the bag, and went down with a tuft of wiry grass and hawkweed in his right hand, and disappeared in the midst of the rock and earth that was in process of being chewed. Now the carpet-bag, then a leg, next a hand appeared, and went under again. Then up came the head, only next moment to be drawn beneath and disappear in the mighty mill.

When the landslip ceases, however, amid the general devastation the house remains, damaged but still largely intact, and Jane Marley is found alive and not badly hurt. She and Winefred are reconciled, Jack Rattenbury promises to go straight and gets parental blessing to marry Winefred, and all (except the buried Dench who "has gone to his account") live ever after, happily and presumably well-informed about rotational slump processes.

You might be interested in a contemporary account:

Supposed earthquake in Dorsetshire

One of the greatest convulsions of nature ever on record, or that has taken place within the memory of man in this neighbourhood, has occcurred in Dowlands and Bending Cliffs, situated between Lyme and Axmouth harbour. Various are the opinions respecting it - some attribute it to the long-continued and heavy rains, others insisting on its being an earthquake. It certainly has every appearance of the latter. The inhabitants are no strangers to the occasional sliding of the cliffs, on this part of the coat, both east and west, but here is presented a scene of awful grandeur.

The above cliffs, which are very lofty, are about three miles west of Lyme Regis.

On Christmas Eve, Mr Chaple, the tenant of Dowland's estate, invited his workmen to the farm-house, to regale them for the evening, among whom were the occupants of four cottages, situated on the common at the foot of the cliffs. On their return home they found considerable difficulty in opening their doors, but took little noticce of it. On rising on Christmas morning they discovered a settlement of their homes; and becoming alarmed, removed their goods with all speed, and retired to Dowland's farm, about a mile on the top of the cliffs, for safety. And very providentially too; for shortly after an immense portion of the top cliffs, consisting of between forty and fify acres of arable and pasture land, with their crops, together with the common below, sunk to a depth varying from 50 to 100 feet; two of the above tenements being completely buried, whilst the other two are shattered to their very foundations. The scene presents a spectacle not easily described - gigantic rocks having been rent asunder, lofty trees buried beneath the mighty mass, with only their tops visible; large fields with their crops, separated, one part here and another there - immense precipices formed, awful chasms which appear bottomless, the whole of which strike the beholder with terror and amazement and present a striking view of the Almighty power of Him "who holds the mountains in the scales and the hills in a balance." The length of cliffs affected by this shock is more than two miles, and perhaps in breadth about one, encompassing about a thousand acres. But perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon of the whole is, that immense and ponderous rocks in front of this scene of action have been forced by the concussion from their beds, where they have reposed for ages, under the bed of the ocean beyond low water mark, and made their appearance in pyramids and different forms - in some places 40 or 50 feet above the sand, and have wonderfully formed a sort of harbour, while the beach adjoining the land remains unmoved. Boats have entered this naturally formed harbour on the eastern side, which is shallow, and found in the middle three fathoms of water. Outside the rocks thus formed, towards the sea, is about five fathoms at high water. Thousands of persons have already been to visit this extraordinary scene. No doubt but it will attract numbers of the nobility and gentry to Lyme Regis. The celebrated Pinney cliffs, which are situated betwixt Lyme and Dowlands, and which have been admired for their romantic scenery, sinks into comparative insignificance, and its lofty rocks must "hide their diminished heads" when compared with the grandeur and sublimity which Dowland's cliffs wll in future present. Dr Buckland, of Oxford, the eminent geologist, who has been residing in Lyme for some time past, has prolonged his stay, in order to explore and view the wonders of this phenomenon of nature. He states that he never witnessed anything equal to it in England. It is to be hoped that his, or some other able pen, will gratify the public by a full and proper description of the scene.

- The Hull Packet, January 10, 1840

PPS: I'm not sure why I consider Baring-Gould geeky, when (just as Katin in Samuel R Delany's Nova is a fan of moons rather than planets) I'm a fan of chines, the miniature coastal valleys of the English south coast. The majority are in the Isle of Wight, notably the now-lost Blackgang Chine, but Seaton in East Devon has one - Seaton Chine - whose foot is occupied by a cafe at the western end of its esplanade. But about 100 yards to the west, a flight of steps leads up from the beach to a fenced-off deeply-incised stream valley that I can't find in any accounts but surely deserves to count as a minor chine. See Google Maps: Seaton Chine and its cafe are at the right; the second chine is to the left. The dark shape is the shadow of a knife-edged section of cliff created by erosion between the sea and the stream, which runs almost parallel to the coast at this point.

PPPS: Winefred; a story of the chalk cliffs is now on the Internet Archive (ID winefredstoryofc00bari).

- Ray

Sidmouth and nearby

Today was one of those days when you can believe summer is finally happening. Clare and I went to the Donkey Sanctuary in East Devon. I guess it's best summarised as a very gentle experience: donkeys are pleasant enough, but they don't seem to relate very much (and you aren't allowed to feed them). However, from the Sanctuary we took the beautiful 500-foot descent down the wooded Weston Combe - at the moment the bluebells and wild garlic are in flower - to the beach at Weston Mouth. We didn't know it's a naturist beach, but it's all very discreet (it's so inaccessible that anyone on the beach is either sunbathing, doing serious walking, or geologising - so no curious spectators). Offshore, the last bits of the MSC Napoli are still there. Rather than climb back up, we walked along the beach to Sidmouth - a couple of miles on loose shingle, almost as strenuous as the climb, especially on a hot day without the forecasted breeze - and had tea there.

I never tire of Sidmouth, for its pleasant isolation and very genteel Regency style. It also has a solid literary presence: Jane Austen's family visited it in 1801; Elizabeth Barrett Browning lived there for a time; it was the home of novelist Stephen Reynolds, author of A Poor Man's House (based on his life among Sidmouth fisher-folk) and the great love in the life of Philippa Powys; and RF Delderfield lived there at the end of his life. It's the setting of HG Wells' short story The Sea-Raiders (featuring killer squid) and of the title story of Jane Gardam's The Sidmouth Letters (described here at BooksPlease); and it appears in fictionalised form in various works: as Beatrix Potter's "Stymouth", Thomas Hardy's "Idmouth", Thackeray's "Baymouth", and Howard Pyle's "Spudmouth".

It featured, as Westcombe-on-Sea, in the Fry and Laurie Jeeves and Wooster series. Stephen Fry, in his Telegraph column at the time, wrote well of it in the article "Dear Sid", reprinted in his book Paperweight. He mentions its Edwardian hotels, the long esplanade with "a greater concentration of tea-rooms, bun-shops and knick-knackariums than one would have imagined possible outside the novels of EF Benson", and where the only coin-operated machine he saw was a telescope. He also confirmed its reputation, among other quiet resorts, as "God's waiting room", quoting an average of four deaths a week in its hotels, the corpses being quietly removed at two in the morning to avoid upsetting other guests. (This sounds more furtive than it actually is; as the book Front Office points out, for hotels everywhere this is standard procedure that makes all-round sense). Fry commented also on the particularly marvellous atmosphere when it was decked out as the 1930s Westcombe-on-Sea, in relation to Britain's sentimentality for a chocolate-box past. A diet of chocolate would be emetic, he says, but it's nice for a occasional treat.

I found the list of Sidmouth's pseudonyms at A Place in Literature, a posting at A Curious State of Affairs, the weblog of Sidmouth-based author Jan Marshall. By coincidence, she and her partner were also out today, but taking the clifftop route: see Walking the coastal path for very nice photos (see also her Photo-blog).

See also: Seaton and Sabine Baring-Gould.
-Ray