To return on our traces. Combe Martin is one long street of not interesting or ancient houses, save "The Pack of Cards," but it has a fine church, beautifully situated, with a good tower and a well preserved screen. Saints are painted on the panels. There are fine canopied niches for SS. Peter and Paul. The vaulting of the screen was removed in 1727. The parvise over the porch is good, and there are eight old carved bench-ends. There is a curious double lock to the vestry; a small key has to be turned before the lock can be made to act under the large key. An Early English triplet is in the south aisle. Behind the brass in the wall of William Hancock, Gent., 1587, is his skull in a recess. [Illustration: CHAPEL ROCK, ILFRACOMBE] Watermouth Castle, that was passed on the way to Combe Martin, is modern and unsuccessful. A gateway into the gardens is made up of carved armorial coats removed from Berrynarbor, and dating from 1525. The Berrynarbor Church tower is finer than that of Combe Martin. There is a good deal to interest in the church. In the Valley of Rocks are hut circles, but so mutilated and overgrown with fern as not to be easily distinguishable. Lynton Church has been well enlarged and is very pleasing. It is fabled that a band of marauding Danes succeeded in landing at Lynmouth, ascended the cliffs, and were surrounded and massacred in the Valley of Rocks, which bears the name of "The Danes" or "Danes' Combe." But this is one of those many legends invented to explain a name; the original signification has been lost. It was called originally _Dinas_, the castle or camp. Lee Abbey never was an abbey. It was the seat of the De Wichehalse family, refugees, it is pretended, from the Low Countries in or about 1570. But, as a matter of fact, the Wichehalse family first turns up at Chudleigh nearly half a century before their reputed flight from Flanders. They were cloth merchants apparently, and one of the family, Nicholas Wychalse, the third son of Nicholas of Chudleigh, having married a wife from Pilton, settled at Barnstaple and died there in 1570. As merchants in the wool trade the Barnstaple branch did well, and married into some of the best county families. All the rigmarole about their being _De_ Wichehalse, and being of noble Flemish ancestry, and of their having fled from Alva's persecution, may be dismissed as pure fable.