A book of the west. Volume 2, Cornwall : $b being an introduction to Devon and CornwallBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
A book of the west. Volume 2, Cornwall : $b being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Cornwall (England : County)
Externally it is fine, the tower remarkably so. In the tower may be
observed curious results of a lightning flash.
The coast of North Cornwall right and left of Bude is very fine; the
carboniferous rocks stand up with their strata almost perpendicular,
but there are bays and coves that allow of descent to the sea.
Widmouth promises to become some day a great watering-place.
To see this coast it is in vain to take the coach road to Bideford
or to Boscastle. The road runs on the ridge of high land from which
the streams descend and spill into the sea. The only way in which to
appreciate its wildness and beauty is to take the coast road that
climbs and descends a succession of rocky waves. By that means scenes
of the greatest picturesqueness and of the utmost variety are revealed.
One excursion must on no account be omitted, that to Morwenstow, for
many years the home of a fine poet, an eccentric man, the Rev. Robert
S. Hawker.
He was born at Stoke Damerel on December 3rd, 1804, and was the son of
Mr. Jacob Stephen Hawker, at one time a medical man, but afterwards
ordained and vicar of Stratton. Mr. J. S. Hawker was the son of the
famous Dr. Hawker, incumbent of Charles Church, Plymouth, author of
_Morning and Evening Portions_, a book of devotional reading at one
time in great request.
Young Robert was committed to his grandfather to be educated. He was
sent to Oxford, but his father, then a poor curate, was unable to
maintain him there, and told him so. The difficulty was, however,
happily surmounted. He proposed to a lady rather older than his mother,
but who had about £200 per annum. She accepted him; he was then aged
twenty and she was forty-one, and had taught him his letters. By this
means he was enabled to continue his studies at Oxford. He was given
the living of Morwenstow in 1834, and remained there till his death in
1875.
A writer in the _Standard_ of this latter year thus describes his first
acquaintance with the vicar of Morwenstow:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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