Teignmouth of to-day, with its modern houses and bright, sunny streets, has little left of antiquity. Probably the most ancient dwelling does not date back two centuries, and except for the tower of St James’s Church, West Teignmouth, there is little left of antiquarian interest. One must not, though, forget the really beautiful reredos (alas! disfigured by texts in the niches where once stood figures of beautiful workmanship) with its exquisite moulding of leaf and knot design, and its small figures of saints so perfectly carved as in most cases to be easily identifiable. Not a few ancient writers have accounted for the red colour of the cliffs throughout this part of the Devon coast by the old tradition that the Danes in ancient times killed so many of the inhabitants hereabouts that the blood of the slain dyed the soil for all time. And Teignmouth is by several stated to have been the landing place of the Danish pirates on several of their expeditions or raids, but there would not appear to be any very sound historical basis for this assertion. It seems beyond question, however, that the marauders did land somewhere along the Devon coast, and enter the valley of the Teign, burning and ravaging as they went. In the first year of the eleventh century they were out on one of their expeditions, and burned what is described in the chronicles as Teigntun or Tegntun, which may have been any of the “Teigntons,” either Bishop’s Teignton or Kingsteignton. It is also not unlikely that the little settlement at the mouth of the river now known as Teignmouth, but which is not even mentioned in Domesday (although certainly existing) received a share of their attention. The Saxon fortress church of St Michael, which, unhappily, was pulled down and re-erected in the third decade of the last century, was most probably originally built to place a check upon the depredations of the invaders, and to defend the town.