Clovelly has been thought by some to have a Roman origin, and its name to derive from _Clausa Vallis_. The ingenuity of this derivation compels our admiring attention, even if it does not win our agreement. Ptolemy styled Hartland Point the “Point of Hercules,” and Barnstaple is thought to have been the Roman _Artavia_; but no evidence of any kind associates Clovelly with those times. The great triple-ditched prehistoric earthworks at Clovelly Cross, where the road down to the village branches from the highway, point to some ancient people having been settled here and greatly concerned to defend the place; but the history of Clovelly Dykes, or “Ditchens,” as they are called, will never be written. Clovelly’s name almost certainly derives from words meaning “the cliff place,” the site of it being amazingly cloven down the face of the steep cliffs that on either hand present a bold front to the sea. The force that carved out this astonishing cleft was the same that has fashioned the many combes and “mouths” along this coast; an impetuous stream rushing from the inland heights. Indeed, the cobble-stoned stairs that form the footpath of Clovelly’s “street,” descending hundreds of feet to the beach, now represent what remained until modern times the bed of that streamlet. It poured down here from the cliff-top, and the curious overhanging terraces of the “New Inn,” and most of the cottages are survivals of its banks. This stream was diverted half a mile to the east, and now flows through the Hobby Drive and over the face of the cliff at Freshwater Cascade. [Illustration: CLOVELLY, FROM THE HOBBY DRIVE.] The population of Clovelly is almost entirely seafaring: or rather, the men are fisherfolk, and the men’s wives have for years past found a second string to the domestic bow in letting bedrooms and providing refreshments for visitors; so that when circumstances forbid the chase of the herring there is not likely to be that empty cupboard at home, which is apt to vex the lives and haunt the imaginations of the fisherfolk of most other seaboard places. What competition there is in this ministering to visitors is necessarily very limited, because Clovelly itself is unexpanding. What it was sixty or seventy years ago, that it remains in almost every detail to-day. It is the manorial appanage of Clovelly Court, standing up in its broad Park on the cliff-top; and has been since the earliest times. In Domesday we find it the property, among innumerable other manors, of Queen Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror. Down the centuries occur the names of Giffards, Stantons, and Mandevilles, as owners; and in the reign of Richard the Second it became the property of Sir John Cary, by purchase.