The existing lighthouse looks like the design of some one who set out to build an ordinary, four-square dwelling, and then conceived the idea of placing a tower on its roof; and this tower, tapering towards the lantern and carefully hung with slates, is strongly shored up with metal-sheathed timbers, lest the stormy winds that blow pretty constantly in winter overturn it. The lighthouse-man, who spends his summer days gasping for air on the shady side, holds the infrequent stranger in converse as long as possible, and does not appear altogether contented with his existence on a spot where, he says, you cannot bear to sit down on the sands in summer, for the heat, which is strong enough to almost scorch your breeks, to say nothing of your person, and in winter dare hardly put your nose out o’ doors, on account of the cold. He will illustrate for you the especial dangers of this point, against which the lighthouse is placed here to guard, and will explain that, on account of the shifting, sandy bar of the river, there are two lights provided: the fixed one on his tower, and another, low down, on a movable white- and black-striped box on rails. This is moved backwards and forwards, according to the movement of the bar, so that ships entering the river and keeping their course safely, shall get the two lights aligned. The way between Braunton and the approach to Barnstaple, at Pilton, is uninteresting. The road runs for the most part out of sight of the river and the sea. Only one thing attracts the wayfarer’s attention; and that for its singularity, rather than for any intrinsic beauty. This object, beside the road, and so close to it that the wayfarer cannot fail to notice the queer, would-be Gothic battlements, is Heanton Court, now a farmhouse; the “Narnton Court” of Blackmore’s “Maid of Sker.” CHAPTER XI PILTON--BARNSTAPLE BRIDGE--OLD COUNTRY WAYS--BARUM--HISTORY AND COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE--OLD HOUSES--“SEVEN BRETHREN BANK”--FREMINGTON-- INSTOW AND THE LOVELY TORRIDGE Barnstaple is heralded by its suburb, Pilton, on a creek (or “pill” as the word is here) of the river Yeo. The people of Pilton, who were among the earliest to manufacture cotton fabrics in a district that made only woollens, were in the early part of the seventeenth century looked upon in much the same way as the makers of base coin are regarded. “Woe unto ye, Piltonians,” exclaimed Westcote (1620), “who make cloth without wool!”