The Rivers and Streams of EnglandBradley, A. G. (Arthur Granville)
General
The Rivers and Streams of England
Bradley, A. G. (Arthur Granville)
England -- Description and travel; Rivers -- England
ecclesiastics of that order. High above the streams of the Dart, too, in
Holne Vicarage, Charles Kingsley was born nearly a century ago. After
passing through the village of Staverton the Dart spends the last mile
or two of its fresh-water career before tumbling over the Totnes weir in
the slower tree-shaded waters that bound the grounds of Dartington Hall.
This is the ancient and present seat of the Champernownes, whose
ancestor was a quite distinguished member of that group of enterprising
Devonian squires who shed such unforgettable lustre on the county in the
Elizabethan age. Though the present house at Dartington is more or less
of that period, what more particularly constitutes it one of the
memorable houses of Devonshire is the still ample ivy-clad shell of the
noble fourteenth-century banqueting hall, the great clock tower, and
many subsidiary buildings of an extremely early date. Not very far
across the river, too, are the splendid ruins of Berry Pomeroy Castle,
one of the best existing mediæval monuments of the kind in the county.
The little town of Totnes, where those celebrated tidal reaches, to
which the Dart owes perhaps a somewhat disproportionate measure of its
fame, begin, is about the most picturesque inland town in a county by
no means architecturally rich in this particular. With its castle, its
quaint and steep narrow High Street climbing from the river level
through an embattled gateway, its penthouses and fine church, Totnes has
something to show on its own account to the great numbers of people who
come here for the sole purpose of making the beautiful trip by steamer
to Dartmouth. There are still, moreover, in Totnes, some fine old houses
where its merchants dwelt when Devon did such a roaring trade with the
Newfoundland fisheries and the Mediterranean in the seventeenth century,
to say nothing of a little profitable buccaneering, when the Spaniards
were so well worth robbing, and the beard of their king requiring to be
so frequently singed.
In due accordance with the nonsensical habit of labelling the natural
beauties of England after stock scenes on the Continent, this tidal
stretch of the Dart has been advertised ever since most of us can
remember as the "English Rhine." Anything more utterly different from
the banks and waters of the Rhine than the banks and waters of the Dart
it would be difficult to conceive. One is reminded of the gushing lady
who, while walking upon one occasion with the venerable Bishop Philpotts
of Exeter above the cliffs near Torquay, asked the Bishop if he did not
think the prospect was very Swiss like.
"Very, ma'am," snapped the bored prelate, "only here there are no
mountains and in Switzerland there is no sea."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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