Not by any means that these much-criticised buildings were offensively ugly. Their ugliness was of that supreme and old-fashioned kind so greatly prized in (for example) old china. It transcended the merely ugly and rose into the realms of the hideously quaint. St. Michael’s tower, for instance, was a very gem of misbegotten early nineteenth-century “Saxon” architecture, done in grim grey stucco, and looking like the architectural monstrosities of nightmare-land. It would have genuinely astonished any Saxon privileged to revisit the earth after a thousand years and seeking the original Saxon building he had known on this site. The present tower, in the Perpendicular style, is ornately pinnacled and windowed, and although so very florid, is a beautiful and entirely successful feature. The almost wave-washed position of St. Michael’s is a startling surprise to the stranger, although the inhabitants and the congregation take it soberly enough; as well they may, considering that, although it stands so little removed from high-water mark, and although the salt sea spray of winter’s storms flecks its walls, the sea does not appear to have gained the fraction of an inch since the first church arose on this site, in the tenth century. On a wall of this peculiarly seaside place of worship the stranger may read a pathetic story of the sea, in the epitaph to John and Richard Westlake, lost in the foundering of the brig _Isla_, in the storm of October 29th, 1823, “within sight of this church.” St. James’s church, the surviving ugly brother, stands commandingly at the crest of the steep rise through the town, at the entrance to Bitton. It is often known as the “round church” because of its central lantern tower, which is octagonal. It is only with a difference I endorse the received opinion among architectural critics that this church of West Teignmouth is so ugly. Architecturally, the lantern-tower and the odd octangular interior additions made nearly a century ago are enormities, but looked at from the lay point of view, the whole mass of the building, while singular, is imposing—and I am afraid the uninstructed public rather like it. This is almost enough about churches, save for the fact that we are here come, in this beautiful West country, into a deeply religious land, where the Church of England weakens and Dissent takes firm hold. CHAPTER XII TEIGNMOUTH—THE PLYMOUTH BRETHREN—THE TEIGN—LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS The further West you go, the more distinctly religious you find the people, and the stronger you find the hold of Dissent upon them. Religion is a very real thing in the West, and the more real it is, the weaker is the hold of the Established Church. Peculiarly strong, among other forms of Dissent, are the Plymouth Brethren in Devonshire, and the Bible Christians in Cornwall.