The Vicar of Morwenstow: Being a Life of Robert Stephen Hawker, M.A. — John Shaqi
The Vicar of Morwenstow: Being a Life of Robert Stephen Hawker, M.A.Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
General
The Vicar of Morwenstow: Being a Life of Robert Stephen Hawker, M.A.
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Hawker, Robert Stephen, 1803?-1875
The road to Morwenstow from civilisation passes between narrow hedges,
every bush on which is bent from the sea. Not a tree is visible. The
whole country, doubtless, a century ago was moor and fen. At Chapel is a
plantation; but every tree crouches shrivelled, and turns its arms
imploringly inland. The leaves are burnt and sear soon after they have
expanded.
The glorious blue Atlantic is before one, with only Lundy Isle breaking
the continuity of the horizon line. In very clear weather, and before a
storm, far away in faintest blue, the Welsh coast can be seen to the
north-west.
Suddenly the road dips down a combe; and Morwenstow tower, grey-stoned,
pinnacled, stands up against the blue ocean, with a grove of stunted
sycamores on the north of the church. Some way below, deep down in the
glen, are seen the roofs and fantastic chimneys of the vicarage. The
quaint lyche-gate and ruined cottage beside it, the venerable church,
the steep slopes of the hills blazing with gorse or red with heather,
and the background of sparkling blue sea half-way up the sky—from such a
height above the shore is it looked upon—form a picture, once seen,
never to be forgotten.
The bottom of the glen is filled with wood, stunted, indeed, but
pleasant to see after the treeless desolation of the high land around.
A path leads from church and vicarage upon Morwenstow cliffs. On the
other side of the combe rises Hennacliffe to the height of 450 feet
above the sea, a magnificent face of splintered and contorted schist,
with alternating friable slaty beds.
Half-way down Morwenstow cliff, only to be reached by a narrow and
scarcely distinguishable path, is the well of St. Morwenna. Mr. Hawker
repaired it; but about twenty years ago the spring worked itself a way
through another stratum of slate, and sprang out of the sheer cliff some
feet lower down, and falls in a miniature cascade, a silver thread of
water, over a ledge of schist into the sea.
On a green spot, across which now run cart-tracks, in the side of the
glen, stood originally, according to Mr. Hawker, a chapel to St.
Morwenna, visited by those who sought her sacred well. The green patch
forms a rough parallelogram, and bears faint traces of having been
levelled out of the slope. No stone remains on another of the ancient
chapel.
From the cliff an unrivalled view can be had of the Atlantic, from Lundy
Isle to Padstow point. Tintagel Rock, with its ancient castle, stands
out boldly, as the horn of a vast sweep against glittering water, lit by
a passing gleam behind. Gulls, rooks, choughs, wheel and scream around
the crag, now fluttering a little way above the head, and then diving
down towards the sea, which roars and foams several hundreds of feet
below.
The beach is inaccessible save at one point, where a path has been cut
down the side of a steep gorse-covered slope, and through slides of
ruined slate rock, to a bay, into which the Tonacombe Brook precipitates
itself in a broken fall of foam.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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