THE EVOLUTION OF STARCROSS

In the summer of 1984 Harold Fox, who was at that time a Senior Research Fellow of the University of Leicester, was on the shore at Starcross planning a lecture which became a paper which some seven years later became a book entitled, "The Evolution of the Fishing Village, Landscape and Society along the South Devon Coast, 1086 - 1550." (Leopard's Head Press, 2001.)

Many, if not most, of his examples of early activity come from the Estuary, particularly from Starcross,Kenton and Woodbury. His main thesis was, in a word, that the origins of permanent settlements on coast and estuary were often the consequence of the erection of 'cellars' or cabins set up by farmers who chose to build their houses well inland.

"Most of the rural settlements of Devon's coastal manors - typically small hamlets and isolated farms - were situated away from the shore and often out of sight of the sea. The reasons for this were probably fairly simple and basic: a desire to avoid the fiercest of winds and a need for security... Such considerations, and, in South Devon, rich farmland inland, drew rural settlements away from the coast. On the other hand, when and where fishing was a by-employment among farmers, fisheries in estuary or sea drew people towards the waters. The Devon solution to this tussle...was for farmers living inland to use cellar settlements, collections of storage huts on the beach which served as bases for their fishing operations."

Starcross gave him his best example of this evolution with farmer/fishers residing well inland but keeping their boats, nets and other tackle in sheds at the water's edge. In time, so the theory, the fishing village of Starcross evolved from these largely uninhabited buildings.

Professor Fox was a true scholar, able to study Latin texts and to interpret them. Sadly he died within weeks of his retirement in 2007. But so much work went into his monograph that he provides many answers to questions about the nature of the Estuary from the eleventh century to the sixteenth that are not to be found elsewhere .

WOOLCOMB'S ISLAND

In the August of 1883 J B Davidson MA FSA gave a paper to a meeting of the Devonshire Association at Exmouth on the History of Exmouth. Among other good things he knew the story of the stair cross. In the thirteenth century, according to Mr Davidson, ...

"...amongst the other privileges conferred upon Sherborne Abbey by these grants was the right of ferry from Exmouth to the opposite shore of the mouth of the river. The starting-place of this ferry was at a place called Pratteshide, which is spoken of by Dr. Oliver as an ancient name of Exmouth. At any rate it was a place of resort for the purposes of the ferry, and of some commercial importance. The actual point of departure must have shifted from time to time with the changes brought about by waves and storms. On the other side of the river the ferry terminated at a place formerly called Woolcomb's Island, where there was a flight of stone stairs ; and near this ferry-house was set up by the bishop of Sherborne a stone cross, whence was derived the name Stair, now Starcross."

Presumably Woolcomb's Island was properly an island connected to the main by bridge or ford. Another source, Sidney Heath's book "The South Devon and Dorset Coast" published by T Fisher Unwin in 1910 has the following|

"On November 26, 1703, in the same storm that wrecked Winstanley's Lighthouse on the Eddystone Rock, the houses on Woolcomb's Island, as the district was then called, were washed away by the overflowing waters of the Exe. In order to guard against a similar disaster in the future, the Courtenays of Powderham Castle built a strong embankment all along the shore from Powderham Point to Eastdon, a short distance below Starcross, and some years later this embankment was completed by the construction of a wall to keep out the tides, but provided with sluices for the outlet of the water of the little River Kenn. Up to this time the Kenn was navigable as far as Powderham Castle, and a contemporary painting shows the castle with the river at high tide.

"Where Exe meets curled Kenne, with kind embrace,
Betwixt their arms they clip fair Powderham's place."
-RISDON."

Well, there's a lot to be commented on here had I not already written my quota. But I must say before I go that "Pratteshide" seems to me a very apt name for the Exmouth of today, especially at the weekends.

STARCROSS

I have heard it said , I don’t know on what authority, that the name Starcross is a corruption of Stair Cross and that it is an ancient name dating from a time when passengers landing there climbed an actual stair to an actual cross where, on their knees, they devoutly gave thanks for a safe crossing, presumably from Exmouth.

This is not as fanciful as at first it might appear. The ferries from Exmouth were a salient fact of mediaeval life on the Estuary and for many years up until 1267 they were in the possession of the Abbot and monks of Sherborne who may well have demanded a little piety, as well as a little money, from the people who were carried across to Starcross.

I have lately dipped into a book called ‘The South Devon Coast’ by the ‘Historian of British Highways’ Charles G Harper. He too had heard the ‘Stair Cross’ story, though not the ‘giving thanks’ bit. Unlike many travel writers he does not hesitate to disparage where he thinks disparagement is due. I find that healthy. I like his irony and his style. His writing is refreshingly unaffected for the times. His book was published by Chapman and Hall in 1907. Here is a sample:

“Starcross itself has been described as ‘a melancholy attempt at a watering-place’, probably by some person who regards Exmouth as a cheerful and successful effort in that direction; but ‘there is no accounting for tastes’ as the old woman said when she kissed her cow. As sheer matter of fact, Starcross never attempted anything in that way, but just like Topsy – ‘grew’ and so became what it is; a large village of one long, single-sided street, looking once uninterruptedly upon the`shore and the water, but since the railway came, commanding first-class views of expresses, locals and goods-trains; and more or less identified by strangers with a singular Italianate tall red tower, sole relic of the atmospheric system with which the then South Devon Railway was opened in 1846. This survival of one of the old engine-houses completes a conspicuously beautiful view along the Exe, raised thereby to the likeness of an Italian lake. The one other remarkable feature of Starcross is the curious little steamship, modelled like a swan, that for fifty of more years past has been moored off Starcross jetty: to the huge amazement of travellers coming this way for the first time.”

Well, ‘The Swan of the Exe’ was never a steamship but it stands to reason that it must have been something amazing to look out for from the trains for all those little boys and girls bound for West Country holidays. In those days children gazed out at the world. Nowadays the little monsters are encouraged to gaze into electronic toys on their laps, missing so much and so much.

And what fun to have the Estuary compared to an Italian lake as well as to the Bosphorous.

THE BABY IN THE MUD

On a March day in 1909 the water-bailiff in the employ of the Exe Board of Conservators, Thomas Robert Luxon, was walking along the banks of the Exe between Turf and Powderham when he saw a dead baby in the mud about five feet from the bank. Mr Luxon fetched Police Constable Acland from Starcross who picked the child out of the Estuary. She was a little girl.

The tiny muddied corpse was carried to the doctor at Starcross, Mr John Hyde Iles, surgeon. John Iles was thirty three years old and at the beginning of his long working life in Starcross which was to last for another forty years. He was no stranger to death. After Cambridge, he had served as a volunteer in the war against the Boers and he had come to Starcross having been for some years the house surgeon at the Victoria Hospital for Children, Chelsea.

There needed to be an inquest even for so slight a person as this dead baby. It was held at the Church House, Powderham. John Iles told the Coroner and the jury that the body had probably been in the water for a couple of days. There was a mark on the left chin, caused by a fish bite. He had concluded that the child had been prematurely born and there was no evidence that she had ever had a separate existence. The baby had been stillborn.

No one had any idea whose child this might be and there seems to have been very little curiosity. The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence.

I find it strangely moving, this inconsequential tale of the baby in the mud and the fish that bit the infant chin.

CELIA FIENNES GLIMPSES STARCROSS

Celia Fiennes who famously travelled side-saddle throughout England in the seventeenth century had a glimpse of the Estuary in the year 1698. She was thirty-six and had been travelling and writing the account of her travels for some thirteen years already. Celia had stayed with friends in Exeter and had noted how the Exonians slew the leaping salmon on the river there with spears. I suspect that this already seemed to her to be archaic but in fact fishing spears were still being used in the estuaries well into the nineteenth century.

From Exeter she went to Topsham, “which is a little market place a very good key; hither they (the Exonians) convey their serges and so load their shipps which comes to this place all for London, thence I saw Starre Cross where the great shipps ride and there they build shipps, this was up the river, 5 or 6 miles up the river, but the tide being out could not goe and it was ten mile by land and their miles are soe long here I would not goe it, seeing almost as well the shipps that lay there as if at the place.”

What a heroine was Celia! She may not have known her uprivers from her downrivers but she was a noble noblewoman nonetheless.