THE SKIRMISH AT POWDERHAM CHURCH

In the cold winter of the year 1645, ‘loyal’ Exeter was still a royalist stronghold holding out against a now confident parliamentarian army. General Fairfax, the parliamentarians’ supreme commander, had his headquarters in Ottery and Lieutenant General Oliver Cromwell had turned up with his forces. The Estuary demanded their attention because supplies and reinforcements were reaching besieged Exeter up river by ship and boat.

The parliamentarians controlled the length of the eastern bank and there must have been armed men everywhere. There were garrisons at Topsham, Nutwell and at the Fort in Exmouth. Troops stared across to the western bank of the Exe which was in royalist hands and fired at suspect shipping passing up to Exeter. Then came the parliamentarian attack across the river on Powderham Castle. With both Powderham and Nutwell in their hands, the parliamentarians hoped to prevent help reaching Exeter up river. Professor Hoskins takes up the story:

“Under cover of darkness – it was nine o’clock on Sunday night, December 14 – Captain Dean with two hundred foot and dragoons , moved across the river from Nutwell in boats and reached the Powderham side. But they found the house more strongly defended than they had imagined and they did not, in fact, attack it.

Not wishing to return without doing anything, they occupied the church, not far from the Castle. The next morning they brought provisions across the river from Nutwell into the church and began to fortify it. The royalists up at Exeter feared that the river would be blocked by these manoeuvres. On Monday night they sent down a party of five hundred soldiers to join the two hundred in the Castle. Together they attacked Fairfax’s men who were barricaded inside the church, throwing in many hand-grenades. For three hours the siege of Powderham church went on until the royalists withdrew, leaving the snow stained with their blood. However, it was bitterly cold in the church. There was no means of warming it, and the parliamentary forces were glad to be withdrawn in a day or two from this unpleasant situation.”

For more on Exeter in the Civil War link to Exeter Memories.

THE CUSTOMS OFFICER'S BOY

It was the dark evening of Thursday 27th November 1872 and Mr Matthew, the chief officer of Customs for the port of Exmouth was working at the dock. Helping him to measure a stack of timber were his two sons, George and Joseph. At half past five Mr Matthew told his son, Joseph, to scoot off home and tell mother that he and George would be home shortly looking for their tea.

Joseph needed to take the narrow path that ran by the dock edge. There were no lights and there was no fence and by now all was black as pitch. Young Joseph felt his way forward but somehow he slipped and fell into the dock. His head struck timber and, although he was a strong swimmer, he sank and drowned.

A half hour later Mr Matthew and George arrived home unaware of Joseph’s fate. When they did not find him at home they immediately suspected what had happened and went back to the dock and spent the night searching for the lost boy but to no avail. Before dawn others joined the search. The dock was dragged and the body was found in thirteen foot of water at the dock gates. There were two dreadful bruises to the face.

On many occasions previously Mr Matthew had pointed out the danger of the dock having no lighting and no fencing. Only after Joseph’s death were steps taken to make the docks safer.

FOR ME, THE EXE

(Kiseljak 1995.)


Some weary ev'nings here I stash away
my scribblings for the Queen for good or ill
and close my eyes and see great Haldon hill
cradling the sun. This fancy, clear as day,
is my ideal and here in dream I stray
beside bright waters and high cliffs until
the tide glows red beneath the sun's last ray
and then - reality! - I'm stuck here still.

But what's with here and there? All places charm,
well, most at least, and blessed spots abound
in ev'ry land. - That's true but where's the harm
in thinking best of one small chunk of ground?

For me, the Exe where winds and hearts are warm,
the Exe, where sweet content is to be found.

CATCHING A BASS

It would seem that we are to have a summer worthy of the name. Last Tuesday, all of a sunny afternoon, I sailed Poppy up and down the tide just for the fun of it.

When we set out there was a steady breeze blowing from the sea and the tide was flooding fast so I sailed her closehauled and took on both wind and tide and we made what progress she and I could. 'Us against them'.

Now, to tell the truth, my lovely Scaffie, with her one loosefooted lugsail, is not the best in the world at sailing against the wind and some might think we made sad progress. But why should we care? There is a pure joy in going nowhere elegantly and Robert Louis Stevenson was right when he wrote, ‘to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive and the true success is to labour.’

Poppy was labouring right enough and it was with difficulty that we crept down river until we were clear beyond Powderham castle. It was a hard won advance but what glorious wide sweeps we made across the whole width of the shining river and how sweetly the sun shone on us both! Next though we allowed ourselves the luxury of gliding with the wind on our beam and with the tide in our favour until we were way up river under the Royal Marine Camp. By now the tide was considering turning and the wind had shifted slightly in our favour and it was already time to think about tacking home.

I had trolled a handline over the side in no great hope of catching my fish. There is always too much seaweed floating about the Exe these days. Every time I pulled up the line to clear it of weed I told myself that I was wasting my time because of the weed and because I was sailing far too speedily. The lure, I told myself, must be positively skidding along and too near the surface for any fish to take but a superfish. Nevertheless I persevered. There was nothing to be lost beyond a fishhook and two inches of electric cable.

Then I caught my sea bass. It fought nobly. They always do. But soon it was aboard, all silver scales and spines and shining in the sun. I rejoiced. I only hope to catch two or three sizeable bass in a summer and here was the first.

I cooked the superbass à la Vendangeuse according to a 1970's Jane Grigson recipe that required half a pint of white wine in the cooking and the rest of the bottle in the drinking. It had been a triumphant day.

THE FOUR CHILDREN AND THE FISHERMEN

On Friday se’nnight, four children, the eldest about six years old, went out under the rocks, a little distance from Budleigh Salterton to gather periwinkles; the tide coming in, they were unexpectedly surrounded by the sea, when providentially some fishermen, observing them in motion, took them for birds, and rowed towards the rocks with the intention of shooting them, but to their surprise, discovered their mistake, and rescued them from a watery grave.

There are three things about this short report from Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post of the nineteenth of June, 1816 that I find of interest. The first is the use of the word se’nnight, OED has sennight, meaning a week or in this case of a week ago. It is a word of great antiquity but now more or less lost to us.

The second is the image the passage gives of these four feral infants of the Regency, ‘the eldest about six years old’, scampering abandoned along the summer beaches of East Devon and foraging for their own suppers.

The third is the piratical nature of the boatload of Devon fishermen armed with fowling pieces, or whatever. I wonder what kind of birds they hoped to kill under the rocks and to what end. There are not many sea birds you can eat.

What was that great Tom Lehrer line?: “I just stand there looking cute/and when something moves I shoot.”

It’s a nice story, not least in that it has a happy ending. I do like a happy ending.

MIDSUMMER SUNSET

With pagan eyes,
with a pagan heart,
even maybe with a pang of pagan anguish,
wonder at this sunset
turning the tide to blood.

For this is midsummer
when the potent sun
rides highest
and bounces straight up and down
on the horizon
like a celestial yoyo.

If we keep out of mischief ,
the calculating priests have told it,
he will, after,
but only approximately,
twelve moons,
be back this way again.

Meanwhile:
O great inseminator,
father of the waters,
of forests and fields,
of fiveaday flora
and fauna
and fishes great and small,
hear our fervent prayer.

Stray not too far,
be not too cold, too cruel,
ride never too low,
carry us through winter.
and deliver us from ice and snow.

FRANCIS DANBY

Francis Danby, the Irish painter, came to live in Exmouth in 1847. He was already fifty four years old but he was to spend fourteen productive years in a grand house down by the beach overlooking the sea. This was the first house built on the Maer and it was called Shell House. Danby died here in 1861. The house was demolished in 1925 to make way for a sports ground.

His had been a chequered career but he was well liked in Exmouth. His kindness to young artists won him many friends. He had moreover learned the secret of eternal youth. He wrote to George Petrie “Let us exult in the confidence that we belong to that class of our fellow-men who by the elixir you describe, ‘the true enjoyment of nature’ retain the heart of youth though the eye grow dim, the hand tremble and the hair turn grey.”

Danby, I am sure, truly enjoyed the Estuary. He painted a great variety of subjects in his lifetime but he often painted the setting sun and he was a dab hand at painting tall ships at anchor. One of his early triumphs, in 1824, had been when the great Sir Thomas Lawrence, the favourite portrait painter of the age, bought, at a great price, his painting ‘Sunset at Sea after a Storm.’ No doubt one thing that brought him to Exmouth was the grandeur of the sunsets across the Estuary which he painted again and again.

We who live on the eastern bank of the Exe enjoy wonderful sunsets. Every time I see the sun set in glory across the wide Estuary and behind the Haldon hills I think of the paintings of Francis Danby.

Say then, friend, is it Art that copies Nature or does Nature copy Art?