Detail from the ‘Pedigree of Hawker, of Devonshire and Cornwall’

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F. G. Lee’s biography, Memorials of the Late Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker  (Chatto and Windus, 1876), includes a ‘Pedigree of Hawker, of Devonshire and Cornwall’. This provides some useful background regarding the ancestry of the man best remembered by many as the author of the Cornish ‘national anthem’. According to Lee, Hawker’s great great grandfather (recorded by him as James Hawker but referred to elsewhere as John; Hawker’s father, Jacob, is also named incorrectly here as James) was a ‘Surgeon and Alderman of Exeter. Sheriff, 1742; Mayor 1744′.

A search of the web provides a little more detail. On 6 May 1714, John Hawker married Mary Rowe at St Olave’s Church in Fore Street, Exeter. The baptisms of their five children are also recorded at St Olave’s: Richard (1716), Elizabeth (1717-1804), Mary (1721-1811), Jacob (1722) and John (1731). The Exeter Memories website records John Hawker serving as Mayor in 1744.

Exeter in 1888. St Olave’s Church can be found just above the ‘A’ in ‘St. Petrock Ward’.
The junction of West Street and Stepcote Hill can be found lower centre.
(Click on image to enlarge.)

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On 1 August 1749, Jacob Hawker (born 1722) married Sarah Smith at St Mary Steps, West Street, Exeter. Two children of the marriage, Thomas (1750-51) and Robert (1753), are recorded as having been baptised here.

A postcard of West Street and the church of St Mary Steps, Exeter,
probably dating from the 1930s.

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St Mary Steps church stood just inside the old West Gate. Until the 1770s a narrow street known as Stepcote Hill was the main route into the city from the river – in the above picture the entrance is hidden behind the projecting building to the right of the church. According to Exeter Memories, William of Orange rode into Exeter by this route in 1688, on his way from Brixham to London. In the 18th century the hill was lined with the houses of wealthy merchants but the area gradually declined and by the time this picture was taken it had become a notorious slum with some of the worst living conditions in the south west of England.

For anyone who would like to know more about the architectural and social history of Exeter an excellent website, Demolition Exeter: a Century of Destruction in an English Cathedral City, is recommended. The articles on ‘The Slum Clearance of Stepcote Hill’ and ‘West Gate, West Quarter’ are of particular interest in this instance.

THE REV. ROBERT HAWKER, D. D. (GRANDFATHER OF R. S. HAWKER),
from The Life & Letters, by C. E. Byles.

*  *  *  *  *

Returning to F. G. Lee’s pedigree we find ‘Robert Hawker, only son, the celebrated Calvinistic divine and preacher, born circa 1753. Matriculated May 27, 1778 at Magdalen Hall, Oxford. Clerk in Holy Orders. D.D. Edinburgh. Vicar for fifty years of Charles Church, Plymouth.’  Robert Hawker married Anne Rains (not Hannah Baynes as shown on F. G. Lee’s pedigree) in 1772, ‘when their combined ages did not exceed thirty-six years’. The couple had eight children. Their second son, Jacob Stephen, married Jane Elizabeth Drewitt, originally from Winchester, and their first child, Robert Stephen Hawker was born in his grandfather’s vicarage at 6 Norley Street, Plymouth, Devon, on 3 December, 1803.

Charles Church Vicarage, Plymouth (now demolished)

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A few years after Robert’s birth Jacob Stephen Hawker abandoned the medical profession and took Holy Orders. His first curacy was at Altarnun in Cornwall but Hawker’s biographers all agree that the couple left their eldest boy to be brought up in the home of his grandfather and grandmother where his boyhood high spirits and practical jokes became notorious in the neighbourhood. After running away from several preparatory schools he was given a place at the Grammar School at Liskeard. By this time his family had moved to Stratton in North Cornwall and Hawker joined them there during his holidays. After leaving school he returned once again to Plymouth and took up employment with a solicitor there.

Plymouth (North) in 1893. Charles Church and Norley Street are at the lower edge of the map.

*  *  *  *  *

Hawker soon rejected the legal profession (at which his younger brother, Claude, had considerably more success in later years) and instead committed himself to a further course of study, this time at Cheltenham Grammar School. Marriage and university occupied the next few years and terms were spent in Oxford. It was not until after his graduation in 1828, when he and Charlotte took up full-time residence at his wife’s family home at Whitstone, that he first began to cement his adult connection with Cornwall. In October 1829 he was ordained deacon and appointed to the curacy of North Tamerton. A cottage outside the village became the couple’s first independent married home; Hawker gave it the name ‘Trebarrow’ and described it as ‘on a moor and surrounded by Barrows or mounds of Pagan Burial before the Christian Era’. It was here that he published his second book of poems with its evocative title, Records of the Western Shore, and here too that he received the letter from Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter that was to shape the rest of his life – the letter dated 15 December 1834 that began ‘The Vicarage of Moorwinstow in your neighbourhood being vacant . . .”

BISHOP PHILLPOTTS of EXETER (in 1851).
After a mezzotint engraved by William Walker from a painting by T. A. Woolnoth.
From The Life & Letters, by C. E. Byles.

*  *  *  *  *

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to David Cornforth at Exeter Memories and Beverley Chamberlain from the Devon Family History Society web forum for information on Hawker marriages and baptisms at St Olave’s and St. Mary Steps.

LINKS

- Entry for ROBERT HAWKER, D. D. in the Dictionary of National Biography (PDF)

The lych gate at the entrance to St Andrew’s church dates from the early 1930s

*  *  *  *  *

Hawker’s father, Jacob Stephen Hawker, was the second son and fourth child of the well-known preacher and vicar of Charles Church, Plymouth, the Rev. Robert Hawker DD. Little is known about Jacob’s early years but he practised initially as a surgeon in Plymouth before marrying Elizabeth Jane Drewitt and taking Holy Orders. His first post as curate was at Altarnun and he moved to Stratton, still as a curate, in around 1813. In 1833 he became vicar of the parish and Stratton remained his home until his death in 1845 at the age of 67. He is buried in front of the altar of St Andrew’s church and commemorated by a brass memorial plaque in the floor (see picture below). His vicarage, which stood to the east of the churchyard, has since been demolished.

Houses in Diddies Road, Stratton, viewed from the churchyard

*  *  *  *  *

Hawker spent most of his early years living with his grandparents in Plymouth but after his father’s move to Stratton he began to spend holidays there with the rest of his family. A number of stories have survived which apparently illustrate his tendency to high spirits and impulsive behaviour as well as his habit of inventing elaborate practical jokes. The ‘traditions still current of the pranks which he played’ were recorded by his son-in-law Charles Edward Byles in his biography, The Life and Letters, published in 1906. More than ninety years had elapsed since the events in question and these accounts inevitably have an over-rehearsed air; as Byles notes at least one tale was also told at Liskeard in connection with a shopkeeper there. Robert was the eldest of Jacob and Elizabeth’s nine children (five boys and four girls) but among all the accounts of his escapades in Stratton I have only been able to find a single reference to a sibling – an unnamed brother reputed to have played a part in consuming a stolen roast chicken set aside for use as a prop in a local play.

Stratton church and part of the northern section of the churchyard

*  *  *  *  *

‘The Succession of the Vicars of St. Andrew’s Stratton taken from the Episcopal Registers’

*  *  *  *  *

The small brass memorial plaque to Jacob Hawker is set into the floor tiles in front of the altar. It was hidden under carpet for many years but has now been uncovered.

*  *  *  *  *

 Revd. Jacob Stephen Hawker. Obt. 1845 AEt. 67.

* * * * *

The Norman font dates from the 12th century. The octagonal granite pedestal on which it now stands is probably a Victorian addition.

*  *  *  *  *

The rood screen was designed by E. H. Sedding and dates from 1901.

*  *  *  *  *

The Royal Arms on the north wall of the Lady Chapel. On the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II similar Arms were put up in many Cornish churches.

*  *  *  *  *

Detail of a memorial brass to Sir John Arundel of Trerice who died in 1561. The brass stands against the west wall of the church and is still in its original stone matrix. At one time it formed the top of an altar tomb at the east end of the south aisle. Sir John is shown between his two successive wives.

*  *  *  *  *

A memorial in St. Andrew’s churchyard to the artist John Ley Pethybridge, illustrator of the Life and Letters of the Rev. R. S. Hawker and the John Lane editions of Cornish Ballads & Other Poems and Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall. The inscription reads:

At Rest
In loving memory of John Ley Pethybridge artist of this parish
Born 1867 Died 1905
Also of Frank Pethybridge
Born 1871 Died 1942
Sons of E and E Pethybridge of Launceston

*  *  *  *  *

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to Nicola Trzaska-Nartowski for informing me of the discovery of Jacob Hawker’s memorial plaque, as well as sharing much other valuable and interesting knowledge on Stratton and its history. Further details of burials and memorial inscriptions can be found in The Memorials and Burials of St Andrew’s Church, Stratton, by Ian & Val Barker and Barbara & Mike Worden.

Photo of ‘The Succession of the Vicars of St. Andrew’s’ © Charles Cox, 2012

All other photos and text © Angela Williams, 2012

LINKS

- Read more about St Andrew’s Church at the FOSTA website

- St Andrew’s Church, Stratton, at British Listed Buildings

Looking south into Cornwall from the coast path above Marsland Mouth

*  *  *  *  *

Article by Lee Robertson – pictures by Angela Williams

In 2004 as the landlord of the Old Smithy Inn and an aficionado of Hawker’s poetry, I decided to set up a running race between the two pubs on either side of the valley separating Devon and Cornwall, and name it after the pony that so resolutely made the journey for RSH between the parishes. Then as now the route is a fantastical journey, through deep woods and then up onto high paths with the ever changing sea far below. There is no route for motor cars, although it is just possible with a four wheel drive if you do not mind the tight turns and encroaching woodland.

It was the first summer we were at the pub, and we had much to do after it had been closed for a few years. Then, the Smithy, and the Bush were both small drinking pubs, and Beryl who had run the Bush for many, many years remembered bringing horses across the valley to be shod by Caleb Wakely, son of Caleb Wakely, both blacksmiths of Welcombe when The Smithy was a smithy.

The race was set for September 21st. It was a beautiful day, and the runners were given choice of any route they wished, The paths they could have taken I thought were all of similar length, being, the coast, Marsland or Gooseham. The prize was a bottle of Pol Roger Champagne. About twenty brave souls took part, including a good long distance runner from the area.

Marsland Mouth

*  *  *  *  *

The competitors all decided to make for the coastal route, they thought that the cliff path would be more of a challenge, and the sea breezes on a beautiful late summer day would refresh.

The winner was writer and photographer, Tim Rainger, a New Zealander staying in Welcombe for the summer and helping out at the Old Smithy. He was a little tired from a late night the previous evening and after leading for most of the journey had a cooling dip in the sea where the tide was high at Marsland mouth. This put him toward the back of the field, but he managed to retake the lead up the hill in the last mile. Sand Lane is the very steep old donkey lane from the beach to Darracott and it was an exciting finish as the exhausted leaders raced up the final incline.

Click here to visit Lee Robertson’s website and find out more about his eBooks, photography, film-making and travel writing . . .

West Mill and the lane leading to Darracott

*  *  *  *  *

Mead Corner, Welcombe

*  *  *  *  *

The view south towards Morwenstow. Hawker often returned this way on his pony after holding Sunday service at St. Nectan’s church in Welcombe

*  *  *  *  *

Text © Lee Robertson 2012

Photos © Angela Williams 2010, 2011

Tonacombe Manor, from a postcard by A. H. Hawke, Helston

*  *  *  *  *

Ever since I first came across the J. L. Pethybridge illustration (see below) of the interior of Tonacombe Manor I’ve been hoping to acquire more pictures, so I was delighted when four postcards turned up recently on eBay. The only useful information on the house I’ve been able to find online is a comprehensive but rather dry description on the British Listed Buildings website and a couple of photos in the Country Life Picture Library. According to British Listed Buildings, Tonacombe Manor is very little altered since Christopher Hussey wrote about it in his article of November 11th, 1933 (pp.500-506), but unfortunately the  Country Life website doesn’t include the accompanying text. Once again Byles’ Life & Letters provides a good deal of information not readily available elsewhere:

‘Morwenstow is one of those remote districts where the centuries have wrought but little change. The same families of the good old yeoman stock have occupied the land, and intermarried, for generation after generation. It is a place where names, and the men who bear them, live long. A tablet in the church is inscribed to the memory of one John Shearme of Harscut, the Eleventh John Shearme successively : “Who departed this Life in the Year of Our Lord 1771, in the 91st Year of his Age.” Other names such as Brimacombe, Harris, Adams, Mountjoy, Venning, Cory, Burrow, Trewin, Seldon, Cottle, Jewell, Cholwill, Kinsman, Cann, Trood, Rouse, Boundy, Manning, Shephard, Walter, Bray, Tape, Heard, Mugford, Hambly, Littlejohns, are likewise indigenous to the soil, and recur again and again in the Parish records, or on the gravestones in the old churchyard. During the whole time of Hawker’s incumbency, the Brimacombes tenanted the two largest estates in the parish, Tonacombe and Marsland.’

Tonacombe Manor, from a postcard by A. H. Hawke, Helston

*  *  *  *  *

‘Tonacombe Manor, the residence of Mrs. Waddon Martyn, is a perfect specimen of mediaeval domestic architecture. It is of no great size, but complete in its preservation, and unspoiled by modern additions. Seen from a distance, it shows a picturesque cluster of low roofs, gables and chimneys. From the moment of entering the massive gateway, the visitor feels himself transported out of this twentieth century into the Middle Ages. An old-world air pervades the whole place.

‘A door with an old portcullis, and a porter’s lodge at the side, leads into a small courtyard, and the arrow-slits pierced in the thick strong walls of the lodge indicate that it was built in times when the house might have to resist an armed attack.’

Tonacombe Manor, from a postcard by A. H. Hawke, Helston

*  *  *  *  *

Interior of Tonacombe Manor by J. L. Pethybridge, from The Life and Letters of R. S. Hawker

*  *  *  *  *

‘The interior deepens the illusion that the clock has been put back several centuries. The sombre hall, with its great beams overhead, its flagged and sanded floor, its minstrels’ gallery, its mighty open hearth, piled in winter with blazing logs, its windows like the “tall oriels” of a dimly-litten chapel, its walls hung with antlered heads of great beasts slain in the chase, portraits of departed heroes, rusty weapons, tattered banners, and ancient coats of arms – all these things combine to banish from the mind consciousness of the present, and to call up before it “the brave days of old.” Before Hawker came to Morwenstow, the minstrels’ gallery had been partitioned off, and the beams of the roof hidden by a ceiling. It was he who pointed this out to the owner, Mr. Martyn, and persuaded him to remove the partition and the ceiling.

‘The rest of the house is equally old-fashioned – odd flights of stairs, winding corridors, and unexpected rooms, all panelled in dark oak, and sometimes leading one into another, – an ideal scene for a ghost story. In one of the upper rooms a narrow loop-hole gives a view of the hall, by means of which the mistress of the house could enjoy invisibly those scenes of revelry at which her sex forbade her to appear.

‘The design of the grounds and buildings is considered to be of Saxon origin. There are five courts, and five gardens. (Compare the end of chapter II. of ‘ Ivanhoe.’) One of these gardens, called the Pleasaunce, is the scene of Hawker’s legend of ‘The First Cornish Mole.’

‘”Tonacombe,” writes its late owner, the Rev. W. Waddon Martyn, “is mentioned in an old Deed, enrolled in the Books of the Diocese at Exeter, A.D. 1296, where it is described as “the three Vills of Tunnacombe.” It formerly belonged to the Jourdens (Jourdains), and from them has passed by marriage successively to the “Leys (or Leighs), alias Kempthornes, Waddons, and now to the Martyns.”‘

Tonnacombe, Moorwinstow, from a postcard by Thorn, Bude

*  *  *  *  *

‘Tonacombe is the original of “Chapel” in ‘Westward Ho !’ which was partly written there. Round the panelled drawing room are the arms of Ley (or Leigh) and Courtenay. There is a Chapel House in Morwenstow, but it is of recent date (about 1800), and has no traditions. Kingsley adopted the name and applied it to Tonacombe. A writer in Chambers’ Journal says that Kingsley visited Morwenstow many times, and there met Hawker, who “pointed out to him the site of the old house of the Grenvilles at Stowe.” Hawker did not consider that the local colour in ‘Westward Ho ! ‘ was accurate. In 1857 he writes to a friend : “You would have grievously failed in your search for the localities referred to, but by no means identified, in ‘ Westward Ho ! ‘ The whole Book is an assumption – and me judice a failure.”‘

The Waddon Lantern, Hawker’s walking-stick and holy water stoups, at Tonacombe Manor, from The Life and Letters of R. S. Hawker.

*  *  *  *  *

‘Among the curios at Tonacombe is an old lantern once in Hawker’s possession, and unique in its construction and its history. It was made for Thomas Waddon of Tonacombe, who died in 1755. His brother, Edward Waddon, lived at Stanbury, and their sister, Honor, was the wife of the Rev. Oliver Rouse, Vicar of Morwenstow. The three families used to meet regularly at each other’s houses for dice and cards, and what the old song ‘ Arscott of Tetcott ‘
describes as

Gay flowing bumpers and social delight”

‘In the excess of their merriment the cronies would dash their glasses on the table, and the broken pieces were preserved as a record of the jest. In course of time there was a goodly collection of these fragments, and in order that their memorial should not perish the lantern was made, of solid oak, square, with a pointed roof and little windows formed of the round bases of the broken glasses and other pieces cut in the shape of dice, hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades. Thereafter, when the festive party broke up, those whose turn it was to walk homeward through the dark lanes had their way lighted before them by this emblem of their wit and humour.

‘There are also to be seen at Tonacombe several massive old stone vessels, which Hawker called “holy water stoups,” but which more prosaic persons have explained as corn measures. Tradition tells that he collected them from small ruined chapels in the neighbourhood. There were at one time eleven of these little shrines in Hartland parish alone. The small cross over the piscina at Morwenstow came from one of these at Longfurlong.’

*  *  *  *  *

The extracts quoted above are from The Life and Letters of R. S. Hawker edited by C. E. Byles, John Lane, 1906, pp. 47-50)

No ancient Manor House is complete without at least one ghost, and Hawker himself told J. F. Chanter ‘in the summer of 1874′ that Tonacombe was haunted by the spirit of a person he identified as ‘Master Zachary’, whose bedroom, ‘Master Zachary’s chamber’, was accessed by an external stone stair leading from the little courtyard (Life & Letters, p. 616).

Michael Williams, in his book Supernatural in Cornwall (Bossiney Books, no date, pp. 5-10), records an interview with David Waddon Martyn in which the latter describes a number of apparently benign resident spirits, including one known as ‘The Old Lady’. He suggests Katherine Kempthorne as a possible candidate; Katherine married John Kempthorne of Tonacombe at Chudleigh in 1558 and was buried at Morwenstow church on 14 February 1613, in the Kempthorne tomb. Ghostly appearances aside it would be interesting to find out why her wedding took place at Chudleigh, which is on the far side of Dartmoor just a few miles west of Exeter. The commonly held belief that ‘people didn’t travel far in the old days’ is frequently overturned by stories like this one – see for instance my piece on Mary Chudleigh at Literary Places.

A public footpath from Morwenstow to Stanbury runs just to the west of Tonacombe Manor – there’s a photo on Geograph – but the house and grounds are not open to the public.

ADDENDUM 30 JUNE 2012 - 

Two more Thorn postcards obtained recently from eBay:

Tonnacombe interior

* * * * *

Tonnacombe exterior. The absence of a formal driveway and the fact that the stonework above the window looks unaltered suggest that this is an earlier picture than the one posted previously.

*  *  *  *  *

Photos and additional text © Angela Williams 2012

Old Whitstone House

*  *  *  *  *

No portrait exists of Hawker’s first wife, Charlotte. Writing to a friend after her death, Hawker expressed his regret that she could never be persuaded to sit for a photograph ‘because I should have liked that others might have known the features that I can never forget’.

‘Her face was indeed a perfect image of noble Womanhood – oval – blue-eyed – with a nose slightly curved somewhat like my own – a firm mouth, and a forehead moderately high banded with soft light hair that never turned gray to the last. But it was the expression that was so striking. You could see every kind emotion and loving impulse on her face and She never heard a good thought or noble sentiment without moistened eyes and quivering lip. In my dining room there hang upon the wall pictures of her two elder Sisters, Twins, her youngest Sister and her Father. She was most like the latter – but of her dear face no outline except that graven on my heart and that comes to me ever and anon in dreams.’
(Life and Letters, p. 484)

According to Hawker, Charlotte was well able to justify her objections to photography, or ‘sun-pictures’: ‘She used to say that every person who had a Photograph taken tried to call up a forced and unnatural expression under the notion of trying to look better and otherwise than their natural countenance and therefore the result was failure’. Plenty of people still feel this way, despite advances in photography, but the pictures of her father and sisters which ‘hang upon the wall’ are presumably paintings rather than photos, and her reluctance seems to have been based on an innate dislike of the whole business of portraiture. To resist the pressure of loved ones over an entire lifetime must have taken a good deal of determination – Hawker himself underwent a number of photographic sessions, and his wish to possess her image seems likely to have been expressed in fairly robust terms.

A few other descriptions of Charlotte have survived to be passed down to us. C. E. Byles in The Life and Letters includes the account of ‘The late Mr. Christopher Harris, at whose house, in 1827, Hawker wrote his “Inscription for the Waterfall at Hayne,”‘. Not long after Hawker’s death Mr Harris shared his recollections of Miss I’ans with the readers of ‘John Bull’:

“We saw the lady,” he says, “in 1816, then at the age of thirty-three, eight years before her marriage. She was tall, fair, and comely, with suave and winning manners, and very accomplished. Her elder sister, Florence, shone in conversation, and was yet more good-looking. In the society of these ladies, at Bude, Hawker spent most of his time. Young, handsome, and brilliant, he was ever a welcome guest. His craving after knowledge was notorious. Books such as he desired were not to be found at Stratton; and the library at Whitstone, small yet well selected, furnished the means of gratification. A similarity of tastes was the bond of union between the attractive preceptress and the diligent pupil; they paid the usual penalty of propinquity, and their relative positions became quickly reversed . . . . . This did not escape the vigilant eye of the second and elder sister; but the caution that was honestly given came too late for preventive purposes . . . . . It was in vain that a fearful disparity of years was urged, which, in the course of time, might have unfortunate results, and bring sorrow to both. The advice was most sage and judicious, and, as is usual in such case, when the maggot bites, was utterly disregarded.”

” In this instance it should be observed,” continues Mr. Harris, ” and we do so with singular pleasure, that the auguries of the elder sister failed of consummation, and to no one did it cause greater satisfaction than to that lady herself. We knew the Vicar of Morwenstow and his first wife during the whole time of their married life, and to the very last their mutual affection remained unimpaired in the sanctity of their plighted troth.” . . .
(Life and Letters, p. 16)

Margaret Dyne Jeune, describing a visit paid by herself and her husband, Francis Jeune, to Morwenstow vicarage in 1847 (Pages from the Diary of an Oxford Lady 1843-1862, p. 9) comments that: ‘We had enjoyed ourselves much and could not but be gratified by the hearty welcome given us by this old friend of my husband and his wife – a lady many years older than himself and with a sadly strong Cornish accent, but a woman of good commonsense, well-read and informed; in her youth she must have boasted of no small share of beauty.’

Efford Manor (now Ebbingford Manor), Bude

*  *  *  *  *

The baptism of Charlotte Eliza Rawleigh I’ans was recorded in the register for the parish of Whitstone, Cornwall, on 6 December 1782. Very few of Charlotte’s papers survive, but Lois Ijams Hartman, a distant American relative, has recorded some information about the I’ans family in a privately published booklet, Remembered in This Land. Charlotte was one of seven children of Colonel Wrey I’ans and Frances Rawleigh. The dates of birth of her brothers, John, Edward, and Thomas, are unknown, but her older twin sisters, Florence and Frances, were born in 1776 and her younger sister Catherine in 1785. Charlotte’s ancestors, like Hawker’s, originally came from Devon and her great-grandfather, Thomas I’Ans, worked at one time as a ‘customs collector’ in Bideford.

Thomas I’ans probably purchased Old Whitstone House in the early eighteenth century. During Charlotte’s childhood Colonel Wrey I’ans also took on the lease of Efford (now Ebbingford) Manor in Bude. Efford is generally supposed to have been the scene of Hawker’s proposal to Charlotte but the family appear to have divided their time between the two houses. Hawker and Charlotte stayed at Whitstone during his vacations from Oxford and he studied there in a hut in the woods when he was preparing for Deacon’s orders after his graduation.

Charlotte was forty-one and Hawker only nineteen when they married. Although some accounts describe her as his godmother this was not the case – they did not meet until after his father moved to Altarnun when Hawker was about eight years old. The newly married couple lived together in Oxford while Hawker continued his studies and were joined for part of the time by two of Charlotte’s sisters. After Hawker’s installation as vicar of Morwenstow, Charlotte supported him both practically and financially in running the parish and caring for the poor and needy. Despite the differences in their ages and backgrounds the impression given by Hawker’s letters, and confirmed by the accounts of those who knew them, is of two people of similar outlook, well-matched in their dedication to a common goal.

Charlotte’s health and eyesight deteriorated as she grew older, and Hawker cared for her devotedly at considerable cost to his own physical and mental well-being. His description in a letter of 1856, of reading aloud to her in the afternoons while she ‘works or knits’, provides a touching contrast to the reports of bad weather, parish disputes and financial worries which fill much of his published correspondence. Charlotte was the only one of the seven I’ans siblings to marry, and outlived all of her family. She and Hawker had no children and his outpourings of grief following her death in February 1863 make sad reading.

She is buried in Morwenstow church, ‘just outside her Seat door in Church where the Chancel meets the Nave’, and her stone bears the inscription:

There is sprung up a light for the righteous: and a joyful gladness for such as are true-hearted.

A memorial to Charlotte Hawker in Morwenstow churchyard.
All illustrations by J. L. Pethybridge from The Life & Letters of R. S. Hawker by C. E. Byles.

*  *  *  *  *

ADDENDUM – 26 MAY 2012: While writing this piece I was aware that information was lacking as regards Charlotte’s schooling, however a snippet from the Preface to C. E. Byles’ The Life & Letters has since caught my eye. Expressing his thanks to the publisher, John Lane, Byles mentions in passing that Mr Lane’s grandmother, Mary Isabella Hobbs of Whalesborough, near Bude, had been a schoolfellow of Charlotte’s, and that this ‘gave Mr Lane an early interest in the Vicar of Morwenstow’. If anybody reading this knows which school Mary Isabella Hobbs attended I’d be grateful to hear from them via the website contact form.

Text © Angela Williams 2012

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Follow Me, or Lost and Found: A Morality from the German. C. E. H., Morwenstow. James Burns, London. 1844.

‘Earl Sinclair.’ Translated by Mrs Hawker from the German of Oehlenschlager. Sharpe’s London Magazine, 6 Dec, 1845.

The Manger of the Holy Night: From the German of Guido Gorres. Mrs C. E. Hawker. London, Joseph Masters, James Burns, 1847. Available to read online at the Open Library . . .

‘Too Late’, a translation from Toni, appeared in Household Words, Volume 8, No. 202, 4 February 1854. The Dickens Journals Online website describes it as a piece of short fiction by Charlotte Elizabeth [sic] Hawker on the following subjects: Crime; Criminals; Punishment; Capital Punishment; Prisons; Penal Transportation; Penal Colonies. Russia—Description and Travel. Russia—Politics and Government. Unfortunately it isn’t available to read as yet.

Two poems, ‘The Wreck’ and ‘Earl Sinclair’ are both included in Cornish Ballads and Other Poems by R. S. Hawker, edited by C. E. Byles. John Lane, 1904.

RECOMMENDED READING

Remembered in This Land by Lois I. Hartman. Privately printed. Stapled booklet, 78pp. No date but probably circa late 1970s.

The Vicar’s Wife by Lois I. Hartman. Minerva Press, 2000. Read more here . . .

Footprints Beside Him: a poignant love story of the Cornish Coast. Hillcrest, 1984. (An earlier version of The Vicar’s Wife.)

FURTHER LINKS

- Online Parish Clerks, Whitstone, Baptisms: Charlotte Eliza IANS

THE CELL BY THE SEA

How wildly sweet by Hartland Tower,
The thrilling voice of prayer:
A seraph, from his cloudy bower,
Might lean to listen there.

For time, and place, and storied days,
To that great fane have given
Hues that might win an angel’s gaze,
‘Mid scenery of heaven.

Above — the ocean breezes sweep,
With footsteps firm and free:
Around — the mountains guard the deep,
Beneath — the wide, wide sea.

Enter! the arching roofs expand,
Like vessels on the shore;
Inverted, when the fisher-band
Might tread their planks no more;

But reared on high in that stern form,
Lest faithless hearts forget
The men that braved the ancient storm,
And hauled the early net.

The tracery of a quaint old time
Still weaves the chancel screen:
And tombs, with many a broken rhyme,
Suit well this simple scene.

A Saxon font, with baptism bright,
The womb of mystic birth,
An altar, where, in angels’ sight,
Their Lord descends to earth.

Here glides the spirit of the psalm,
Here breathes the soul of prayer:
The awful church — so hushed — so calm —
Ah! surely God is there.

And lives no legend on the wall?
No theme of former men?
A shape to rise at fancy’s call,
And sink in graves again?

Yes! there, through yonder portal stone,
With whisper’d words they tell,
How once the monk, with name unknown,
Prepared that silent cell.

He came with griefs that shunned the light,
With vows long breathed in vain:
Those arches heard, at dead of night,
The lash, the shriek, the pain;

The prayer that rose and fell in tears,
The sob, the bursting sigh:
Till woke, with agony of years,
The exceeding bitter cry.

This lasted long — as life will wear,
E’en though in anguish nurs’d —
Few think what human hearts can bear
Before their sinews burst.

It lasted long — but not for aye:
The hour of freedom came:
In that dim niche the stranger lay
A cold and silent frame.

What sorrows shook the strong man’s soul,
What guilt was rankling there,
We know not: time may not unroll
The page of his despair.

He sleeps in yonder nameless ground,
A cross hath marked the stone;
Pray ye, his soul in death hath found
The peace to life unknown.

And if ye mourn that man of tears,
Take heed, lest ye too fall;
A day may mar the rest, that years
Shall seek but not recall.

Nor think that deserts soothe despair,
Or shame in cells is screen’d;
For Thought, the demon, will be there,
And Memory, the fiend.

Then waft, ye winds, this tale of fear,
Breathe it in hall and bower.
Till reckless hearts grow hushed to hear,
The Monk of Hartland Tower.

[Printed in Ecclesia, 1840, in Echoes From Old Cornwall, The Cornish Ballads, etc.]

*  *  *  *  *

St. Nectan’s, the parish church of Hartland, is situated between the town and Hartland Quay in the village of Stoke. The room above the north porch is traditionally known as Pope’s Chamber; the Pope in question being a local resident of that name. Access is via a steep and narrow stairway and the chamber contains an interesting collection of odds and ends, among which I was delighted to find a glass case with an oak shingle from the roof of Morwenstow church. Despite Hawker’s lively imaginings it seems doubtful that the place ever served as a monk’s cell – it contains a large fireplace and the atmosphere is more homely than ascetic. A leaflet that I picked up during our visit suggests that the chamber may have been used by a priest or sexton, and to store the parish armour in Elizabethan and Stuart times.

In the Life & Letters Byles includes an account of a visit made by Hawker and Charlotte in 1838, just over three years after their arrival in Morwenstow:

HARTLAND

“On the – of June 1838 Charlotte and I drove to Hartland. Day showery. Saw first Grave-ground and Church. The yard-paths clean, but the Vicar cherishes for his Horse the grain that grows from out the Bosoms of the Dead. No green and shaven mounds like my own Church Yard. By the Chancel door there is an Altar Tomb, an epitaph, but no surviving name – The Words ‘ Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant ? ‘ &c. ‘ Rejoice not against me, oh mine Enemy,’ &c. Legend. One of the Doctons of Docton smote his Son in ire with His Sword belt. The buckle struck him in the temple that he died. Hence Remorse evermore – hence the nameless Tomb – The fierce anticipation of reproach &c. Cf. and dl.

“Next the Church. The Screen nearly complete. On its upper ledge the Singers stood, within the tradition of one generation. The last Chancel Choir of which I ever found tracery in the West. The Roof of the Church painted thick with Stars in imitation of Heaven. I hence perceive why and whence our carved projections – they are all meant to be starry tokens to meet the lifted eye with memorials of Heaven.

” We ascended by a narrow stair of stone from the North Wall into a small low chamber, called still the Monk’s Room – it is an obvious cell. There lived a solitary man. There dwelt Thought as a Demon and Memory arrived in the garb of a Fiend. Long years, long years – the vigil of the night, the abstinence of the day, the solitary yell, the lonely psalm, the Mea Culpa of a goaded Mind. ‘Mother of God! why is thy face so like to hers I slew? O let my Hell burn now. Let those who torture come before the time’ and then ever and anon in the pauses of the public Mass, a sob, a wail, an echo from that Wall – a whisper from a Man to to his Mate, ‘It is the Monk.’ Kurie Eleeson. Ave Maria. Pater noster qui es.”

Life & Letters (p.54)

Text and photos © Angela Williams 2010, 2012

Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall, by R. S. Hawker. John Russell Smith, 1870.

*  *  *  *  *

‘The Botathen Ghost’ is probably Hawker’s best known prose work, having been included in numerous collections of ‘supernatural stories’. It was first published in May 1867 in All The Year Round, a weekly literary magazine edited by Charles Dickens. In 1870 it appeared along with twelve other stories and essays (‘Morwenstow’; ‘Anthony Payne, The Cornish Giant’; ‘Daniel Gumb’s Rock’; ‘Black John’; ‘Thomasine Bonaventure’; ‘Cruel Coppinger’; ‘The Gauger’s Pocket’; ‘The Light of Other Days’; ‘Holacombe’; ‘The Remembrances of a Cornish Vicar’; ‘A Ride From Bude to Boss’ and ‘The First Cornish Mole’) in Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall, a collection assembled by Hawker in order to raise funds to support his growing family.

In 1893, eighteen years after Hawker’s death, the collection was reissued by William Blackwood and Sons under the title The Prose Works of Rev. R. S. Hawker, Vicar of Morwenstow, with the addition of two previously unpublished essays, ‘Humphrey Vivian’ and ‘Old Trevarten’. Bibliographical footnotes and a brief Prefatory Note were supplied by Hawker’s friend J. G. Godwin.

Hawker’s son-in-law, Charles Edward Byles, edited a new edition published by John Lane in 1903, which appeared in dark brown cloth binding with an embossed panel on the front cover representing a bench end in Morwenstow church, bordered by the vine carving from the church roof. With nineteen illustrations, extensive footnotes, and a generous selection of appendices, this is an attractive item and copies are still relatively easy to find.

Appendix H and a portrait on p. 160 of “Parson Ruddall” are the first indication that the story may have combined facts with fiction, and Byles’ confident assertion that Hawker’s version is ‘obviously a paraphrase’ of  C. S. Gilbert’s Historical Survey of Cornwall ‘with some embellishments of his own’ seems to confirm the source. Byles however didn’t have internet searches to contend with, and it’s hard not to envy him to some extent – at least he managed to complete his book and presumably to satisfy the majority of his readers, who would have been ill-equipped to dispute his conclusions.

By contrast, my online searches for ‘The Botathen Ghost’ delivered a tangle of contradictory information that has taken me several weeks to unravel. According to Sabine Baring-Gould, writing in Cornish Characters and Strange Events, the publication by Daniel Defoe in 1720 of ‘A Remarkable Passage of an Apparition, related by the Rev. Dr. Ruddle, of Launceston, in Cornwall, in the year 1665′, was not only the first recorded appearance of the Botathen story but also ‘a genuine narrative written by the hand of John Ruddle himself’. Baring-Gould has some harsh things to say about previous writers on the subject, claiming for instance that ‘Samuel Drew, in his History of Cornwall, blunders as to the locality, making the apparition appear in the parish of Little Petherick, near Padstow’, and that Hawker ‘fabricated a “Diurnall” of Ruddle , which adopted Drew’s error, and by altering the date made the story as given to him disagree with the facts as they stand on record’. Coming from Baring-Gould, himself a prolific publisher of fictions passed off as facts, this is hard to swallow, but he bolsters his case on this occasion by citing his source as ‘Mr Alfred Robbins in the Cornish Magazine, 1898′.

Defoe’s “Pacquet” was easy to find online, and Alfred Robbins’ magazine article, included in a book called Launceston Past and Present, turned out to be available from the Internet Archive/Open Library. Many Baring-Gould’s accusations were first made by Alfred Robbins, although Baring-Gould throws in an extra one for good measure, wrongly claiming that Defoe changed the name of ‘the spectrum’ to Mrs Veale. Samuel Drew’s History of Cornwall: from the earliest records and traditions, Vol 2 can be found at Google Books, and pp. 547-551 correctly locate the ghost at  South Petherwin, near Launceston, according to the established tradition.

Hawker’s version of the story does indeed involve a fabricated diary or ‘Diurnall’ as he calls it – a device which adds considerably to the impact of the story, as do many of his other innovations, none of which involve any alteration to the date at which the events are said to have taken place. As a person who has always found even the best written supernatural tales and folk legends quite hard going I hadn’t paid much attention to Hawker’s various ‘sketches’ until now, but my respect for him as a storyteller has increased considerably as a result of researching this piece and I highly recommend comparing his handling with that of Defoe’s far more basic account.

- Click here to read Hawker’s version of ‘The Botathen Ghost

- Use this link to find Defoe, Baring-Gould and more on our ‘Free Publications’ page

“The Place” of Botathen. Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge.

*  *  *  *  *

“Parson Ruddall”. From a picture in the possession of Rev. S. Baring-Gould.

*  *  *  *  *

THE BOTATHEN GHOST : A TIMELINE

(The complete texts of many of the earlier versions of the story can be found at the Internet Archive or Google Books, and there are probably some later ones not included here.)

1665 – The year in which the events described in the story are supposed to have taken place

1720 – History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell, by Daniel De Foe. ‘In August [1720] a second edition was called for, of which some copies included a pamphlet that had been printed in June: “Mr. Campbell’s Pacquet, for the Entertainment of Gentlemen and Ladies,” and this “Pacquet” contains “A Remarkable Passage of an Apparition, related by the Rev. Dr. Ruddle, of Launceston, in Cornwall, in the year 1665.”‘ (See Sabine Baring-Gould, Cornish Characters and Strange Events, 1909.)

1817 – Historical Survey of Cornwall, by C. S. Gilbert. vol i. pp. 115-119. Byles regarded this as Hawker’s source; see Appendix H to Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall., p. 288.

1824 – The History of Cornwall, by Hitchins and Drew.

1825 – Signs Before Death and Authenticated Apparitions: in 100 Narratives. Collected by Horace Welby

1841 – The Works of Daniel De Foe, edited by William Hazlitt

1853 – The Unseen World, by J. M. Neale

1867 - Hawker’s version of the story appears in All the Year Round.

!870 - First appearance in Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall

1889 – Launceston Past and Present, by Alfred Robbins

1893 - Reprinted in The Prose Works of Rev. R. S. Hawker

1897 – The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain, edited by John Ingram

1903 - Reprinted in Byles’ edition of Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall

1909 – Cornish Characters and Strange Events, by Sabine Baring-Gould

1921 - The Haunters and the Haunted, edited by Ernest Rhys

1927 - More Ghosts and Marvels, edited by Vere H. Collins

1932 – More Great Ghost Stories, edited by Harrison Dale

1936 - A Century of Ghost Stories, editor unknown

1948 - Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall reissued by Westaway Books

1970 - Cornish Tales of Terror, edited by R. Chetwynd-Hayes

1973 – Haunted Cornwall, edited by Denys Val Baker

1991 – Victorian Ghost Stories: An Oxford Anthology, edited by Michael Cox, R. A. Gilbert

1996 – Classic Victorian and Edwardian Ghost Stories, edited by Rex Collings

1997 – Hawker’s Tales of Ghosts and Witchcraft, editor unknown

‘Humphrey Vivian’ and ‘Old Trevarten’ are not included in this rather basic 1948 reissue from Westaway Books of the 1870 edition, but J. C. Trewin’s lively introduction offers a useful insight into Hawker’s literary standing at the time.

Haunted Cornwall: A Book of Supernatural Stories, edited by Denys Val Baker. William Kimber & Co. Ltd., 1973.

Cornish Tales of Terror, edited by R. Chetwynd-Hayes. Fontana Books, 1974.

Hawker’s Tales of Ghosts & Witchcraft, by R. S. Hawker. Oakmagic Publications, 1997.

Classic Victorian and Edwardian Ghost Stories, selected by Rex Collings. Wordsworth Editions, 2008.

Text and photos © Angela Williams, 2012

THE TAMAR SPRING

The source of this storied river of the West is on a rushy knoll, in a moorland of this parish. The Torridge also flows from the self-same mound.

Fount of a rushing river! wild flowers wreathe
The home where thy first waters sunlight claim;
The lark sits hushed beside thee, while I breathe,
Sweet Tamar spring! the music of thy name.

On! through the goodly channel, on! to the sea!
Pass amid heathery vale, tall rock, fair bough:
But never more with footsteps pure and free,
Or face so meek with happiness as now.

Fair is the future scenery of thy days,
Thy course domestic, and thy paths of pride:
Depths that give back the soft-eyed violet’s gaze,
Shores where tall navies march to meet the tide.

Thine, leafy Tetcott, and those neighbouring walls,
Noble Northumberland’s embowered domain;
Thine, Cartha Martha, Morwell’s rocky falls,
Storied Cotehele, and Ocean’s loveliest plain.

Yet false the vision, and untrue the dream,
That lures thee from thy native wilds to stray;
A thousand griefs will mingle with that stream,
Unnumbered hearts shall sigh those waves away.

Scenes fierce with men, thy seaward current laves,
Harsh multitudes will throng thy gentle brink;
Back! with the grieving concourse of thy waves,
Home! to the waters of thy childhood shrink!

Thou heedest not! thy dream is of the shore,
Thy heart is quick with life; On! to the sea!
How will the voice of thy far streams implore
Again amid these peaceful weeds to be!

My Soul! my Soul! a happier choice be thine -
Thine the hushed valley, and the lonely sod;
False dreams, far vision, hollow hope resign,
Fast by our Tamar spring, alone with God!

*  *  *  *  *

From Cornish Ballads & Other Poems by R. S. Hawker, edited by C. E. Byles, John Lane 1904. Byles provides the following footnote:

This poem is entitled “That Ancient River,” with reference to Judges v. 21, in Ecclesia, 1840, and Mr. Godwin, therefore, assigned that date to its production: it is quoted in Footprints of Former Men, 1870, and in The Cornish Ballads, 1869. It was, however, first printed in the second series of Records of the Western Shore, 1836, as “The Source of the Tamar,” with some verbal differences.

The Tamar rises in a ditch on the south side of a lane leading from Woolley Cross to Bradworthy, about 100 yards from the old Moorwinstow/Bradworthy boundary marker. Whether Hawker’s description of the Torridge ‘flowing from the self same mound’ was ever completely accurate is debatable – nowadays that river rises in an inaccessible-looking area to the north of the road, quite some distance from the Tamar spring.

Photos © Angela Williams, 2010

LINKS

- Cornish Ballads and Other Poems at the Open Library

- Rivers of Bradworthy: sources of the Tamar and Torridge

In The Life and Letters of R. S. Hawker, his son-in-law C. E. Byles writes: ‘A memorandum in Hawker’s hand states that on the 19th of October 1850 he was transcribed for the curacy of Welcombe, which he continued to serve along with Morwenstow for the rest of his life. [...]‘

‘Welcombe is in Devonshire, and is divided from Morwenstow and Cornwall by the brook that runs in the bed of Marsland Valley. The way thither from Morwenstow is by a rough steep lane up and down the valley sides, a difficult road in bad weather, and a stiff pull for man or beast at any time. But the beauty of that wooded vale, “Broad-cloven thro’ the green of rolling hills,” banishes all thought of discomfort or of weariness. Every Sunday henceforward Hawker rode the three miles to Welcombe on his pony (or drove when, as they say in Cornwall, he was “gotten up in years),” to hold an afternoon service in the little church. The morning and the evening services he performed at Morwenstow. In his riding days he used a military saddle, and, with his ample cloak and fine physique, presented, it is said, something of the appearance of a cavalry officer.[...]‘

‘The church at Welcombe, and an ancient well standing near, are dedicated to St. Nectan, a brother of St. Morwenna. The fine old carvings in the church, representing the Fruitful Vine and the Barren Fig Tree, have supplied the designs on the title-page and back of Cornish Ballads and Footprints. On the lower side of the tympanum above the pulpit is an inscription, designed to catch the preacher’s eye when he casts it ecstatically heavenward, “Woe unto you if ye preach not the Word of God.” A wholesome check to heresy.’ (Life & Letters, p.206)

“Sunday was a heavy day! Poor Jewel the Sexton at Wellcombe died on Thursday and I fixed to bury him after the Service. But in Church, five minutes after I had begun my Sermon on the Young Man of Nain, a mass of the Roofing about four feet square fell suddenly on the people below. There was a shout screams and a rush. I was calm but thoroughly frightened. Still under the Sounding Board I was safe and I directed every body to keep quiet and they did so. I told them to cross the aisle and leave the dangerous side and then I commenced ‘And as I was saying, Brethren’ &c &c. But I was personally afraid that more would follow. Luckily it was not the Wood work but only laths and the plaister of years thickened.” (Letter from Hawker to J. G. Godwin, Life & Letters, p.593)

The sounding board has been taken down since Hawker’s time, but the pulpit with its 16th century carved panels remains in place. The gilded lettering around the top reads ‘Where there is no vision the people perish’ (Proverbs 29:18) but on our visit the elaboration of the ‘v’ in ‘vision’ led to a temporary misunderstanding and a puzzled discussion as to whether bison had ever roamed the West Devon countryside.  The entry on the British Listed Buildings website renders it as ‘Where there is no Bishop the people perish’ – also a subjective interpretation and disappointingly unimaginative by comparison.

According to Pevsner, the stained glass window in the north transept of the church depicting Christ in a landscape dates from 1929 and is the work of Morris & Co. This company seems to have been a successor to Morris, Marshall, Faulker & Co., the firm founded by William Morris in 1861. In 1925 Morris & Co. Art  Workers Limited began selling glassware made by James Powell and Sons from their London shop in Hanover Square but I’ve been unable to discover whether the glass for the window was made by Powell’s. Perhaps there is more information about this somewhere in the parish records?

“In the northern wall,” says Hawker, “there is an entrance named the Devil’s door: it was thrown open at every baptism, at the Renunciation, for the escape of the fiend; while at every other time it was carefully closed.” (Life & Letters, p.207)

Books and music piled beside the organ in the north transept. Our visit to St Nectan’s took place on a September day of fierce wind and heavy showers, with the result that the interior of the church was too dark to take pictures of the general architecture or the beautifully carved rood screen which still retains traces of it’s original paint and gilding. John Betjeman doesn’t include Welcombe in his Collins Guide to English Parish Churches, but a more recent book by John Lane and Harland Walshaw, Devon’s Churches: A Celebration, provides an excellent full page illustration and describes it as feeling ‘neighbourly’ – a good way to sum up its air of plain and unpretentious simplicity.

On the east wall, early Victorian Creed, Lord’s Prayer and commandment boards, highlighted in gold leaf, hang alongside reredos paintings of Christ the Good Shepherd and Mary Magdalene. These paintings were created by Rev. Erisey John Porter, vicar at Welcombe between 1882-1903. Rev. Porter seems to have been a Morwenstow man, and the title of the only published written work of his that I’ve been able to trace – The Prophetic Mirror: being an attempt to arrange the subjects of prophecy in plain verse – suggests that he might have got on well with Hawker.

St Nectan’s well is situated on a quiet roadside just across the green from the church. The well-house is a Grade II listed building and dates from the 14th-15th century. On the day that we visited the clear water was brimming over the stone lip and the well and its surroundings looked to be excellently cared for. A few miles north of Welcombe, in the village of Stoke, is the parish church of Hartland and another holy well, both of which are also dedicated to St Nectan.

Text and photos © Angela Williams, 2011, 2012

LINKS

- Read further extracts from The Life & Letters in Hawker at Welcombe (PDF)

- ‘Parson Hawker at Welcombe’ at Literary Places

- Welcombe parish has connections with a number of other writers and artists – Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey holidayed there, and Ronald Duncan made his home in the village for over forty years. Read more at Literary Places…

- Morris & Company in the Twentieth Century by Linda Parry (PDF)

This 48-page pamphlet by one of Hawker’s successors provides interesting reading. Hugh Breton was installed as vicar of Morwenstow in 1923, and was therefore able to collect some of his information from people who had known Hawker. The printer, Thomas Cory Burrow of Hartland, was the son of a Morwenstow man whose family still owned his certificate of Confirmation ‘with Hawker’s bold signature’. Burrow seems to have been an enterprising character: he built his own press and in 1896 began printing the area’s first monthly local newspaper, the Hartland Chronicle. He also produced the first edition of R. Pearse Chope’s The Story of Hartland. His father was a carpenter and is mentioned in one of Breton’s anecdotes about Hawker in this book.

The pamphlet is undated but was probably published in 1926. It is stitched rather than stapled, which has saved it from being damaged by rust, but the paper is soft and fragile. The selection of images shown below gives an idea of how Breton chose to present the material that he had gathered. Clicking on the pictures opens them in larger versions and the text is available as a PDF to print or read online via the following link:

- Download the full text of Hawker of Morwenstow by Rev. H. Hugh Breton as a PDF

Although Breton’s pamphlet is probably the liveliest short account of Hawker’s time in the parish, several other works deserve a mention. An attractive little book, The Story of Morwenstow, by John Tagert’s daughter, Mary Tagert, is illustrated with a number of black and white photos and turns up from time to time on AbeBooks. I’ve been able to obtain two copies: an early undated one inscribed ‘from K. Waddon Martyn, Christmas 1919′, and a fourth edition dated 1929. Frederick Conrad Hamlyn’s book Morwenstowe Since Stuart Times or A History of Morwenstowe After the Restoration is a much more substantial work which devotes a chapter to Hawker and provides an interesting and comprehensive account of the parish but is quite hard to get hold of. Hamlyn also published A Selection of R. S. Hawker’s Cornish Ballads on Local Topics, a tiny stapled booklet with a nine-page introduction which is more commonly available.

*  *  *  *  *

Vicars of Morwenstow in the years following Hawker’s death:

John Robert Thomson, M.A., from 25 January 1876.

John Tagert, B.A., from 4 April 1876.

Herbert Lynne-Jones, from 15 May 1905.

Henry Hugh Breton, M.A., from October 1 1923.

Frederick Conrad Hamlyn, L.Th., from 24 May 1927.

*  *  *  *  *

Breton came to Morwenstow after a spell as vicar of Sheepstor, where he had already published five small volumes to raise funds for the restoration of the rood screen.

Pages 16-26 are devoted to a list of ‘wrecks along the coast in Hawker’s day’, which looks as if it may have been taken from C. F. Crofton’s Bencoolen to Capricorno: a record of Wrecks at Bude, 1862 to 1900. Breton adds in a footnote that he is contemplating a further book ‘about Shipwrecks on the shores of this and neighbouring parishes during the past 100 years. [...] Many pictures expected.’ but unfortunately he doesn’t seem to have got around to publishing this.

This illustration from the Illustrated London News shows the aftermath of the wreck of the Avonmore, in September 1869. The ship went aground immediately below Hawker’s hut; at 1158 tons it was the largest vessel ever wrecked along that coast. Hawker wrote ‘The scene is appalling. The wreck will not be cleared away for weeks or months. There is a vast heap of broken timber, sails, and pebbles, under which the men say by the fearful smell there is another corpse.’

The ‘Forty-six stories about Hawker’ have a random quality which adds to their appeal. Hawker’s reputed love of cream gets a mention, along with the names of his horses, but item number 46, ‘The abominable scandal of Hawker becoming a pervert to Rome’ is by far the longest section. According to Breton the conversion to Catholicism never took place, but despite this firm conviction he was even-handed enough to include a letter from Hawker’s man-servant, John Olde, which suggests that it did (see below).

The full text of the two previously unpublished poems by Hawker can be read in the PDF version (see link above). Neither is especially impressive – they read like drafts Hawker himself might have rejected, though the second one has a bouncy rhythm which may owe something to his habit of composing on horseback. The final poem in the book was written by Francis Coutts, for the occasion of the dedication of a memorial window to Hawker on September 8th, 1904.

- Read a brief biography of the Reverend Henry Hugh Breton (1873-1936)…

BOOKS BY H. HUGH BRETON

THE BEAUTIFUL DARTMOOR SERIES (originally called The Sheepstor Series)

Beautiful Dartmoor, Part I – Sheepstor and its Borderlands (the South-West Quarter of the Moor). Plymouth: Hoyten and Cole, 1911.

Beautiful Dartmoor, Part II – The Northern Quarter of the Moor. Special Articles: (1) Tin-streaming and Tin-mining on Dartmoor, by R. Hansford Worth. (2) Devonshire Screens. Plymouth: Hoyten and Cole, 1912.

Beautiful Dartmoor, Part III – The Southern Quarter of the Moor. Special Articles: (1) Dartmoor Folk-lore and Quaint Customs. (2) British Barrows, their purpose and their contents. Plymouth: Hoyten and Cole. 1913.

The Breezy Cornish Moors – A Guide to the Bodmin Moors and their Border Lands, and to the romantic coast of North Cornwall, and to places of interest in East and South Cornwall. Special Article: Cornwall the land of the Early Saints; its Holy Wells and its Ancient Crosses. No date available.

Land’s End and the Lizard – A beautifully illustrated Guide to this wild and rugged coast and to the interesting Antiquities in the neighbourhood. Special Articles: (1) Serpentine Marble (2) The Rude Stone Monuments of Cornwall; their origin and purpose. Plymouth: Hoyten and Cole, 1912.

The first three volumes of this series were republished in 1990 as Beautiful Dartmoor and Its Interesting Antiquities, a combined facsimile edition by Forest Publishing.

*  *  *  *  *

THE MORWENSTOW SERIES OF SHILLING BOOKS

Morwenstow, its Magnificent Church, its Cliffs and Combes. No further information available.

The North Coast of Cornwall (From Marsland Mouth to St. Ives). No further information available.

Hawker of Morwenstow. Printed by Thomas Cory Burrow, Hartland, Devon. No date, probably 1926.

The Heart of Dartmoor – the land of the purple heather and the golden furze. Plymouth; Hoyten & Cole, No date, probably 1927.

*  *  *  *  *

OTHER WORKS

The Great Blizzard of Christmas 1927. Its causes and incidents. With a comparison to other great snowstorms in England between 1795 and 1927. Hoyten and Cole, Plymouth, 1928.

The Great Winter of 1928-29. With accounts of the unprecedented snowstorm at Dean Prior on February 16th, 1929, and the great ice storm of the end of February, 1929. 1930.

Spiritual Lessons from Dartmoor Forest (Part I) – “White Heather” and other studies. Hoyten & Cole, Plymouth, 1929.

Spiritual Lessons from Dartmoor (Part II) – “Crystal Streams” and other studies. Ridouts Limited, Whitstable, Kent, 1930.

Both volumes republished in 1990 as Spiritual Lessons from Dartmoor Forest, a combined facsimile edition by Forest Publishing.

The Word Pictures of the Bible (Parts I and II). 1929 and 1930.

The Forest of Dartmoor, Part I – South-East. With some Ancient Records of Dartmoor Parishes and of Dartmoor Worthies. Hoyten & Cole, Plymouth, 1931.

The Forest of Dartmoor, Part II – South-West. With some Ancient Records of Dartmoor Parishes and of Dartmoor Worthies. Hoyten & Cole, Plymouth, 1932. Intended to be the start of a projected four-part series covering the South-east, South-west, North-east and North-west corners of the moor, but the final two parts were never completed due to Breton’s failing health.

Parts I and II republished in 1990 as The Forest of Dartmoor, a combined facsimile edition by Forest Publishing.

*  *  *  *  *

Text and photos © Angela Williams, 2012