Clovelly
| Clovelly | |
| Devon | |
|---|---|
 Clovelly main street | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SS315245 |
| Location: | 50°59’24"N, 4°24’0"W |
| Data | |
| Population: | 443 (2011) |
| Post town: | Bideford |
| Postcode: | EX39 |
| Dialling code: | 01237 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Torridge |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Torridge and West Devon |
Clovelly is a lovely small village on the north coast of Devon. It is a privately owned village and a major tourist attraction notable for its extremely steep, car-free cobbled main street, donkeys and views over the Bristol Channel. The thick woodland which shelters the village allows many tender plants to flourish.
The village
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Clovelly used to be a fishing village and in 1901 had a population of 621; there are fewer today. It is a cluster of largely wattle and daub cottages on the sides of a rocky cleft; its steep main street descends 400 feet to the pier, too steeply to allow wheeled traffic. Sledges are used for the movement of goods. The quaint street is lined with houses, a small number of shops, a café and a public house. All Saints' Church, restored in 1866, is late Norman, containing several monuments to the Cary family, Lords of the Manor for 600 years.
Unusually, the village is still privately owned and has been associated with only three families since the middle of the 13th century, nearly 800 years. The scenery has been captured by artists for its richness of colour, especially in the separately accessed and separated Clovelly Court and along The Hobby, a road cut through the woods and overlooking the sea. The South West Coast Path National Trail runs from the top of the village and the section from Clovelly to Hartland Quay is particularly spectacular.
The village has one public house and one hotel.
Listed Buildings
Each of the buildings along the terraced cobbled street is architecturally listed: more than 50 of these 71 are on the main street itself. Only seven buildings are not listed. At a higher level of build or antiquity, Grade II*, are numbers 16, and 45-47, 53-54, (53 has the house name Crazy Kate's) and 59-61.[1]
Access
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The village main street is not accessible by motor vehicle, although there is a road leading to the harbour with parking limited to staying guests of the Red Lion Hotel[2] and locals with permits. Visitors can park at the visitor centre at the end of the B3237 road above the village, where there is a café and shops. Land Rover taxis run in summer between the car park and the harbour.
The estate is run by the Clovelly Estate Company, led by the Hon. John Rous, a descendant of the Hamlyn family who have owned the village, estate and manor house, Clovelly Court, since 1738. John Rous is the eldest son of the Hon. Mary Rous and Keith Rous, the 5th Earl of Stradbroke.
Appearance in literature and art
The novelist Charles Kingsley lived here as a child from 1831 to 1836, while his father, Rev. Charles Kingsley served first as senior curate then as rector. Later, in 1855, his novel Westward Ho! did much to stimulate interest in Clovelly and to boost its tourist trade.
- A Message from the Sea by Charles Dickens describes Clovelly
- Rex Whistler painted the village; his cameos of the village were used on a china service by Wedgwood.
- The Grove of Eagles, historical novel by Winston Graham, features the sixteenth-century Carys of Clovelly
- Stalky & Co. by Rudyard Kipling has a passing reference to Clovelly as being to the west of the boys' academy.
- In the High Valley (1890), part of the Katy series by Susan Coolidge, a walk in to Clovelly is described: ".. surely a more extraordinary thing in the way of a street does not exist in the known world. The little village is built on the sides of a crack in a tremendous cliff; the "street" is merely the bottom of the crack, into which the ingenuity of man has fitted a few stones, set slant-wise, with intersecting ridges on which the foot can catch as it goes slipping hopelessly down." [3]
- J M W Turner's painting of Clovelly harbour hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.
Shipwrecked Mariners' Society
On Sunday 28 October 1838, twelve fishing vessels with a total of twenty-six men on board left Clovelly harbour for the fishing grounds. Only one vessel and its crew ever returned after a ferocious storm in the Bristol Channel. This event led to the founding of the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society early the following year with the object of:
“giving relief and assistance to the widows and orphans of fishermen; and of mariners, members of the Society, who lose their lives by storms and shipwreck on any part of the coasts of the United Kingdom, while engaged in their lawful occupations; and also to render necessary assistance to such mariners, soldiers, or other poor persons as suffer shipwreck upon the said coasts.”
The Charity is still very active supporting the seafaring community suffering hardship and distress.[4]
Cultural traditions
Deliveries by sledge
The lack of vehicular access to the main street has led to deliveries being made by sledge. This is not done as a tourist attraction, but as a matter of practicality. Goods are delivered by being pulled down on a sledge from the upper car park, and refuse is collected by being pulled down the hill to a vehicle at the harbour.
The Clovelly cannibals
An 18th century chapbook entitled The History of John Gregg and his Family of Robbers and Murderers explains that "Chovaley" (i.e. Clovelly) was once the home of a tribe of cannibalistic bandits. It is alleged that Gregg and his extended family of dozens were eventually tracked down by bloodhounds and were burnt alive in three fires. They were said to have lived in "a cave near the sea-side" and had committed some 1000 murders.[5]
Although the story is fiction, writer Daniel Codd observes that a stretch of Clovelly Bay is called "the Devil's Kitchen" - "an apt name indeed if there is any truth in the ghoulish story of the Gregg family".[6]
Events
Clovelly hosts three annual events, each with live folk music, quay kitchens, beer tasting, arts and crafts stalls, local food stalls and cookery demonstrations: the Clovelly Maritime Festival in July, the Clovelly Lobster and Crab Feast in September, and the Clovelly Herring Festival in November which aims to support local fishermen.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Clovelly) |
- Clovelly
- Clovelly Parish Council
- Information on Clovelly from GENUKI
- [2] - Clovelly Donkeys
References
- ↑ 16 National Heritage List 1104517: Clovelly
45-47 National Heritage List 1104522: Clovelly
53-54 National Heritage List 1333120: Clovelly
59-61 National Heritage List 1333138: Clovelly - ↑ Red Lion Hotel
- ↑ [1]
- ↑ The Shipwrecked Mariners Society
- ↑ James Halliwell-Phillipps (July 1849). Notices of Fugitive Tracts, and Chap-books. Read Books (2013). p.85. ISBN 978-1473309128
- ↑ Codd, Daniel (2013). Paranormal Devon. Amberley. p.126. ISBN 978-1848681668
- Sheila Ellis, Down a Cobbled Street: The Story of Clovelly, 1987
- Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho!, 1855