Yelverton: Edith Holden, the Suffragists and the Victorian Occult

Women Writing on the Devon Land

Illustration from The Nature Notes of An Edwardian Lady

A – Z of Devon Women Writers & Places

Y ... for Yelverton (or, more specifically, Dousland)

Although she is still well-known as author of the popular books The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady and The Nature Notes of An Edwardian Lady, early C20 Diarist/Illustrator/Naturalist Edith Holden is not usually associated with Devon, or the South-West of England. Neither is she generally remembered as author. But perhaps Holden's life-journey, which included many holidays down in Devon, and her artistic achievements need to be viewed from a new perspective. Since coming across her paintings and nature journals back in the seventies, when the country's Holden fandom went crazy for her books and off-spin of Holden inspired knick-knacks and merchandise - and more especially, after I found that she had loved Dartmoor and stayed there several times during the early decades of the C20 - I've often thought of and felt drawn to her. I have already written a little about Holden in at least one earlier blog post. DoveGreyScribbles also has a lovely piece about Holden in Devon.

       I believe that, challenging the default literary assessments of Holden as 'not a great literary or historical discovery … and 'an overall unremarkable woman' (see Keith Brace, 'Fragrance from the Fields of Edwardian Olton' in Birmingham Post, 18 June 1977 and Rodney Engen 'Some Diaries of Victorians and Edwardians' in Book World Advertiser 1982), Holden ought instead to be viewed as an iconic female artist, whose contributions to the field of nature writing/illustrating at the beginning of the C20 can be celebrated as formative to the recognition of the environment as a valid genre for writers. Recently academics have challenged the customary view of Edith Holden as simply artist and/or naturalist: 'she was highly politicised. Many of her animal paintings were created for the RSPCA and she marched the streets to petition against vivisection. She also supported women's suffrage'. (The Edwardian Lady; a 1970's Icon; Feminist Seventies Conference, Dr Sarah Edwards).

          Given these new understandings of Holden and her work I'm going to divert away from her connections with the landscape and instead make a few observations about several other interrelated cultural concerns, the Suffrage movement and the Victorian Occult or Supernatural, both of which Holden may have been more involved with than first may appear and about which her Devon visits may provide more information. Some of the accounts about Holden leave out information about her love of and holidays spent on Dartmoor, so this is an attempt to rectify that omission. This post will not be an in depth commentary, and will probably leave more answered questions than new revelations about the Edwardian artist, but I hope just to suggest a few pointers for anyone out there who may be interested in Holden and what her life and work may have to tell us about the workings of the early suffragists and the late C19/early C20 cultural fascination with the paranormal. 

 It was when I found where Holden had stayed when she travelled down to Devon in the first decade of the 1900's that I became curious about her possible links with the suffragists. I'd read that she befriended the Trathens, a local family who lived at Dousland, which is a 'small settlement' just up the road from Yelverton - near Burrator and Yannadon - but given that it seems nowadays to be rather a remote location I was always rather puzzled as to why she would have stayed at Dousland in the first place. Then, in Ina Taylor's book The Edwardian Lady, I found that Holden stayed at The Grange, at Dousland, near Yelverton, which Taylor says was then an imposing boarding house that accommodated the "better class of visitor"'. The Trathens apparently lived up the road at a cottage called Belbert Cot. This property agent sale notice has pictures of The Grange and confirms that Holden stayed there.  

     More intriguingly, one of the then leading woman of the suffragist movement, Alison Vickers Garland (who was also a playwright and novelist), apparently held classes at The Grange during the period that Holden visited Dartmoor.  Julia Neville writes an account of Garland's links with the boarding house on the Devon History Website:

In the early years of the twentieth century Garland began to arrange educational-cum-holiday programmes at Dousland Grange, Walkhampton.[34] The first reference to these is that ‘a series of lectures’ was organised there, referring specifically to one given by a local cleric, Rev S. Vincent, who spoke about the life and work of King Alfred.[35] In July a three-month programme of weekly evening meetings was published under the heading of ‘Summer Holidays on Dartmoor organised by Miss Alison Garland at Dousland Grange’, with a programme including W.T. Stead, editor of The Review of Reviews, speaking on ‘Is an Anglo-American Alliance Desirable?’ and Lady Grove (secretary of the Forward Suffrage Union) on ‘The position of women in different countries’. When Grove withdrew due to bereavement Garland stepped in herself with her talk on India, as there was ‘a large house party of nearly 40 people’ to entertain.[36] There is also a reference to a programme at Dousland Grange in April 1905 when, ‘at the invitation of Miss Alison Garland’, in addition to a musical programme a dramatic sketch was performed, arranged by ‘Miss Mary Bateson BA, Fellow of Newnham College’.[37] Mary Bateson was a distinguished constitutional historian, but she was also a suffrage activist, selected as one of the speakers when the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) met Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in May 1906.[38] It is likely that it was their shared interest in the suffrage movement that prompted this event. Garland was increasingly involved with the movement in London: she appeared at the NUWSS demonstration in Trafalgar Square in July 1910 speaking both on the West Steps for the Women’s Liberal Federation and on the East Steps for Temperance Women. (Alison Garland)

          Edith Holden makes entries for April 1905 from Dousland, so  she may well have been staying at The Grange when the event noted above took place. Perhaps indeed her visit there in the beginning was instigated by her previous links with Garland; I can't help but wonder if they knew each other or/and perhaps Holden knew Mary Bateson. Somewhere out there in the archives there may be some letters which would show such a connection, but as yet I have not had any chance to locate Holden's correspondence, except in Ina Taylor's biography (see above), which includes reference to Holder's letters to the Trathen family. The biography written by Neville also informs us that Garland was, like Holden, an artist so the two women may have met and become acquainted through their shared artistic interests:

As well as her music, Alison Garland was interested in art and in literature. She attended classes at the Plymouth School of Art, and exhibited at the annual student show in 1883 when, of the 350 contributors, two works of hers ‘Wonderland’ and ‘Luff Boy’ were singled out for mention.[7] The School of Art prepared students under a national course of instruction devised at the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) and Garland made her way through the seventeen parts of which it was composed so that, although she was already teaching art at The Hoe Grammar School in 1887, she was finally able to advertise herself as holding ‘full certificate, South Kensington’ in 1888.[8] She had also negotiated with Miss Hutchens of the Stoke School for Girls that her classes would be open to pupils not attending the school. (Devon History Society) 

      Also, apparently, in 1912, Garland organised a 'Suffrage Summer School' on Dartmoor, which was held at another boarding-house in Dousland, called Heather Torr - which may be the Heatherside Care Home. By then Edith Holden had married sculptor Alfred Ernest Smith and was settled in Chelsea, so was probably not likely to have been down in Devon.

      I'm not sure whether many researchers in the UK have considered or/and written about the possibility of links between the suffragists and spiritualists in the work and writings of C19 women. I keep meaning to read the book Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England, by Joy Dixon, which is 'a full-length study of the relationship between alternative or esoteric spirituality and the feminist movement in England', because it will probably provide valuable contextual information.  In the US some writers, such as Flora Macdonald Merill, who was the same age as Edith Holden, were both spiritualists and feminists. Apparently in the States at the time it was not unusual for Mediums and Psychics to become spokespeople for the suffrage movement...


     Interestingly, the Holden family draw together both of these concerns. For a postmodern readership the most extraordinary manifestation of the family's involvements in what many now would label 'jiggery-pokery', was the compilation and publication in 1913 by the Holden sisters with their father of The Edwardian Afterlife of Emma Holden, a collection of messages from their mother from the 'spirit world' beyond the grave. (See the review of a recently re-published version of this text) in PsyPioneer).

      Could Edith Holden have been attracted down to Devon because of some now forgotten link with the C19 Victorian Occult/Victorian Supernatural? I'm afraid at the time of writing I don't have any startling discoveries to relate to confirm this; but when I look at Holden's extended family and ancestry, then reach out to take in the wide ranging circle of her social and artistic network, it seems likely that amongst them all there were individuals who had links with Devon, maybe indeed with the Dartmoor area near Dousland where Holden spent many holidays. It is hard to find out about some of the people concerned, needing time for hours of archival study which I don't have at present. So I'll have to make do with one or two thoughts. Edith's father Arthur Holden's family came from Bristol and so did Emma Wearing, her mother. The couple met and married there before moving to Birmingham where they made their home. I haven't had a chance to research their respective families, but wonder if we could trace the Holden and Wearing family lines further back we might find that at least one of their families had direct connections with Devon - possibly through either Edith's father's (Holden) or mother's (Wearing) maternal ancestry. 

     During the last decades of the C19 Devon became important in terms of various manifestations of what some have called the 'Victorian spiritualist crusade' (See Who Ya Gonna Call (Dr James Gregory) in the southwest of England. From the 1870's onwards there were various spiritualist associations in Plymouth and Exeter and according to Gregory several women became prominent mediums, including Sarah Martin Chapman and Miss Bond of Stoke. In 1878, The Spiritualist noted that 'We possess information that [Spiritualism] has taken root in at least six Devonshire towns, and that in one of them mediums are multiplying' (See Who Ya Gonna Call). 

        It is perhaps of interest that one of Devon's most notorious C18 radical woman 'prophets'/'spiritualists' Joanna Southcott, had connections with both Bristol and Birmingham, the main places with which the Holden family were associated. The St Lawrence Street Chapel, in Birmingham was apparently originally a chapel for Southcott's followers before being taken over by other sects, including the Unitarians (See Radical Spirits), a non conformist sect which became the mainstay church for the Holden family. Also, the famous Sealed Box containing Southcott's predictions was kept at the rectory of the eccentric vicar Thomas Foley, at  Stourbridge, a parish not far from where the Holdens lived, at King's Norton, then Moseley; in 1803 Southcott had lived at Stourbridge for a while. Whilst there are no obvious links between any of these facts (and Southcott was from an earlier generation), given the Holden's very radical views and in particular affiliations with dissenting religious groups, they may well have known about the legacy of the controversial female prophetess from Devon.

     Some years later, there was another equally eccentric Devon author, Beatrice Chase, who was just a couple of years younger than Edith Holden who coincidentally first travelled down to Dartmoor from her London home in 1901, just one year before (according to Taylor) Holden first travelled down to the moor. Chase's religious fervour and various writings often had an esoteric leaning and were frequently reviewed in spiritualist magazines such as Occult Review. (See iasop website). It's probably unlikely that the two women knew about one another because the years that Holden spent her holiday on the moor were before Chase became well-known through her writings and celebrated 'White Knights Crusade'. However, several of Chase's early writing are reviewed in contemporary occult magazines (See iasop), so perhaps Holden was familiar with Dartmoor's 'Lady of the Moor'. 

     

      … So, although I don't have any startling revelations to set down here, it seems to me that Edith Holden, woman, diarist, artist, naturalist, was much more than the solitary woman as depicted in her own now iconic nature books and Ina Taylor's biography. Perhaps indeed the somewhat sentimental quality of Holden's journal art-books detracts from and hides another layer of the artist's identity. Certainly, her life and family network link her into a far wider social, cultural and literary community than first meets the eye. And those lost Devon links may eventually help to fill in a few gaps and show up more about Holden as one of those woman who - though ostensibly on the periphery of the suffrage movement, and only 'writer' on the margins (the superimposed 'edgelands' of/on her own artwork) - was actually more actively and centrally involved in several important contemporary societal and spiritual movements. 

      As I reach into unknown spaces, to try and find a flicker of Edith Holden's unknown past it's as though, whilst possibly floundering in the dark, I'm echoing her own foremothers' ancestral familial 'psychic' obsessions -  a kind of medium, 'channelling' for voices of the past as she/they ride the loops of time. (Read about the Victorian fascination with the supernatural on the British Library website). I hope that I, or someone else out there, will hear her/them whispering, revealing a new air-born  'automatic' text, that we can write down and can add to the intertextual layers of texts written by and about the women writers of this period - especially, for my own specialism, women-who-wrote who had Devon connections.

Note: photos above are, of sheep above Burrator and a pony on Yannadon.
See also From the Devon Ridge Where a Book Began

Who Was the Woman-in-White of Widecombe-in-the-Moor?

Women Writing on the Devon Land

A-Z of Devon Places & Women Writers

V and W for Venton and Widecombe in the Moor

At Venton, along the lanes from Widecombe-in-the-Moor, once home of Beatrice Chase. 

    
      Just in case you have been following this A-Z of Devon Places & Women Writers, from Writing Women on the Devon Land, I have not missed out 'V'; but instead combined ‘V’ with 'W'. V for Venton and W for Widecombe-in-the-Moor. Venton is a small hamlet rather than parish, but fitted nicely for my purposes here. The two place-names are a perfect duality for one once famously iconic woman writer linked with Devon, namely Olive Katherine Parr, alias Beatrice Chase. 

       Unlike many of the writers who I've researched in connection with Devon, Chase is an author who is amply covered on the internet, especially when it comes to women writers associated with Dartmoor. Typifying the notion of the eccentric woman author, for me Beatrice Chase represents Dartmoor's version of Exmoor's Hope Bourne. Chase's self-made legend asserts that she was directly descended from the brother of Henry VIII's last wife, Catherine Parr; that she had moved to Dartmoor to convalesce from the London slums, where she'd worked with her mother after contracting TB and that she'd had a 'great personal sorrow', which may refer to the loss of her fiancé, who had died during World War One. 

          My poem about Chase appears in the collection Tessitura and she features in a blog-post called Chase Over Moor, my other, earlier blog, in which I commented that, 

'like other people of her generation Chase thought nothing of walking miles and miles, and by the time she wrote Heart of the Moor, in which she mentions a secret experience, a 'vision of white', which happened to her on 'Bellever Tor, the 'central tor of Dartmoor - the core of the heart of the moor', knew the moor like the back of her hand. Chase adds that 'Only one who ever reads this book will understand the meaning of this ... and I doubt if even he knows that he alone holds, and always will hold, my heart in the hollow of his hand''.

       Chase's life, like some of her writings about her beloved moor, is in some ways still mysterious. Back in the 1950's, when we used to drive south across moor from North Tawton and ended up in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, my parents would often remark how, from the 1920's to the 1940's, a bike, hike or car-trip to Dartmoor's picturesque village, where Chase lived at nearby Venton, meant a slight diversion out along the nearby lanes where they'd invariably see the authoress swathed in white, at her celebrated Dartmoor window.

         

           Since then, I've always had this picture of Beatrice Chase as 'woman in white', Devon's version of the character in Wilkie Collins' famous C19 novel of that name; the passage in Chase's best known book, Heart of the Moor, which refers to the 'white vision' emphasises that association. Apparently, I'm not the only one whose visualisation of Dartmoor's once famous author has her and her home surroundings enveloped within an aura of white. Chase features in the recent book about Dartmoor by William Atkins, Moor; Lives; Landscape; Literature. Atkins comments  

'White is the colour of Parr/Chase's story, a "white, unbroken perfection of silence",  "that white silent hour", "the whited sepulchres", "his great white friendship", "brilliant white sunshine", "the full white joy of living".'

     There are certainly similarities between the life-story of Olive Katharine Parr/Beatrice Chase, who spent much of her adult life buried away in Dartmoor's most famous archetypal village and that of the fictional Anne Catherick, heroine of Collin's popular mystery novel, one of the first in the mode of Victorian Sensation genre, which was first published in 1859. To begin with, for a while, both book and person became focus of intense public fascination. I'm not trying to suggest that Chase was personally directly influenced by the famous fictional character, or even indirectly swayed by the traits of the sensationalist genre. Or maybe, just maybe, her life-story in some way does link up with either the novel or/and its predominant defining features of mystery, sensation, secrecy, romance, melodrama and spiritualism. The genre was incredibly popular during the decades of the 1860s/and70s - just around the period of Olive Katherine Parr's birth, so the inclination to make associations between the traits of the sensationalist fiction and life of this Devon-based author is tempting, especially when you look at Beatrice Chase's life-story. Always known as eccentric, both in her life and her writings, Chase seems to have left a trail of mystery in her wake; whilst in itself her backstory is intriguing.

         Beatrice Chase did not have a 'twin' or double out there as did Anne Catherick in Woman in White; but Chase did take on a kind of alter-ego in that after she moved to Devon she disowned her previous identity as Olive Catherine Parr and re-named herself with her literary name, therefore providing with herself with both a pseudonym and new identity. It's interesting that BC ensured that her old name was not completely rejected, frequently using it in her own tellings of her life-story and back-history, when she reiterated that through her father's ancestors she was a direct descendant of Catherine Parr Henry VIII's last wife - a fact, incidentally, which is disputed by several genealogical researchers:

Parrs in Charles Parr’s time claimed descent from the same Lancashire family that produced Katharine Parr, last wife of Henry VIII and her brother William, Marquis of Northampton. Charles’ daughter later claimed to be a direct descendant of the Marquis, but that’s impossible as neither he nor Katharine had any children that survived beyond infancy. The earliest ancestor that Burke’s Landed Gentry’s 1852 edition was prepared to vouch for was a 17th-century John Parr who owned land at Rainford, near Liverpool. (See Wright&Davis.)  

         As I mentioned earlier, Chase also is rumoured to have had a mysterious past romance before her move to Devon; she was even possibly engaged. But as yet I have not been able to verify that fact, or find any clues as to the identity of the person.

       You'll find information about Parr's/Chase's family and ancestry if you do a bit of google searching and at least two short biographies have been written about her, including The Mysterious Lady of the Moor by Judy Chard and The Real Beatrice Chase by Simon Dell. I've tried to pin-point some of the salient facts about her family gleaned from the web, just to see what comes to light. I'm not sure if I've found anything especially new, but let's see...

       Olive Katherine Parr's family evidently took in a panoply of professions and backgrounds. There were solicitors, preachers, archdeacons, explorers, vinegar manufacturers, army/naval commandants, mayors, charity-workers, artists, writers, religious converts, footballers (!) - you name it, you're likely to find one of her forefathers/foremothers or uncles/aunts, who participated in well-nigh any activity or profession! 

        You don't have to dig too deep either. Just looking at the backgrounds and lives of Olive's parents triggers a trail, a wake of mystery and fascination; it's hardly surprising that Olive (or Beatrice) gained a reputation as an offbeat and quirky character. Her father, a qualified solicitor, albeit briefly was also a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn; a paternal grandmother and aunt were known watercolour artists; one paternal uncle was both a Naval Officer and explorer who took part in the British Artic Expedition 1875-6; another paternal uncle became a famous footballer; a paternal great grandfather and grandmother were leading lights and instigators of The Foundling Hospital. Meanwhile, on her mother's side of the family, Olive's maternal grandfather was a Wesleyan Minister and her mother became a convert to Roman Catholicism.  

       Although it is not possible to take it too much further in this blog-post, any and indeed all, of these individuals are worthy of further study and investigation with regard to the life-story of Beatrice Chase. (Anyone out there wanting an idea for a PhD study?) However, I'll just make a start using various sources found online. Much of the information about the Parr family history I'm using here comes from Turner Trees, and the website Wright&Davis, but FindMyPast and other similar genealogy sites have also come in useful.

      Here is an copy of the image of Olive Katherine's parents, Charles Chase Parr's and Katherine Anne Millar's marriage, in 1872.

Marriage record of Charles Chase Parr and Katherine Millar

      Beatrice's father, Charles Chase Parr - whose middle name his daughter took for her assumed Devon identity - was born in 1847. (See Turner Trees). Eldest of seven children, his father, Thomas Chase Parr, became Commandant at Karachi and was Colonel of the 2nd European Regiment during the Indian Mutiny. One invaluable internet source says Thomas rose through the ranks after surviving an attack by a tiger. (See Charles Chase Parr ). Previously, Thomas' father had died from injuries following the incident of an upturned carriage in London (Charles Chase). Charles, his eldest son, was most likely born in The Foundling Hospital, which had been founded by Harriet Pott, his mother's, family: Harriet was daughter of Charles Pott, the hospital's Governor and Treasurer. The Potts were a wealthy family; one sources says that when Charles died in 1864 his personal effects alone were worth about £70,000 (contemporary values). (See Wright&Davis). The Parrs may not have been quite so well-off as the Potts and Charles may have felt obliged to work as solicitor. He had other talents as well, as explained by Sally Davis, the writer of this online study:

If Charles Chase Parr would have preferred to be a sporting man-about-town, he wouldn’t be the only young man to have wished for such a life while not having the income to support it. He did do what he could, though: in the memoirs of Raymond Blathway (journalist, writer and definitely a man-about-town), Charles is named as one of a group of young men who frequented Jem Mace’s boxing saloon in St James’s Street in the early 1870s. He was also a keen cricketer, though he was a late developer at the game - he never played for his school and it wasn’t until he became a member of West Kent Cricket Club (WKCC) that his skills blossomed in the less competitive atmosphere of weekend cricket. (Wright&Davis)

       Also, as noted above, Charles Chase Parr must have had an interest in esoteric, exotic spiritualism, for he joined the Order of the Golden Dawn. Sally Davis's comments again seem pertinent: in the following passage we also find out a little about Beatrice Chase's/Olive's mother Katharine, who apparently held deep seated religious beliefs: 

Behind the sporting life, however, there must have been a more sober side to Charles Chase Parr, because he married a woman with deeply-felt religious beliefs and a serious commitment to church-based social work. Katherine Anne Parr was the daughter of Joseph Millar, who at least in the early 1850s was a Wesleyan minister in Liverpool. Both Joseph and his wife Ellen were born in the Liverpool area. In 1872 Katherine and Charles were married in the Church of England church of St John the Evangelist Knotty Ash, but they had probably met in Harrow, because on the day of the 1871 census, that is where not only Harriet Parr but also Joseph Millar, Ellen, Katherine and her brother Gaskell [her mother's maiden name] were living. On that day, Joseph Millar told the census official that his main source of income was as a landowner; and that he was a Wesleyan minister but not currently working as one. I mention where Katherine and Charles were married, and that Joseph Millar was no longer employed by the Wesleyan methodists by 1871, because at some stage, Katherine Parr at least became a convert to Roman Catholicism.

       Other than her well-known Dartmoor-based books and writings - (which I have only mentioned in passing in this post - but you can see them listed on sites such as Google Books) -  Beatrice Chase is remembered in Devon mostly for founding the Crusade of White Knights and Ladies or White Knights Crusade, during World War One. (See The Rise and Fall of British Crusader Medievalism for a short commentary on the network Chase set up during the war and the texts she wrote about it.)  It is very tempting to assume a link between what appears to be Chase's dual fascination with alchemical traditions and religious fervour. It's as if she was combining the esotericism of her father's involvement in the Order of the Golden Dawn and the conviction of her mother's conversion to Catholicism.

      But was Beatrice Chase influenced by The Woman in White? I don't have an answer, but hope this blog-post might just stir a few people's interest and that someone out there may go and investigate more. I'm sure that there is much yet to find out about the story behind the mystery author who made such an impact on the Dartmoor and Devon locals during the years in which she lived in the county.

     I would love also if there is ever more time to pursue research into Beatrice Chase's familial backgrounds, and their potential influences on her as author and person. There are several lines of study that might just turn up fascinating material. I have wondered, for instance, if there was any family connection between the Parrs of Beatrice Chase's paternal ancestry and the popular C19 fiction writer Harriet Parr, who also used a pen-name. As far as I can yet tell there was no immediate family connection, but possibly there was a genetic thread somewhere along the line. Although Olive Katherine Parr's immediate family history shows up an array of professions and cultural interests, as far as I can tell only one - her father Charles Chase Parr - actually wrote anything. (He apparently wrote poems - see Wright&Davis). I keep wondering if there are others yet to be identified in the wider family who wrote more seriously and if so if he or she may have inspired Beatrice Chase to take up writing herself. 

     Anyway, for now at least, I have to be content to draw this piece to an end. Notwithstanding the arguments regarding the perhaps dubious literary merits of Beatrice Chase's own writings - for in the main, although her Dartmoor texts have left their mark on the county's literary repertoire, as author she is sometimes regarded as solipsistic and self-aggrandizing. In her book The Mysterious Lady of the Moor, Judy Chard quotes a comment made by Enid Shortbridge, a woman who knew Chase when she lived in Widecombe -

 'As a matter of fact no one really knew her, she was an enigma. Remember the Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus? Katharine Parr created the image of Beatrice Chase and then fell in love with it. In all her books she is the heroine' - 

       The woman herself was, and remains fascinating. If you want to get a feel for her within the local landscape of her Devon life, then visit her grave at Widecombe-in-the-Moor.
 

       You can also walk along the lanes to Venton, where the house that was once home of Chase is now a guesthouse and I understand a now popular destination for Chase followers and fans. You can still see the sadly rather neglected chapel with its cross, once used as shrine, a place of prayer and petition for Beatrice Chase's Knights of the White Crusade.

Once-Chapel at Venton near Widecombe-in-the-Moor

See also

Women Writing on the Devon Land

Over the A377 at Umberleigh Exploring Ancient Abbeys ...

Writing Women on the Devon Land

A – Z of Devon Women Writers & Places

Over the A377 at Umberleigh

Track near Umberleigh House

'A private track leading away from the A377 across the Taw floodplain, giving access to several fields'.

© Copyright  Derek Harper and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

.

     What often intrigues me when I'm out and about exploring Devon's lost literary links connected with women of the past are the occasional teasing facts which pop up unexpectedly out of the historical blue, and yet either report conflicting facts or omit tantalising details, leaving you wondering what might have been. Although through the centuries Devon has frequently played a vital role in many major historical happenings, perhaps because of its outlying position toward the western margins of our country, it is more often than not ignored - and especially in my line of research focusing on its women's past literary achievements and networks. Sometimes, like a pop of colour from a bland painting, a tiny snippet of information leaps out of a passage of information and begins to repeat over in my mind, reminding me of those bothersome earworms. I had such a revelation recently when reading about Umberleigh, in the northern part of the county, so decided to select it as the Devon parish for 'U' in this A-Z of Devon Women Writers & Places.

     I've been interested in Umberleigh since finding about its links with the Bassett family and the Lisle Letters, which I wrote about in a post in my other earlier blog - see A Tale of Two Tudor Sisters.

     As I commented in the earlier piece, if you drive along the old Barnstaple main road, the A377 route through Umberleigh now, you just would never know, let alone even imagine, that the place was at one time and for many centuries, a site of great significance and that here there was an ancient chantry chapel; a large manor; perhaps at one time even a palace ‘overshadowed by tall trees’ (see Beatrix Cresswell). A deer park is recorded at Umberleigh during the period of Henry VII and may have been in existence long before that. If you search the site out on Devon Environmental Maps you can see that Umberleigh House is marked as 'on the site of a probable pre C13 mansion.

      (Unfortunately, although I have taken photos of the area some years ago, at present I can only find one of them, so Geograph images will need to suffice - and anyway their quality far surpasses any that I might come up with!).

A377 approaching Umberleigh House
'From Fishleigh Rock Garage looking towards the point '
where SS5924 : A377 near Umberleigh House was taken.
© Copyright Derek Harper and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

          I'm not exactly a qualified historian; my PhD was in English Literature. I don't often have time to visit archives to search out original data; for the most part my interpretations are taken from a range of online and secondary textual sources. But I did manage to scrape through history A level, so like to think I have sufficient credentials to have a go, especially when literary interests link with historical ones - and in particular, when they both focus on women who were once engaged with literature. Such is the case with Umberleigh. 

       As Beatrice Cesswell noted in her article on Umberleigh Chapel, the place appears to have been an ancient estate, 'which' she added 'in the course of its history has had [so] many feminine possessors'. Then, as is the case with the women of the Lisle family and the letters they exchanged, there are times in the estate's history when an owner was explicitly linked with written literary pursuits of the time. The period which especially intrigues me with regard to Umberleigh House/Chapel, is the C11, especially around the period of the Norman Conquest. In her piece about Umberleigh Chapel Cresswell comments that

Just before the Conquest all this property was held by Brictic Meau, Thane of Gloucester, whose tragic story has to be told so frequently in the history of Devonshire parishes, and need not be repeated here. - The Conqueror. bestowed Umberleigh upon the Abbess of the Holy TrInIty, Caen Mr O. J. Reichel suggests that the Abbess had here a rural oratory with the same dedication as her convent, and includes Umberleigh among the Domesday churches of Devon.

    Two details in this passage especially intrigue me: the reference to the 'Abbess of the Holy Trinity Caen' and the possibility of there once being an 'oratory' at Umberleigh. Other sources confirm that at the time of the Domesday Book in effect Umberleigh was entered as an alien priory, 'in the manor of the Church of the Holy Trinity Caen' (See History of Devonshire).

        The Holy Trinity, or Abbaye aux Dames, of Caen was founded as a Benedictine Monastery of Nuns in the latter years of the C11 - (possibly in 1059, or 1066) - by William the Conqueror and his wife Matilda. Works on the monastery began in 1062; they were completed in 1130. (Matilda, who died in 1083, was buried in the abbey). One source says that the first Abbess of Holy Trinity Caen (See The Early Abbesses Nuns and Female Tenants of the Abbey of the Holy Trinity Caen) was also a Matilda (which is a possible pitfall leading to confusion), who governed the abbey for 54 years (another source says 47 years) and that she must have come from an aristocratic family; she'd previously been abbess of an abbey in Liseux. Following Abbess Matilda's death, in 1113, or 1120, the Conqueror and his consort's probably eldest daughter Cecilia (who'd entered into the Abbey of Caen at a young age, probably at its founding), became second Abbess of Holy Trinity (See Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy). Cecilia died on 30 July 1126 in Caen, France; she was buried within the abbey walls. Her father was also buried in Caen. Eventually Cecilia became a powerful and highly respected figure amongst monastic women.

      It is interesting to compare these dates with the years during which the abbey of Caen was linked with Umberleigh, which, if Cresswell is correct in her statement that 

'In 1176 Bishop Bartholemew Iscanus confirmed to Tewkesbury Abbey the church of Wimberleigh which Roger de Winkleigh held on behalf of the monks for 20S'. (Umberleigh Chapel) 

was about one hundred and ten years, a period which takes in the abbesses periods of both Matilda and Cecilia. 

        Cresswell also concludes that it is unlikely there was any direct connection between the Abbey of the Holy Trinity at Caen and its distant sub-oratory in Devon:

'It is improbable any of them [the nuns or the abbess herself) ever saw the place, and they must subsequently have parted with it, perhaps in exchange for property more conveniently situated' (Umberleigh Chapel).

        I can't help wondering whether it may be possible to question this theory that there was no direct link between Umberleigh and its 'mother' institution over in Normandy. I suppose Cresswell came to that conclusion after assuming that the rural situation of the Devon site would have made it too difficult to access and that the women from Caen would not have had any interest in visiting the far off western regions of the Saxons. I feel she was in some ways slotting into the same assessment about the northern part of the county as many earlier researchers - and once voiced in 'The Early History and Aborigines', a C19 paper by J.R. Chanter, in Transactions of the Devonshire Association, vol 2, 1867), in which he concludes:

The facts which have at various times been brought together concerning North Devon, tend to show that its history deserves more attention than has heretofore been shown to it.

        I'm not sure that Chanter's plea has yet received any response, even now well into the C21. But one fact is sure. At the time of William's invasion in 1066, Devon was not some god-forsaken, inconsequential county - a place which had little impact on the dramas unfolding throughout the whole country. Maybe it's quite valid to challenge Cresswell's conclusion. 

     For a time the county was the centre of the action, especially during the Exeter siege, in 1068, when Exeter was surrounded by William the Conqueror's army, and Gytha, Harold's mother, and wife of Godwin of Essex, was holed up for 18 days with other royal women. Eventually Gytha escaped, was rowed away from Exeter's water-gate, down the river Exe, and away from the town. 

    Then, three years after the initial invasion, north Devon became central to the main historical narrative when another significant battle, that of the Battle of Northam, took place in which Brian of Brittany defeated an army headed by two sons of King Harold. The battle site is thought to be between Northam and Appledore, in the north of the county (and so, not far from Umberleigh).

     There is also is the question of the once-sites of female occupied religious institutions. The focus of historical attention apropos Norman monasteries/convents and abbeys linked with women tends to be directed towards the famous ones such as Wilton Abbey in Wiltshire; but I have sometimes wondered if this is to the detriment of other now lost or forgotten nunneries, which may have existed further west in Devon - and not that much further onwards westward than Wilton. Sometimes when I read about the social, cultural and literary achievements of women during the C11 onwards for several centuries, it is as if they all congregated at Wilton and didn't venture any further westwards. Devon, as we now call it, hardly seems to have existed. It seems generally assumed that Devon religious institutions of the time were of little consequence to our national cultural heritage as it fed into the development of women-centred literature. But to counter that theory, there are several places in the south-west known to have had such female-centred establishments around or during the one hundred years following the time of the Norman invasion. For instance, in Durston, in Somerset, Buckland Priory (also known as Minchin Buckland Preceptory or Buckland Sororum - "Buckland of the Sisters") - was established around 1167 and was the only house for women in England of the Knights Hospitaller. It is known that girls were sent to Buckland to be educated. Then at the end of the C13 there was Canonsleigh Abbey, at Burlescombe, which was important enough to hold at least one copy of The Ancrene Wisse, one of the medieval age’s most significant and famous religious manuscripts (See The Mystery of The Ancrene Wisse).

      As far as I know, Umberleigh was the only Devon site that Caen was linked with? But I may be wrong in this assumption. What really puzzles me about Umberleigh's connection with the important and shiny new monastery of nuns at Caen is why? Why would a place that in the C11 must have been even more remote than most Devon parishes be selected as fit for purpose to align with one of the then most important new French religious institutions? Was Umberleigh already of special significance before 1066? If we take a step back to look at Umberleigh before the Norman conquest, there are tantalising - though unproven - suggestions that the site had been prestigious long before. According to Wikipedia,

Immediately prior to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 the manor of Umberleigh had been held by Brictric, as recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. He was probably the great Saxon thane Brictric son of Algar.[3] A person named Brictric was also the pre-Conquest holder of the single possession in Dorset of the Church of the Holy Trinity of Caen, the post-Conquest holder of Umberleigh [3]

      Prior to that, one tradition says that during the C10 King Athelstan built a special palace at Umberleigh (see, for example, The North Devon Handbook). Athlestan is said to have 'built at Umberleigh a palace and next to it a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Trinity, which served the royal family and household' (Wikipedia). (Athelstan's court was known to be meeting-point and melting-pot for culture and learning for various parts of the British Isles and the continent). According to this tradition, Umberleigh remained an appendage of the crown for centuries. 

    The legends retreat even further back, for one source says that traditionally, pre-Athelstan, Umberleigh was supposed to have been the special residence of the chief of the Celtic Druids of North Devon. (Godfery Higgins, The Celtic Druids, quoted in the paper by J.R. Chanter in Transactions of the Devonshire Association, vol2 1867).

       But, as so often happens re supposed facts about this mystery place, there have equally been other historians who are cynical about Athelstan's military accomplishments in Devon and therefore, about his alleged close links with Umberleigh:

Unfortunately, however, the accounts of his reign which have been preserved are all too scanty; and, as is usual with national heroes whose careers have not been adequately recorded, tradition has been busy with his name, and has ascribed to him deeds which he probably never performed and never even attempted to perform ...Various traditions have added other incidents, such as Athelstan’s triumphal entry into Barnstaple, and the erection of a palace for him at Umberleigh, “which he bequeathed to John of Gaunt.” (See The Athelstan Myth).

     As you may imagine, it is unlikely that I can provide any new evidence either way as to the probability or not of Umberleigh having once been a south-west royal palace; but I do tend to think there must be something in these rumours and that it was perhaps because Umberleigh had already become a pre-eminent Saxon estate that at the time of the Norman invasion it was gifted to the monastery of nuns at Caen. 

     Neither can I establish the truth as to whether there was an oratory at Umberleigh at the time of its possession by Caen. Skimming the sources which are easily available via google searches, there are various reactions to this possibility; they're not always in agreement. One source turns oratory to nunnery - referring to a once Norman nunnery sited at Umberleigh. Others are not so sure. Maybe there was not an oratory here.

     Nevertheless, there is no doubting the facts of the association between Umberleigh and Caen. And there are other local examples of such smaller cells established in Devon during the period of William the Conqueror. In St Nicholas Priory Exeter a cell was built at the charges of the parent monastery (See Monasticon Anglicanum).

Track near Umberleigh House

Looking right from where SS5924 : Track near Umberleigh House was taken. SS5924 : A377 near Umberleigh House shows the A377 just over the hedge on the right.

© Copyright Derek Harper and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

      Why in any case is the possible link between Caen and Umberleigh of interest? You might well ask. My chain of inferred links may well turn out to be a historical-literary red-herring. A far-fetched and obscure theory. Quite likely perhaps, but I hope one day - if there are any useful sources in existence - someone out there might explore the necessary archives and help to confirm, or kybosh, my hunch.

        One researcher in this field who has helped direct my thinking about Umberleigh is the writer/academic Elizabeth M Tyler, whose various writings about royal and aristocratic women of the Saxon to early Medieval period establish again and again how important were the social, family and cultural interconnections of these women in terms of their contribution to the development and spread of literature of the period. In particular, apropos this blog post, Tyler's work in this area explores the impact of the nunneries - where many of the royal women were educated and spent much of their lives - on the proliferation of all kinds of texts into the cultured communities. In her paper 'Crossing Conquests: Polyglot Royal Women and Literary Culture in Eleventh Century England', Tyler notes that during the 'intensely creative period' of the eleventh century, both 'court' and 'cloister' became 'location[s] of innovative literary culture'. Nunneries 'functioned as schools and as places to put royal daughters', whose learning became 'impressive'.  As far as I know, Tyler's work does not focus at all on Royal-women's Devon links, nor does it feature any female religious establishment west of Wilton - the famous convent where so many of these royal women spent much of their lives. However, what she does discuss makes me wonder if there may have been interconnections between places such as Wilton and other convents or priories or nunneries - whose presence and histories are long ago forgotten - which were sited westwards of Wilton. 

      Here is my line of thought. I'll begin by going back full-circle to where I started this piece; it's what is left out of the existing tantalising factual fragments that need to be explored. It seems to me that the linking of Umberleigh with the female community at the Holy Trinity at Caen, - the 'Abbey of Women' - which, in those times, was apparently such a prestigious religious site, ought to be investigated further. For the women associated with Caen were also connected with some of the literary highlights of the early Norman period. Cecilia, the Conqueror and his consort Matilda's abbess daughter, for example, was the recipient of several important literary texts. Some have called her 'patron of poets' and one source notes that she visited London regularly and carried out surveys of her abbey's lands (See Magistra et Mater). It is therefore not inconceivable that Cecilia and other women within the royal network travelled further into the south-west corner of the country to assess and explore sites connected with their family lands. In any case, regarding alien priories held by French religious houses, I understand that frequently the parent church sent a monk or nun over to manage the property. If so, it is surely possible that the abbess travelled down to Devon to keep an eye on proceedings there.

       Certainly, although it wasn't until two years after her husband accomplished the invasion, Cecilia's mother, William's consort Matilda herself visited Devon. It is said that Matilda was keen to see her new kingdom and take possession of her landed wealth, including her rich estates in Devon. Matilda was one of a chain of female consorts who held Devon land during the Anglo-Norman period. Many of them were blood relatives of the west-Saxon royal-line and genealogical study had become one of the special literary trends of the day for women of the aristocracy. It was common for royal women to express curiosity about their family history and to commission genealogical charts; as Tyler explains in Crossing Conquests, they were educated and actively engaged in the 'cultivation of dynastic memory'. 'Who do you think you are' is not a new phenomenon! 

      So, for anyone who's had the patience to follow me this far, if, back in the early days following William the Conqueror's invasion, there was an oratory or small cell-chapel sited at Umberleigh attached to the important mother Caen church over the Channel, in Normandy then, in my re-envisioning imagination, there could have been a footfall of female visitors travelling over from France via other religious establishments (such as the alien priories or nunneries scattered throughout the Wessex region). One or two of them may have been women from the top of the cultural hierarchy who were involved in the pursuit, study and circulation of some of the time's foremost literary achievements. Or perhaps they were actively engaged in the tracking of their own extended family history. Perhaps, for instance the women were out and about in the south-west, re-visiting the haunts of their own predecessors and ancestral kin. William the Conqueror's grandfather Richard II Duke of Normandy, for instance, was sister of Emma of Normandy, (Queen Consort of England, wife of Aetheldred the Unready and Cnut), who'd held extensive lands in Devon and it said he made many visits there. Meanwhile, Matilda of Flanders, William's consort, through Alfred's daughter, Aelfthryth, was a descendant of King Alfred the Great and the old Saxon House of Wessex.

      Yes, I know this is all rather obscure and tentative and that Caen's holding of Umberleigh for the hundred or so years following the conquest could simply be a matter of monetary benefits. As far as literary interests are concerned I could, or should, instead be focusing on the connections between women and literature that are already established and for which there is plenty of evidence. But, when it comes to the centuries before say the C15/16, documentation about female engagement with literary achievement is just not out there. Nowadays, various researchers working in the field of rediscovery apropos the missing contributions of women to our national and local literary heritage, are beginning to reassess and formulate plausible theories about what may have been.They're trying to pinpoint a particular place, a woman (usually royal or aristocrat), or a group of women who, during the time in which they lived, may have played a part in what Elizabeth Tyler, in her book English Royal Women and Literary Patronage c1000 -1150, calls 'the cultivation of literary culture'.

       It is not implausible to suggest that an active network of women from the incoming Norman aristocratic community, who'd been educated at one or other of the various female monastic establishments in Normandy or England had considerable impact upon literary developments of that early Norman period, and given the few facts that are out there indicating a connection between these people and the site at Umberleigh, neither is it completely out of place to suggest that several of these women may have had some direct link with the place.

Fields near Umberleigh House

      In what must then have been an intensely pastoral location, set in the northern region within the ancient land of the Dumnonians, which we now call Devon, perhaps, just for a few years, the quiet site beside the river Taw became a little still-centre - one of the few in the county - where women gathered to commission new texts and to share, exchange views, ideas and responses to a variety of then circulating literary texts.


See also From the Devon Ridge Where a Book Began