Transcript

Of

The Manor House Berry Narbor

Trans. Devon. Assoc., vol. 11, (1879), pp. 493-496.

by

Rev. Treasurer Hawker, M.A.

Prepared by Michael Steer

The name Berrynarbor is derived from past manorial lords - the Berry and De Nerbert families. These days, the focal point of the village is its fine church with lofty pinnacled tower, 17th Century lych-gate and original cobbled path. Next to the church are the remains of the 15th Century Manor House, extended in 1914 to provide a splendid village hall. This social venue is now constantly used for a wide variety of activities and functions. The article, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

Wordsworth, in one of the finest of his sonnets, if not the finest, that on Mutability, says: 

“From low to high doth dissolution climb, 
And sink from high to low, along a scale 
Of awful notes, whose cocord shall not fail; 
A musical, but melancholy chime, 
Which they can hear who meddle not with crime, 
Nor avarice, nor over-anxious care. 
Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear 
The longest date do melt like frosty rime. 
That in the morning whitened hill and plain, 
And is no more; drop like the tower sublime 
Of yestcrday, which royally did wear 
His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain 
Some casual shout that broke the silent air. 
Or the unimaginable touch of time." 

The centuries - some say six - that have passed away since the Manor House of the village, now called Berry Narbor, from the two families of Berry and Narbert, was begun, have seen many realizations of the foregoing lines. There is hardly any record of the families, beyond two monuments in the adjoining church; that to the Narbert family has its inscription undecipherable from the decay of the slate-slab; the one belonging to the Berrys, near the pulpit, is of a more costly character, and has a certain quaintness and force of character in the kneeling figures. But no doubt it represents a generation long after the original inmates of the house; they probably began in a humble way, and gradually grew in wealth and importance. Whether this was so or not, “there is no remembrance of former things." Whether the owners and occupiers of the Manor House had happy days or otherwise; long or short terms of existence on earth; lonely lives or lives blest with loving friends and relations, who can tell?

We need not speculate. The generations of men come up in their several turns and pass away, like the leaves of the forest; each individual leaf having its own distinct character, and each differing from its fellow, yet all subject to the same birth of spring, and the same fading away into decay and death when autumn and winter arrive.

So we need not linger on the thought of those who have passed away, as now the building itself is passing away, with its "fractured arches" and its damaged roof. What is still left is extremely interesting; the more so, because the "unimaginable touch of time" is playing such havoc with what remains. Another twenty years, I should say, will find nothing, save utter heaps of ruin, unless steps are taken to preserve the present fragments. A most competent judge of such buildings, my lamented friend, and, I may say, a lamented member of this Association, the late Mr. Richard John King, about a year ago told me that when the Association came to Ilfracombe, I ought, by a paper with some sort of illustration, to notice it, as there were few of them now to be found in England. I have been fortunate in getting a pencil drawing of the front, taken by my friend Mr. Charles Webber, of Ilfracombe, which to my mind is a faithful representation. To Mr. King I had looked for information on some future visit as to the architectural points of interest in the building, with those details that only a cultivated or professional eye can recognize. In these qualities I am entirely deficient, and he on whom I intended to lean is gone - one more token of the dangers of delay, as the heading (I draw attention to it in hopes some one will tell me its author) to Wordsworth's sonnet on Lesbia’s Dove says - 

“Miss not the occasion; by the forelock take 
That subtile power, the never-halting time, 
Lest a mere moment's putting-off should make 
Mischance almost as heavy as a crime." 

Having then no technical knowledge of architecture, I cannot pretend to do more than give a general notice of what 1 can see with unprofessional eyes; to do less would be disloyal to the promptings of my friend, as well as treating lightly the writer of the hand-books of English Cathedrals.

The ground rooms occupied by the present tenant are internally devoid of interest, the panelling and ornamentation of the walls having been almost entirely removed. I am told that the bedrooms have still vestiges, in their coloured cornices, &c., of former wealth and magnificence. There is nothing in the downstair apartments to notice beyond their fair proportions and loftiness. The largest in the part which fronts one probably served in days of yore for a sitting or withdrawing room. To form an idea of the fair stateliness of the building in its palmy epochs a stranger must pass under the archway, still beautiful even in decay and ruin, running at right angles to the front. The door has remains of what I believe is called the napkin-pattern carving. He will be led through a passage - rooms on the right hand being now occupied by the appurtenances of a farm – 

“To what base uses may we come, Horatio!" 

into a court, theshape nearly of a parallelogram. There on his left is the wreck of a fine room, which I should imagine to have been the banqueting or dining-hall, with a large fireplace, of the same length with the open space. There is a date on the wall above, 1634; but that does not, I suppose, say more than that in 1634 something was done to the building, either in the way of repairs or additions. There are the remains of smaller apartments at the other end of the court; probably superior offices and servants' rooms, with small windows; picturesque, but not suggestive of much light. The greater part of the present building is - Mr. King told me - not earlier, and probably later, than James the First's reign, although some of it is undoubtedly much older. There is a slanting loophole just inside the arch of which 1 have spoken, which is exactly of the same character as the Hagioscopes we see remaining in many churches. If it was intended for the same purpose, viz., to give a view of the mass, when elevated, as it was carried into the church, it would, I conclude, betoken an antiquity much beyond James the First's time. The buildings that now obscure the view are undeniably modern. Within the recollection of the oldest inhabitant there was an uninterrupted path, leading up from the house to the churchyard, and there is still the mark in the wall where the entrance has been closed up. The dwelling was occupied, I am told, for three winters by the grandfather of the present owner; i.e, within the last hundred years.

There are spaces where escutcheons and coats of arms once were, and at the finials of some of the windows there are monograms or letters B - referring no doubt to the family of Berry or Bury. The roof has been raised by placing brickwork on the original wall. Why bricks, which are not common, should have been used I do not know. The stone of which the rest of the building has been built must have been carefully chosen, for a great deal of it is in excellent preservation; the corners as sharp as when first chiseled. The arches are still pleasant to the eye from the beauty of their lines, although "dissolution”  is sinking them "from high to low," and chance-sown flowers crown them at their will - valerian, wall-flowers, and others. Perhaps the decay of old age, when the object has been fair, more touches the feelings than the full flush of maturity. And none, I think, can look upon such a fair wreck as the Manor House of Berry Narbor without being touched; without picturing it filled with family life, and all that belongs to family life - births and marriages and deaths, as the generations have come and gone.

I wish heartily that a competent critic, like the chronicler of the Devon Cistercian Monasteries, Mr. J. Brooking Rowe, would describe the building; and that a neighbouring artist, spoken of in the Spectator's Review of the Water Colour Exhibition of 1879 as having "a very delicately lovely way," especially in No. 294, "The old Manor House, Maidstone," would in future begin with the Manor House of his own neighbourhood, four miles off from Ilfracombe.