Edwardian Devon 1900-1914 E-Book

Dr David Parker

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 403

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

A century ago, Britain was locked in a devastating worldwide conflict that would change every aspect of society. This book explores life in Devon between 1900 and 1914, offering a revealing glimpse of a world now long-vanished before war broke out. Devon was no backwater; its railways and shipping were busy bringing tourists in and sending vast quantities of produce out. It was, though, a county of contrasts and change. Farming had reinvented itself after the late Victorian depression, but villages were in decline; churches and chapels were full but religion bitterly divided communities; the wealthy enjoyed extravagant lifestyles on great estates but their authority was under attack. Devon's upper-, middle- and lower-class schools perfectly reflected the Edwardian social hierarchy, but as the county's elections revealed, society was being torn asunder by bitter controversies over exactly who should have the vote, rule the country, and control the Empire. It was a worrying time overseas too: Great Britain's supremacy was increasingly challenged, and the warships in Devon's harbours and army manoeuvres on the moors drew many comments as the storm clouds began to gather over Europe. Using mainly contemporary sources, this engaging book examines the attitudes and experiences of people across all social classes in this tumultuous era.

Leseprobe

To Pamela, with love

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am very grateful for the help many people have given me as I researched and wrote this book. My thanks are given to Axe Valley Museum in Seaton, Bovey Tracey Heritage Centre, Crediton Museum, Country Life, Dawlish Museum, Devon Heritage Centre in Exeter, the North Devon Athenaeum in Barnstaple, the North Devon Local Studies Centre in Barnstaple, Plymouth Central Library, Plymouth & West Devon Record Office, Tavistock Museum, Torquay Library and the Valiant Soldier Museum in Buckfastleigh.

I remain grateful for the time and ready assistance afforded me by Kathryn Burrell of Beaford Arts Old Archive Bank; Su Conniff and Margaret Knight of the Devon & Exeter Institution; Sara Hodson of Ilfracombe Museum; Nigel Canham of the Mid Devon Advertiser; Peter & Aileen Carratt in Newton Abbot; Felicity Cole of Newton Abbot Town & GWR (Great Western Railway) Museum; Paul Hambling of Okehampton Museum of Dartmoor Life; Jocelyn Hemming and Julia Neville of the Poltimore Estate Research Society; Raymond Bartlett, archivist of Seale-Hayne College Alumni Association; Pippa Griffith, Pamela Sampson and Bernard Swain of Tiverton Museum of Mid Devon Life, and Catriona Batty of Topsham Museum.

I have greatly appreciated the willingness of Bill Leedham and Tony Ovens to discuss numerous aspects of the period with me during my self-imposed obsession with it. Any errors in the book, though, are wholly mine. My special thanks go once again to Tony Ovens for photographing many of the illustrations and often painstakingly refining them from poor quality originals.

CONTENTS

        Title

        Dedication

        Acknowledgements

        About the Author

        Notes

1      Devon:        The Background & the Boer War

2      Opening Up to the World:        Travel & Tourism, Commerce & Consumerism

3      Interwoven Lives:        The Great Estates & Their Families

4      Endurance & Resilience:        The Countryside & Farming

5      Firmly in Their Place:        Children, Schools & Welfare

6      Painful Adjustments:        The Poor, Charities & Workhouses

7      Society Rent Asunder:        Devon and the Great National Crises – Female Suffrage, Irish Home Rule, Free Trade & the House of Lords

8      Conclusion:        1914 – Not Quite the End of an Era

        Bibliography

        Copyright

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr David Parker has written several books and many articles for scholarly journals on late nineteenth and early twentieth-century social and political history. Formerly a Hertfordshire head teacher, he became a history lecturer, Masters programme director and then European Masters project manager in the University of Plymouth’s Faculty of Arts & Education.

As part of the commemorations of the First World War he has written weekly articles for a Devon newspaper, given presentations across the county and contributed to BBC TV and Radio Devon programmes.

Dr Parker is married with a grown-up son and daughter and lives in Exeter.

Previous Books

John Newsom (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2005).

Hertfordshire Children in War & Peace: 1914–39

(University of Hertfordshire Press, 2007).

The People of Devon in the First World War

(The History Press, 2013).

Winner of Devon History Society’s W. G. Hoskins Book of the Year 2013.

Great War Britain: Exeter, Remembering 1914–1918

(The History Press, 2014).

European Stamp Issues of the Second World War:

Images of Triumph, Despair & Defeat (The History Press, 2015).

NOTES

Money Values

In 1901 British money included pounds, shillings and pence. Twelve pence were equated with one shilling (represented as 1s 0d or 1/-), and twenty shillings with £1. Nominally a shilling is equated with 5p today, sixpence (6d) with 2½p and one penny (1d) with less than ½p. In this book whole shilling values are written as 5/- and values including both shillings and pence as 5s 3d.

At the highest end of the monetary scale in Edwardian times were guineas – one guinea being worth £1 1s 0d. Prices in guineas usually meant that one was in a high-class retail establishment or on the racecourse. At the lowest end of the scale a penny was divided into four farthings or two halfpennies (called ha’pennies). These coins cannot be equated with any monetary values today, but in 1901 they could buy scraps of food for poor families.

Using the estimated percentage increase in the retail price index, the purchasing power of a shilling in 1901 was equal to about £5.40 today, and £1 to about £95. However, £1 would be worth around £350 today if average earnings are the basis for calculation, as people today have about three and a half times the real annual income of those living in 1901. Therefore, a shilling was far more precious to working-class families in 1901 than £5.40 is to people today.

A Devon farm labourer was paid around 16/- a week, but he might have a rent-free tied cottage with a vegetable patch; a skilled urban artisan might receive around 25/- a week but he had no comparable extras. In real terms housing was far less expensive than today, as a modest but new terrace house could be rented for 6/- a week, but most foods and new clothing were far more costly.

Sources & References

A list of sources is included, but limited space has precluded a lengthy list of references, running to well over 1,000 for this book. A number of references to particular newspapers, school logbooks and authors are included in the text, and through the publisher the author would be pleased to discuss particular sources with readers wishing to pursue themes further.

1

DEVONThe Background & the Boer War

Countless postcards sent across the nation, and indeed across the world, from Edwardian Devon captured the awesome beauty of its moors and rivers, the attractions of its bustling seaside resorts and high streets, and the glories of its historic castles, churches and mansions. They portrayed a county basking in its ancient landscapes, dramatic past and prosperous present, and they did not lie. And neither did the plethora of guidebooks describing the plethora of leisure attractions and facilities awaiting visitors. But not surprisingly, the truth about Edwardian Devon is far more complicated and a great deal more interesting.

The period 1901–14 is generally known as ‘Edwardian’, even though it includes the first few years of George V’s reign (1910–36) as well as all of Edward VII’s (1901–10). Throughout these years, the Union Jack flew over British imperial possessions across the world, the red ‘duster’ fluttered at the sterns of thousands of British merchantmen and the white ensign announced the arrival of British warships in every ocean and countless ports. But beneath these awesome signs of power and prosperity Great Britain itself was becoming discernibly less sure of its pre-eminence, less confident in its social order and less optimistic about its future.

This book argues that this important period possesses a character of its own, much like Edward possessed a character very different to Victoria and Albert, his parents. Indeed, the Edwardians found that many of the social and political issues vexing the Victorians were now demanding solutions, however controversial and costly those solutions might be. The book examines these turbulent years through the eyes of Devon society with all its variations in wealth, occupations, attitudes and lifestyles, and its primary aim is to highlight the hopes and fears, and convictions and doubts that led the people of Devon to interact as they did. It draws upon the plentiful evidence of the tensions and trends that lies tucked away in museums and archives across the county.

Devon County Council’s minutes record the decisions reached regarding its steadily increasing responsibilities for highways, public health and, after 1903, most elementary and secondary schools. Head teachers’ logbooks give insights into local lives with entries covering syllabuses, standards, inspectors’ reports, managers’ visits, pupil attendances, local epidemics and, sometimes, glimpses of parental attitudes, the gross inadequacies of school facilities and teachers’ joys and frustrations.

Many local newspapers record verbatim, or as verbatim as the reporter and editor decided, the speeches made by the proponents and opponents of every major contemporary question. Most newspapers were avidly partisan, favouring either the Liberal or Conservative Party, but as we shall see, views on the suffragettes, Irish Home Rule and tariff reform often transcended party lines and rendered Edwardian party politics and elections even more confusing than usual. Generally speaking, editors claimed their preferred orators argued eloquently, sincerely and coherently while their opponents were hesitant, repetitive and unconvincing.

The newspapers also contain reports and letters on local sports events, theatre and seaside entertainments, the seasonal condition of agriculture, the many fetes and sales on behalf of charities and political parties, naval and military exercises, church and chapel affairs, court cases and the interminable meetings of school boards, boards of guardians and city, town and borough councils. Advertisements give invaluable information on the range of goods and prices and the frequency of trains and trips by sea.

Other important sources are directories, magazines, pamphlets and memoirs. Kelly’s Directory is a mine of local information, as are the 1891, 1901 and 1911 census summaries. Church magazines provide further evidence of local societies and their aims, clientele and success, as well as the views of the clergy. An array of pamphlets and brochures survive promoting religious and temperance movements, political campaigns, the openings, extension and maintenance of hospitals and mental institutions, and the sales of great houses and estates. The memoirs of Earl Fortescue, Devon’s Edwardian lord lieutenant, contain interesting perspectives on his family’s interests and local trends, and the published and unpublished memories of villagers growing up around the turn of the century throw light, often unconsciously, on the social hierarchies surrounding them as well as the enormous efforts required to keep warm, clean and fed.

The Victorian Background

Queen Victoria reigned from June 1837 to January 1901, and during these sixty-four years her kingdom was buffeted by a bewildering variety of stresses and strains. A host of factories poured out an array of mass-produced goods as well as never-ending billows of smoke, and increasingly powerful locomotives heaved wagons and coaches across the rapidly expanding railway network.

The population almost trebled, and so did the nation’s wealth, with the fanciful mock Gothic houses and fussy parterres of the newly rich matching the ancient, if substantially renovated, mansions and sweeping parkland of the older established grand families. The glittering reception halls and dining rooms were devoted to lavish parties, balls and masques where income and status were flaunted at a time when servants were plentiful and cheap.

The vagaries of markets and investments combined with unfettered expenditure meant that some notable families managed to bankrupt themselves, but there were others all too keen to buy their estates. And all the while the mass of the population crowded into the courts and tenements of the towns and cities or, if they were more fortunate, the serried rows of late Victorian terraced estates springing up on their outskirts. Some of these new houses were plain and flat fronted, and some had decorated brickwork and bay windows, as even working-class homes, like everything else in Victorian Britain, displayed the nuances of a family’s place in the social pecking order. In the middle of the century the urban population outstripped the rural one for the first time, and the gap steadily widened.

Protected by the world’s most powerful navy, British shipping companies and commercial enterprises sought raw materials and markets across the globe, and in doing so the British Empire grew ever larger. Amidst numerous colonial wars, sometimes fought with alarming incompetence although generally successful in the end, large parts of Africa were added to the older established colonies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and a racially and politically divided India remained largely secure in British hands despite a bloody rebellion in 1857.

But it was not only trade that made the empire important: as Victoria’s reign drew to a close both France and Germany had become Britain’s bitter rivals in empire building and its concomitant commercial exploitation, and equally important, in the fervent pride they possessed in this essentially Eurocentric age in exerting and flaunting their imperial influence as they jostled for international pre-eminence.

There was much for Victorians to be fearful about as the British economy changed for the better for some but the worse for many others. Towns became overwhelmed by thousands of migrant families lured by the widespread rash of vast new factories exploiting new technologies that offered regular work and wages. Many migrants had little choice as the new technologies, notably in the vast textile trade, rendered cottage industries such as the home-based handloom weavers redundant. Victoria’s reign saw a transformation in the means of production and transportation, and a dramatic rise in consumerism for those who could afford the dazzling array of new domestic furnishings, clothing and gadgets on offer.

From the late 1870s rural conditions deteriorated as the vast plains of North America, India and the Russian Empire poured huge amounts of grain into British ports far more cheaply than it could be produced here. The imports were also tariff free. Arable farmers were forced to sell up, or to seek lower rents if they were tenants and then diversify into new markets and reduce labour costs. As a result yet more country families trudged to the towns to join the earlier migrants, or packed into the ill-serviced emigration ships sailing to North and South America, Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa.

To the growing consternation of Victorian churchmen, humanitarians, local officials and national politicians, the vast working-class areas in the ever-expanding towns appeared as mounting threats to law and order, and to health and morality, with their plethora of slums, public houses, criminal gangs and brothels, and chronic lack of clean water, sewage, churches, police and schools. Charities moved in with varying degrees of generosity, boards of guardians created vast workhouses run with varying degrees of efficiency and humanity, and with varying degrees of success the rival Anglican, Nonconformist and Roman Catholic churches made huge efforts to build places of worship, provide clergy and attract new congregations. Gradually, too, public health authorities sought to cleanse and drain the streets, but all these tasks were far from complete at the turn of the century, and abject poverty, overcrowding and epidemics remained commonplace.

Poverty was endemic in both town and country, and many working families’ wages provided a mere subsistence standard of living that was always under threat from death or disease removing one of the wage earners, be it the husband, wife or older children.

The very poor had two sources of support – local charities drawing funds from legacies and subscriptions, and boards of guardians drawing on the rates. The former varied widely in their availability, resources and willingness to support those they suspected of being feckless or dissolute; the latter were as much guardians of ratepayers’ pockets as they were of the poor, and the stigma of being labelled a ‘pauper’, along with the workhouse uniform and discipline, went a long way to ensure that only those who had fallen to the very bottom of the social scale applied for admission.

Many upper and middle-class commentators were scathing in their indictment of the poorest members of the working classes as being largely responsible through drink, idleness and debauchery for their own misery. Many people also found the idea of the State intervening in essentially private family affairs abhorrent on ethical grounds. Such widely held views clashed vehemently within and beyond the Houses of Parliament with contrary arguments put forward by reformers for a greater degree of State support for those who had fallen on hard times – often, they boldly claimed, through no fault of their own. Arguments attempting to define ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor and surrounding the right and duty of the State to interfere in people’s lives, and the likely expense, raged to and fro throughout the nineteenth century, and in doing so prevented more than minimal welfare legislation passing into law.

Victorian Britain was never free from popular dissent and protest; indeed it was a violent age. The angry but futile protests of the handloom weavers against the machines of the textile magnates had been mirrored in the 1830s by the equally unsuccessful attacks of rural workers on the new threshing machines. Huge civil disturbances accompanied the campaign for electoral reform before the 1832 Franchise Act was grudgingly passed and also the Anti-Corn Law crusade which secured the abolition of import duties in the 1840s. Around the same time the Chartist movement fought aggressively, but ultimately unsuccessfully, for even greater parliamentary reforms, notably universal male suffrage, secret ballots and the removal of property qualifications for parliamentary candidates. Election contests were often violent, and accusations of corruption were commonplace and often proved justified.

By 1901 two further bitterly contested reform acts in 1867 and 1884 had extended the vote down the social scale to 60 per cent of adult males, and parliamentary constituencies had been substantially realigned to ensure their more even distribution. As each bill struggled to become law many politicians and commentators prophesied the downfall of constitutional government and the degeneration of politics into outright class warfare. As we shall see, such Jeremiahs were not completely wide of the mark, but were no doubt comforted as the new century approached that although women could vote in local school board and board of guardians elections, and even become members of them, they remained firmly barred from voting in general elections.

Nevertheless, virtually all of Britain’s national institutions, and most notably the House of Lords, were soon to be subject to immense and prolonged public scrutiny and criticism. And thrown into the boiling cauldron of Edwardian controversies were the additional and equally hotly contested issues of giving women the vote, finally granting Ireland Home Rule and imposing tariffs on foreign imports.

The deep antipathies between the Church of England and the various Nonconformist sects became more sharply focused, especially over working-class education as it became inextricably entangled in economic, sectarian and political arguments over its value, cost and content. In Devon, as elsewhere, most, but not all, Anglicans leaned towards the Conservatives, and most, but not all, Nonconformists preferred the Liberals. As we shall see, the various overlapping alliances proved a recipe for even more confusion and bitterness.

If the period’s newspapers are to be believed, everyone had views on all these issues. The people of Devon were certainly actively engaged in every trauma, as the verbal and intermittent physical violence characterising the keenly fought general elections revealed. Change, ominous to some but welcome to others, was said to be ‘in the air’. Liberals and Conservatives largely agreed that things were not as they should be – though not, of course, on the causes or the solutions. As Hamlet said of Elsinore – ‘the times are out of joint’.

The Long Shadow of the Boer War

The final war in the long list of wars in Queen Victoria’s reign heightened the relevance of Hamlet’s bitter assessment, and cast a lengthy shadow over both home and overseas affairs throughout the Edwardian era. It was fought against the small Dutch-Boer controlled republics of the Orange Free State and Transvaal in South Africa, and lasted from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 – far longer than anyone in Great Britain anticipated. In this respect it foreshadowed the greater conflict in 1914, a mere dozen years later.

German pro-Boer postcard mocking British military prowess, 1899. The caption reads, ‘How the Boers take snapshots of the British army arriving in Durban’. (Author’s collection)

Diamonds and gold had been discovered in the two Boer republics some years earlier, and their lure had intensified the long-standing antipathies between the independent-minded Boer leadership and British aspirations to control the whole of southern Africa. Great Britain won the war, but the price was heavy. Over 21,000 British, Canadian, New Zealand and Australian soldiers died in battle or from disease. Just over 9,000 Boer combatants died, but so did 28,000 white civilians and unknown thousands of black Africans.

The war had three phases, each of them casting grave doubts on British military competence, political sagacity and moral integrity. At the outset, the Boers struck rapidly into British-held Natal and Cape Colony, and laid siege to Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberley. As General Sir Redvers Buller, the British commander, sought to extricate the garrisons in these key towns, his forces suffered three costly defeats in a single week in December 1899 among the rocky outcrops and scrub of Stormberg, Colenso and Magersfontein, and a fourth in January 1900 at Spion Kop.

Modern telegraphic communications ensured that British newspapers were full of the latest military advance or, more commonly, setback. The Devon & Exeter Gazette provided its readers with maps and details of the defeats, and an early editorial gave a prescient analysis of the Boers’ ability to pick off British soldiers at long range while scorning the efficacy of any return fire. ‘What is the use of firing a volley against the face of a rock,’ asked the Gazette, in its condemnation of the superannuated tactics of ill-trained British officers.

British troops crossing the Tugela River prior to their defeat at Spion Kop, January 1900, from the Illustrated London News. (Author’s collection)

With the British nation stunned, and its French and German rivals gloating, the government sent lavish reinforcements together with a new commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Lord Roberts, and phase two began. The three sieges were relieved to hysterical rejoicing back in Britain, and by June 1900 Buller had driven the Boers from Natal and the Cape Colony and Roberts had invaded the Transvaal and captured Pretoria, its capital. This was the high tide of British military success and secured iconic status for Lord Roberts, but to the nation’s surprise and dismay the Boers felt far from defeated.

Phase three was a bitter and frustrating guerrilla war with Boer commando-style groups harrying troop columns and attacking railway lines, storage depots and telegraph links, while the British, now under Lord Kitchener, resorted to a scorched earth policy of burning farms, imprisoning civilians and hunting down the raiding parties. It was a desperate time in South Africa, and also back in Great Britain where the vocal minority of people hostile to the war from its outset was reinforced by the mounting number of critics of the army for imposing suffering on thousands of Boer families herded into crude insanitary encampments – ‘concentration camps’ they were called – often with grossly inadequate food and medical provision.

The war, and the new century, sent a chill through Great Britain. The stubborn Boers were still defying British forces when Queen Victoria, the personification of imperial might and glory in her old age, died, and many suggested her passing symbolised a time, perhaps imminent, when Great Britain might not maintain its international supremacy or occupy the high moral ground in world affairs. Her son’s involvement in various social scandals, and predilection for horse-racing, gambling, good living and the company of raffish nouveaux riche, did not endear him, at least initially, to the middle classes. The new king seemed to be the embodiment of a worrying new age that was less stable, less reassuring and fundamentally less admirable than his predecessor’s.

As the army licked its wounds, its commanders and their political masters pondered the causes of its poor performance. After due inquiry, in 1907 the government restructured the Regular Army, created the mobile Expeditionary Force, and reorganised county militia and yeomanry into a far better co-ordinated Territorial Army. In 1909 the Imperial General Staff was established.

At the same time, the need for a more extensive nursing and ancillary service linked to the Territorials was recognised with the creation of county-based Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs) comprising men and women willing to be trained in an array of support roles. In Devon, Earl and Countess Fortescue and other notable families ensured the county was covered with well-trained and self-sufficient VADs while Earl Fortescue and Lord Clifford, as respective commanding officers of the Royal North Devon Hussars and Devonshire Regiment Volunteer battalions, set about overseeing their restructuring.

After one in four Boer War recruits had been rejected as unfit by the army, an Inter-Departmental Committee investigation confirmed the appalling physical condition of many young men. Amidst great controversy, in 1906 this led to public money being spent on midday meals for ‘necessitous’ children, although the bureaucracy attached to this pioneering initiative meant its clauses were rarely invoked. The following year the School Medical Service was established and henceforth all elementary school children were examined each year, their ‘defects’ identified, and their parents ordered to seek treatment – either by paying their doctor or through charitable support.

The nation also shifted its attitudes towards its overseas possessions. They remained a source of profit as the provider of raw materials and the market for Great Britain’s finished goods, and also the means of consistently ‘out-trumping’ France and Germany in imperial prestige, but the empire became far more emotionally embedded in the nation as a source of pride. Rather perversely, after the hard won victory in South Africa many more people felt enhanced by the knowledge that their country still ruled the largest empire ever known and could fight off all challengers.

Devon was deeply involved in the war, not least because several battalions of the Devonshire Regiment – the ‘Devons’ – were involved in prominent battles. Most people celebrated its outbreak, believing the intransigent Boers deserved speedy chastisement. With bands playing the ‘Georgia March’, in October 1899 the Devonshire Regiment’s 2nd Battalion Reservists were cheered through the streets of Exeter to Queen Street Station. Other units sent out to reinforce the battered army were still being cheered a year later.

In October 1899 Private Orchard wrote home describing the alarming advance of the 1st Devons over open country towards the Boer trenches at Elandslaagte. It was a small British victory but cost fifty-five dead and 205 wounded. Surveying the British and Boer bodies, he wrote, ‘It was a great slaughter. I never saw such an awful sight before.’ In November, a soldier with Lord Methuen at the Modder River wrote home to Lynton saying, ‘We have had three dreadful fights in six days’, and told of a ferocious bayonet charge in which twenty-eight of his colleagues were killed and 107 wounded before the Boer position was taken.

In January 1900 the Devon County Volunteer Fund started to collect money to provide equipment for new volunteers, and within a few days had accrued £5,000. All subscribers were listed in the Western Times, in order of their donations, starting with £1,000 each from the Honourable Mark Rolle of Stevenstone and Mr Thornton West of Streatham Hall in Exeter. Across the county, collections were launched for needy wives and dependents of soldiers. By January 1901, for example, the people of Cullompton and Tiverton had donated £771, of which £547 had been given out already.

Late in February 1900 the surrender of the Boer General Cronje was celebrated across the county – with the Western Times reporting on the bells rung, flags hoisted, bands playing and cheering crowds in Ashburton, Barnstaple, Cullompton, Dawlish, Ilfracombe, South Molton, Teignmouth, Tiverton and Totnes. The British entry into Ladysmith on 1 March caused further rejoicing, not least because the 1st Devons had charged and routed a Boer force threatening the town from Wagon Hill.

Bradworthy celebrates the relief of Mafeking. (Beaford Arts)

In May 1900 Mafeking was relieved, and once again the county went wild with excitement. In Exeter, streets were hung with flags, shops closed early and cheering people carried Union Jacks and pictures of Colonel Baden-Powell, the hero of the hour. In honour of the famous naval brigade that hauled 4.7in guns from HMS Powerful on hurriedly made carriages in support of the hard-pressed army, a vast procession was formed behind men dressed up as sailors pulling a mock cannon. Accompanied by torch bearers and bands from army units in the city barracks and also the Church Lads and Boys’ Brigade, the City Fire Brigade and Post Office, everyone gathered at the Guildhall in the High Street where the National Anthem was played. Then everyone marched off to the County Ground in St Thomas for more patriotic songs and speeches.

The battles were still raging, though. In May 1900 Private Newberry, an Exeter footballer in the 2nd Devons, wrote home about being shot in the right side – ‘but thank goodness it only grazed my liver’. In May, too, Trooper Sid Braund from Barnstaple wrote to a friend from hospital after being laid low with dysentery. It had struck down many others, and so had enteric fever. Throughout the war, The Times correspondents in South Africa had little good to say about the primitive medical care, especially the lack of nurses. But there was bravery too. In October 1900 Major Edward Brown of the 14th Hussars, a resident of St Marychurch, won the Victoria Cross for rescuing three colleagues under heavy fire during a fierce skirmish around a farmstead at Geluk during the advance into the Transvaal.

William Hems, the son of Harry Hems, the renowned Exeter sculptor and wood carver, lived not far from Ladysmith and in 1901 he witnessed the adoption of the scorched earth policy as soldiers drove thousands of horses, sheep and goats out of the Orange Free State. ‘They are all in the most awfully wretched condition, and driven almost to death. One continuous string of them is left along the road to die … But the troops seem to care nothing.’

Sergeant Basting of the 1st Devons wrote of his wearisome observation duties in one of the block houses erected to restrict Boer forays, and the ever-present danger of Boer sniping. ‘I should like to have half a pint of good old Devon cider now,’ he added. Trooper W. P. Hamlyn from Buckfastleigh told how he was helping turn families out of their ‘filthy, dirty’ farms, sending them to camps and then removing all items of furniture and food. ‘We leave nothing edible in the houses’. In June 1901 Trooper Stewart Ferris wrote home to Paignton, just before he was killed, that his troop was engaged in escorting wagon convoys and searching every farmstead and kopje for infiltrating Boers.

The appalling conditions in which Boer families lived, and died, in the makeshift British camps became common knowledge long before the end of the war, but many articles refuted the charges. In August 1901, for example, the South Molton Gazette published a report attributed to Reuters claiming the Klerksdorp Camp, holding 3,000 people, had plentiful supplies of fuel, water, food, cooking facilities, bedding and clothing. It said a midwife lived on site, a doctor visited daily and the children received free schooling. In March 1902 another upbeat report, again attributed to Reuters, used sporting terminology to describe a British raiding party descending upon a Boer farm at dawn. The cavalrymen ‘shouted to each other out of sheer enjoyment, and spurred on their horses like men finishing a race rather than like men galloping to a possible death or wound’. When some Boers managed to escape the trap, they were chased ‘like foxes for several miles’. The report marvelled at the cavalry’s ‘astonishing energy and marvellous activity’. Many readers in Devon would have related sympathetically to the hunting analogy.

Returning servicemen, whatever their rank, were treated like heroes. In November 1900 crowds at Barnstaple Junction Station welcomed home Captain Sir Edward Chichester RN, the chief naval transport officer at Capetown. He was ‘cheered to the echo’ at a Guildhall reception, especially when he praised the Devons. Even greater crowds assembled that month to welcome Sir Redvers Buller back to Devon. Exeter presented him with a silver casket with an inscription marking ‘the eminent services he rendered to the Empire during the war in South Africa 1899–1900’. At the gates of Downes, his home outside Crediton, his tenants removed the horses from his carriage and pulled it up the drive to the specially decorated house. The violent attacks on his leadership after the defeats in late 1899 were bitterly resented locally, and far greater emphasis was placed on his subsequent successes in relieving Ladysmith and reclaiming Natal and the Transvaal.

General Sir Redvers Buller VC, of Downes, Crediton. (Devon & Exeter Institution)

In June 1901 the Devon Volunteers returned home and exploding fog detonators placed on the railway lines as a tribute by company employees announced their arrival in Exeter, where a cathedral service followed by luncheon in Victoria Hall awaited them. As the troopers dispersed to their homes each community organised its own welcome. A horse brake met the three men from Chudleigh at Newton Abbot Station, and a band accompanied them through the crowded village streets. They were guests of honour at the Globe Hotel, then presented with gold watches, briar pipes and an inscribed pendant at a parade in the Drill Hall, and finally attended a smoking concert in their honour.

And still bad news filtered through from South Africa. Arthur Bowden from Butterleigh wrote to the rector about a surprise Boer attack on a nearby British camp at Tweenfontein on Christmas Day 1901 in which seven officers and seventy-five men were killed and another sixty-three wounded out of a complement of 300. ‘There must have been something wrong with our camp,’ he thought, ‘but it is difficult to say who was to blame.’ Trooper Welby, a medical orderly from Chelston, survived the attack, and told his sister:

I had just cut a man’s breeches down who had got hit in the thigh, when a bullet struck the doctor in the arm; he went on, however, till he suddenly cried, ‘My God’, and rolled over. He had again got hit, the bullet missing his heart by half an inch and coming out on the other side just above his hip.

Not surprisingly, in June 1902 the vicar of Seaton noted ‘the spontaneous outburst of thankfulness’, and also his packed church, when peace was finally announced. Soon afterwards Sir John Kennaway unveiled the memorial plaque in the town to Troopers Bernard Salter and Percy Jones and said they had died ‘in the cause of justice, liberty and humanity’. A year later a memorial window and tablet to the fallen from the county were dedicated in a service in Exeter Cathedral attended by men from the Devonshire Regiment and also Lord Clifford and Viscount Ebrington, the 3rd Earl Fortescue’s heir and brother of Major the Hon. Lionel Fortescue killed in South Africa on 11 June 1900. The dean said the memorial would be ‘one of the most precious possessions of their great ancestral Cathedral’, and Lord Ebrington trusted that the moving tribute to the 460 men named on it would help ‘their sons, and their sons’ sons, whether in the navy, army, or civil life, to be strong and brave men’.

The images in the window reflected prevailing attitudes towards the victory, although perhaps the heavily loaded analogies hinted as much at the uncertainties surrounding the nation’s pre-eminence as at the more public assumption of a God-given triumph. One pictured Abraham receiving bread and wine from the high priest after a victorious campaign; the second showed Joshua with the approving Captain of the Lord’s Host after the fall of Jericho; the third pictured King Alfred and the Treaty of Wedmore he signed with the defeated Danes; the fourth contained the warrior king Edward I being nursed by Queen Eleanor after an assassination attempt, and the central image showed the Resurrection and Christ defeating death. Indicative of the strength of feeling for the hitherto generally unloved British Army, 18,000 subscribers enabled four silver drums to be presented to the 2nd Devons that same evening in Exeter’s Higher Barracks.

A Winkleigh family in best clothes outside their house decorated for King Edward VII’s coronation. (Beaford Arts)

In August 1902 lavish celebrations in Devon’s towns and villages marked the coronation of King Edward VII. It was as though there was a collective sigh of relief at the end of the war and Edward’s recovery from a serious illness, and an accompanying determination to put on a show of national pride and confidence. Streets were decorated, churches were packed and returning volunteers filled many pews. Collections were given, at the king’s request, to local hospitals. School children marched through the streets with accompanying bands, sang patriotic songs and were given medals, mugs and tea. ‘No one could have failed to observe,’ wrote the vicar of Seaton, ‘the loyalty and affectionate feeling towards His Majesty and the Queen which animated all classes.’

2

OPENING UP TO THE WORLDTravel & Tourism,Commerce & Consumerism

The growth of steam-powered railways, shipping and factories, the increasing globalisation of trade and production and the spread of tourism down through the social classes had a dramatic impact upon the towns and villages of Devon, not least in laying bare the conflict between those avidly promoting new developments and those steadfastly opposing them.

The threats and opportunities posed by steam power in all its manifestations began to strike Devon not long after the accession of Queen Victoria, but only during the reign of her son did it become clear that the onslaught of mass tourism and mass production had changed the nature and structure of Devon’s economy forever.

The Railways: Commerce,Consumerism & Convenience

In 1901 a Devonian aged 60 might have remembered the county without any steam locomotives pounding along railway lines. Anyone younger would have grown up with the constant sights and sounds of new cuttings, tunnels and bridges transforming the landscape as the spider’s web of lines covered the county. Indeed, in 1901 much of the vast network was new, and its influence was still growing.

The Great Western

By May 1844 Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Western Railway (GWR) had passed Bristol and Taunton to reach Exeter St David’s, and as the excited newspapers reported, people marvelled that they could lunch in the county town and have supper in London on the same day. Within a year the fastest journey was reduced from five and a half to four and a half hours, and the death knell began to sound for the Grand Western Canal between Tiverton and Taunton.

Edwardian Devon – showing main towns, rivers and railway lines. (Author’s collection)

At Exeter, as almost everywhere else, the first trains were welcomed with rousing bands, lengthy speeches and tables groaning with food and drink for the crowd. As the newspapers gleefully reported, the occasions could get joyously out of hand. Thanks largely to Thomas Latimer of the Western Times, local newspapers enthusiastically equated rail transport with growing prosperity, but the canal and stagecoach companies, fearing annihilation, and some clergy and landowners who equated mass travel with unruly and licentious behaviour, were far less keen.

Amidst all the excitement and anxiety the GWR advanced down the Exe, along the coast past Dawlish and Teignmouth, and then inland to Newton Abbot, around the fringes of Dartmoor to Totnes and Ivybridge and then on to Plymouth where it arrived in April 1849. The lure of profits led subsidiary companies to build branch lines off the main east–west route. In August 1859 one from Newton Abbot reached Paignton via Torquay, and went on to Kingswear in 1864. The line had a dramatic impact. Torquay’s reputation as an upper-class winter resort came to an end, and the town experienced a distinct decline in its fortunes until the middle classes took to it as a summer destination. The line, though, was the making of Paignton at the cheaper end of the market and brought in thousands of visitors – and hundreds of wagons of coal for domestic and commercial consumers, including in due course the huge new gas works. Dartmouth, on the opposite bank to Kingswear on the River Dart, was the planned destination of the line, but a major landowner successfully fought off the idea. All Dartmouth ever got was a rail-less station and a ferry connection with Kingswear.

Other branches also tapped into local industries. In February 1868 a spur off the Torquay line reached Brixham, and most days saw the dispatch of several well-packed fish wagons. In July 1866 a branch opened from Newton Abbot to Moretonhampstead, and secured considerable traffic in incoming coal and outgoing farm produce and clay from the Bovey Basin pits and adits along its line. Fewer clay barges used the Stover Canal connection with the Teign Docks, and by Edwardian times it was clear its profitability was coming to a close. From May 1872 a line out of Totnes grew profitable serving Buckfastleigh’s textile mills and Ashburton’s cattle fairs and gas works.

There were, though, less shrewd investments. The 1893 branch line from Brent to Kingsbridge owed its precarious survival almost entirely to the late Victorian and Edwardian summer holiday traffic rather than any goods contracts. Conversely it was mineral and agricultural traffic from the Teign Valley rather than passenger numbers that saved a belated inland route between Newton Abbot and Exeter via Heathfield, Ide and Christow. Beset by money worries, troublesome landowners and hilly countryside, work began in the 1880s but it took until July 1903 for the line to reach Exeter.

By 1901 numerous lines snaked through Plymouth, Devonport and East Stonehouse, serving both commerce and commuters. The GWR built docks at Plymouth near its Millbay Station, and in 1851 inaugurated a monthly steamship service to Australia, China and India, thereby starting a running battle with Southampton. In May 1859 the opening of Brunel’s Saltash Bridge made access to and from Cornwall much easier. A month later a GWR line from Plymouth reached Tavistock and in 1865 this was extended to Launceston via Lydford, adding significantly to Plymouth’s commercial links. In 1883 a winding line to Princetown aided the troubled granite trade and excited tourists with views of Dartmoor.

The London & South Western

Meanwhile the rival London & South Western Railway (LSWR) had been far from idle. Its shorter line from Waterloo via Salisbury, Axminster and Honiton arrived at its centrally sited station in Exeter in 1860. For the next thirty years Devonians lived with two different gauges of railway – the GWR’s idiosyncratic but possibly more cost-effective 7ft ¼in favoured by Brunel and the LSWR’s far more widely used 4ft 8½in which had served miners for generations. In 1892 the narrower gauge triumphed, and over a weekend in May that year thousands of families enjoyed watching well-rehearsed gangs turn 177 miles of broad track west of Exeter into ‘standard’ gauge.

The LSWR’s large, centrally sited Queen Street Station in Exeter, c. 1905. (Author’s collection)

By 1874 the LSWR had secured access to GWR’s Exeter St David’s Station and worked its way around the north of Dartmoor to Okehampton and then south to Lydford where a troublesome mixed gauge agreement with the GWR allowed the LSWR access to Plymouth in 1876. This finally ended in June 1890 when a separate LSWR route from Lydford to Plymouth, via Bere Alston and Bere Ferrers, belatedly opened up the Tamar Valley, boosting the prosperity of local market gardeners but creating a menacing rival to the river boats.

Other LSWR lines from Exeter wound through the Taw Valley villages to reach Barnstaple in August 1854, Bideford in November 1855 and, rather belatedly, Great Torrington in July 1872. Each intermediate station possessed sidings, goods sheds and cattle pens, most had coal yards, and several, such as Eggesford and Barnstaple, had slaughterhouses nearby. Goods trains hauling cattle and horseboxes, milk tankers and meat vans, and wagons of apples, coal, hay and straw, manure, animal feed, timber and stone became regular sights. In 1879 a slow and winding branch from near Okehampton rambled through the sparse north-west countryside to link Halwill, Holsworthy and Cornwall’s Bude with the wider world.

There were losers as well as winners. The railway eroded Bideford’s prosperity when freight handling became concentrated at Barnstaple’s bigger and better-serviced goods depots. Shapland & Petter’s large Raleigh Cabinet Works was sited not far from Barnstaple’s LSWR Station and possessed its own siding for incoming coal and wood and outgoing finished furniture. Crediton failed to take full advantage of its station and yard, and continued to decline as Exeter’s trade increased. Probably Chulmleigh, bypassed by the line, suffered most when its auction house and market transferred to Eggesford Station.

Halwill Junction, a country station with sidings and goods wagons, 1907. (Beaford Arts)

North Devon tourism received a further boost later in the century. In July 1874 a line opened from Barnstaple to Braunton, the stopping point for Saunton Sands and Croyde Bay, and went on to a windswept terminus high above Ilfracombe from which families, depending upon their means, were ushered to a reserved hotel carriage, paid a public carrier or walked to their holiday accommodation. As late as May 1898 Barnstaple acquired another line when a 1ft 11½in gauge railway opened to Lynton, 20 miles away across Exmoor, in the face of vociferous opposition by Sir Thomas Acland and other lovers of the area’s stag hunting, isolation and exclusivity. No doubt to their satisfaction, it struggled to survive, making more money delivering coal than carrying passengers. Yet more local lines linked Bideford to Northam in May 1901 and the shipbuilding port of Appledore in May 1908. The commercial traffic never materialised, but tourists enjoyed the scenery.

In 1873 a long GWR branch line from Norton Fitzwarren near Taunton reached Barnstaple via South Molton. Heavy expresses used it as well as local passenger and goods services, including the celebrated ‘rabbit specials’ destined for the London and Midland markets. Joining this line in May 1885 at Morebath on the Devon–Somerset border was the winding Exe Valley line from Stoke Canon, a few miles outside Exeter. The textile, brewing and market town of Tiverton was on this route, but its more important connection was with the main GWR London and Exeter line at Tiverton Junction. Local landowners and farmers invested in a branch line eastwards from this junction towards Hemyock. It opened in May 1876, but did little business until a textile factory at Uffculme decided to use it.

Short but costly branches were hacked through the hills and valleys between the LSWR’s main Waterloo–Exeter line and east Devon’s seaside resorts. They made a significant difference to some communities, but not others. A line along the Exe estuary reached sandy Exmouth in May 1861 and gave immediate impetus to the development of its docks, guesthouses and residential estates. Coal, timber and fish became important traffic, and the railway also helped Topsham Quay to stay commercially active, but far greater profits came from passengers using the line’s well-sited intermediate stations.

A branch along the Axe Valley to Seaton opened in March 1868 with plans to develop Axmouth Harbour that came to nothing. Seaton itself remained a minor resort, although its historian records it charmed one holidaymaker in 1894 who delighted in the quietness ‘far away from the madding crowd’, adding, ‘if one wanted entertaining one would go elsewhere’.

Another branch reached Sidmouth, or rather a terminus a mile outside it, in July 1874. The townsfolk had divided loyalties; for well over fifty years Sidmouth had grown used to its select and wealthy visitors, but many traders and hoteliers warmly welcomed the hundreds of less elevated families regularly deposited on its outskirts. In May 1895 a branch off the Sidmouth line reached the small town of Budleigh Salterton, and in 1903 it went on to connect with Exmouth. Day trips from Exeter proved popular, and so did cheap excursions from London, but Exmouth’s sand was much preferred to Budleigh’s shingle.

Cost & Convenience

In Edwardian times most of Devon’s small towns were well served by trains. In 1912 Okehampton’s station was considered a disgrace, with narrow, frequently congested platforms and hardly any shelters, but there were eleven passenger trains a day to Exeter and nine back, and ten to Tavistock and Plymouth with eleven back. The railway companies often offered ‘cheap day returns’ and advertised the easy accessibility of many destinations. In the summer of 1911, for example, Exeter day trippers could go for 1/- to Exmouth, 1s 6d to Budleigh Salterton, 2/- to Sidmouth, Seaton and Okehampton, 2s 6d to Bridestowe, Lydford and Brentor, 3/- to Lyme Regis, 3s 3d to Tavistock, 3s 9d to Plymouth and Devonport, 4/- to Bude and Barnstaple, 4s 6d to Bideford and Braunton, 5/- to Ilfracombe, Mortehoe and Torrington, and 5s 3d