HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: THE SECRET OF CRICKLEY HALL/LYNMOUTH, DEVON

When the Caleighs, the family at the centre of The Secret of Crickley Hall - Gabe, Eve and their children Loren and Cally - arrive in the sleepy seaside village of Hollow Bay for a temporary stay at the riverside property Crickley Hall in a bid to heal the pain of their son’s disappearance, they look forward to walks along the “beautiful deep-sided and tree-lined gorge” marked as Devils Cleave on the map – down to the sea or up to the moors.  They anticipate weekends exploring the “craggy coastline”, and they are met with the sight of the “swift-moving, boulder-strewn Bay River”.  Early on in their stay they pay a visit to the local whitewashed and thatched inn, the Barnaby Inn with its low-ceilinged, beamed interiors.

Anyone who has visited Lynmouth on the North Devon coast will recognise this description, and indeed Hollow Bay was based on this beautiful little harbour village.  The reference to lime kilns is further proof, these being a feature of the village and surrounding area, formerly used for burning imported lime.  That, plus the fact that Hollow Bay is on the shores of the Bristol Channel, as is Lynmouth.  The craggy coastline referred to brings to mind the Valley of the Rocks to the west of Lynton, just above Lynmouth, while the Barnaby Inn may well be based on the charming harbourside inn The Rising Sun.  The only part of the scene described which doesn’t ring true to me is the reference to the “stranger-shy” locals.

Harbourside, with the Rising Sun

Devil’s Cleave must surely be the fictional equivalent of East Lyn Valley whose river tumbles down to the sea from Exmoor, although in an interview with the author of The Secret of Crickley Hall, James Herbert, he reveals that what he had in mind was a valley near his Sussex home called Devil’s Dyke.  As for Crickley Hall itself, which turns out to be a hotbed of supernatural phenomena, there is no particular building in Lynmouth that inspired it, but one can easily imagine such a pile lying alongside the river, where there are a number of impressive properties from the Victorian era lording it over the valley.

The 'boulder-strewn' river and the start of the East Lyn Valley

As well as the village and its surrounding landscape, The Secret of Crickley Hall manages to weave through the story two features of Lynmouth’s history.  During the war, Lynmouth played host to wartime evacuees from the big cities.  In the novel Crickley Hall is used to house some of the evacuees.  Several years later, in 1952, Lynmouth experienced a devastating flood which killed 34 people.  In the novel this event is moved back in time to 1943, with many of the evacuated children among the dead.  The horrors the Caleighs are met with at Crickley Hall are born of this event, with the spirits of the children haunting the property, along with the ghost of the sadistic Augustus Cribben, who subjected them to beatings and starvation.

In 2012 the Secret of Crickley Hall was dramatised for TV, but Devon was nowhere to be seen in the TV version.  Crickley Hall itself was represented by Bowden Hall in Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire.

The real-life Hollow Bay, Lynmouth, is a reassuringly charming and quiet seaside village.  Attractions on offer to visitors include the Victorian cliff railway linking it to the clifftop town of Lynton.  The walk up the valley to Watersmeet is popular with walkers, who are rewarded for their efforts with a pleasant National Trust tearoom with a garden overlooking the rushing river.  Another gorge accessible to visitors (for a fee) is the Glen Lyn Gorge, where among other points of interest is an indication of the 1952 flood level mark.  See my other blog Postcards From The Edge for a write-up on Lynmouth.

Map of the area.