LITERARY PUBS: THE NEW INN, CLOVELLY

It is amazing how often Charles Dickens’ name crops up when I am researching literary pubs.  The New Inn in Clovelly is one of the many hostelries visited by the writer during his lifetime.  He supped there in 1860, and he renamed the village Steepways when writing about it for the magazine All the Year Round.

Other authors who visited the inn include Sir Walter Raleigh, who stayed there on his honeymoon, Charles Kingsley and Josephine Tozier.  Tozier produced a book named Among English Inns and included a piece about the New Inn, describing it as “a doll’s inn”, "perfectly proportioned" and stuffed with breakable china objects. 

The New Inn is one of two inns in the pretty North Devon village of Clovelly, which is subject to an entrance charge.  For the first-time visitor it is immediately apparent why Dickens named the village Steepways, as the main street running through the village is so steep that coming back up necessitates frequent stops for breath, even for the fittest.  However, it is well worth the visit, both for the village itself and for the wonderful views along the coast.

Clovelly, The New Inn (10857529533). Photo courtesy of National Media Museum, via Wikimedia Commons.

WHEN IS CORNWALL NOT CORNWALL? REBECCA 2020

 

I read Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca for the first time this year during lockdown.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I found it to be one of the most amazing stories ever written.  Inevitably, such a famous novel found its way to the big and small screen, most famously in 1940 with Laurence Olivier playing the tragic Mr de Winter and Joan Fontaine playing his socially awkward second wife, struggling to step into the footsteps of the first Mrs de Winter, the Rebecca of the title. Shortly after I read the novel I learned that a new version was to be released, with Armie Hammer playing opposite Lily James, and with Kristin Scott Thomas as the forbidding head housekeeper Danvers.

 

I rushed to watch this new version, in anticipation of seeing some familiar scenes from my native Cornwall,  However, it turns out that just about anywhere other than Cornwall was used for the locations (at least the film used UK locations, unlike the 1940 version, which was largely filmed in California). 

 

As in the original, the film kicks off in the South of France, but the hotel suite occupied by the dreadful Mrs Van Hopper and the “new Mrs de Winter-to-be” is not in France at all, but was filmed at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, which has a suitably chateau-like appearance.  The Manor was built by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild in 1877 as a summer bolt-hole for entertaining.

                                  Waddesdonterrace. Photo by Giano, via Wikimedia Commons.

The first glimpse of Manderley as the newly weds drive up to the property was filmed at Cranborne Manor, midway between Wimborne Minster and Salisbury.  The great entrance hall where the couple are greeted by the servants was filmed at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, which was also used for a pivotal point in the story when Mrs de Winter mark 2 is tricked into choosing an ill-advised costume for the summer ball she and Max are hosting at Manderley.  The painting which provides the inspiration for the outfit is in real life a portrait of Mrs Hugh Hammersley, which is to be found in Hatfield House.  The Persian rugs and wood panelled walls seen in the interior scenes were also from Hatfield.    

 

Cranborne Manor - geograph.org.uk - 1223951.  Photo by Mike Searle, via Wikimedia Commons.

As Mrs de Winter is seen exploring Manderley, there are many works of art in view.  Some of these are from the interior of Petworth House, West Sussex, which was used for some of the scenes.  Meanwhile, for Rebecca’s wing of Manderley, which has been kept as a shrine to her by Danvers, we are transported to Dorset, to Mapperton House, which is also where the accident with the precious porcelain was filmed.  The East Wing bedrooms, however, are from Loseley House near Guildford.

In the ‘downstairs’ part of Manderley, where the servants hang out, we see the basement kitchen and the corridors leading to and from it.  The kitchen area of Osterley House in the London Borough of Hounslow was used for these scenes, with some crockery and food items added in to complete the scene.  Osterley House also provided the stables for the scene in which Mrs de Winter was persuaded to try her hand at horse riding by Rebecca’s cousin, Jack Favell (Sam Riley). 

 

                                 Osterley Park 800. Photo by Sannse, via Wikimedia Commons.

For me, the biggest disappointment of the filming locations, given the gorgeousness of the Cornish coast, is that the coastal scenes were filmed outside the county, specifically at Hartland Quay, North Devon, recognisable from its unusual rock formations.

 

                Hartland Quay - panoramio (3). Photo by Matt Prosser, via Wikimedia Commons.

Waddesdon Manor is about five miles north-west of Aylesbury and is open to visitors, with advance booking only during the coronavirus pandemic.  The beautiful grounds include an aviary housing a range of exotic birds.  The house is a repository for an extensive collection of art, in particular 18^th century French pieces, this being a favourite period of the Rothschilds. 

Cranborne Manor, just outside the village of Cranborne, is notable for its gardens, originally from a design by John Tradescant in the 17^th century and rediscovered in the 19^th century, then replanted in the Arts and Crafts style a century later.  Visitors to the gardens also have access to a cafe and a shop.  Hatfield House, dating from 1611 and owned by the Cecil family for 400 years, has been used extensively in filming.  The house and gardens are open to visitors except for the winter season, when only the park and woodland walks, the cafe and shops are open. 

Petworth House is on the edge of the small town of Petworth, West Sussex.  This vast 17^th century house and its grounds are run by the National Trust.  Works of art on display in the state rooms include paintings by Van Dyck, Turner, Reynolds and Gainsborough.  Mapperton House is near Beaminster in Dorset and is the home of the Earl and Countess of Sandwich.  Both the house and gardens are open to visitors.  Loseley Park lies just beyond the southern edge of Guildford, Surrey.  The gardens are open to visitors in the summer, and the property is also available for weddings.  In normal, non-covid, times the house can be visited on guided tours.

Osterley Park and House, run by the National Trust, lies between the M4 and the Great West Road just a few miles east of Heathrow Airport.  The house is in the neo-classical style, designed by Robert Adam and is surrounded by landscaped parklands and gardens.  Hartland Quay is at the western extreme of the North Devon coast, known for its rough seas during the winter months, which have been responsible for many shipwrecks over the years.  The distinctive layered rocks seen in the film are sedimentary rocks deposited during the Carboniferous period.

THE REAL SOLDIER ISLAND: AGATHA CHRISTIE/BURGH ISLAND, DEVON

In January 2016 I blogged about an Agatha Christie special which aired between Christmas and New Year 2015.  It was a TV adaptation of And Then There Were None, a murder mystery based around an island called Soldier Island.  In the TV version an island off the south coast of Cornwall was used to depict Soldier Island, but Christie’s real inspiration for her crime story was Burgh Island off the south Devon coast.

Unlike the island of the story, Burgh Island is accessible at low tide from the beach at Bigbury-on-Sea.  There is a hotel on the island, and a pub, and visitors can get to the island via a strip of sand stretching from the mainland.  However, even at high tide a boat is not necessary, thanks to the ingenious “sea tractor”, a passenger vehicle which is high enough to stay above the surface of the water as it takes people across.

Burgh Island sea tractor. Photo by DeFacto, via Wikimedia Commons.

It is no surprise that Agatha Christie had Burgh Island in mind when writing her story, as she herself spent a lot of time at the island’s hotel, so much so in fact that a retreat was built for her.  The Beach House was built in the 1930s, and it was here that she wrote And Then There Were None.  The unit is now available as a luxury unit within the Burgh Island hotel complex.

The hotel has a star-studded history, having started life as a wooden house built by the music hall star George H Chirgwin for hosting weekend parties.  Its later incarnation as a more substantial Art Deco building was down to the film-maker Archibald Nettlefold, who bought it in 1927. 

View of the island from Bigbury-on-Sea

During its heyday, Burgh Island was visited by many famous names.  Noel Coward came for a three-night stay, but this turned into three weeks.  Other luminaries who have paid a visit over the years  include the Beatles, who stayed there when playing a concert in Plymouth, and Josephine Baker.  The hotel was even graced by royalty, in the form of Edward Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson, and Lord Mountbatten, second cousin once removed of the Queen.  The hotel also hosted a meeting between Churchill and Eisenhower in the run-up to the D-Day landings.

Needless to say, a stay at Burgh Island does not come cheap, but if you are feeling a bit flush and are a fan of Art Deco, a stay at Burgh Island is a must, not only for its sumptuous period decor but also the sea views from the rooms.

Map of the area.

A SLICE OF HEAVEN IN DEVON: SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

Whenever there is an adaptation of a Jane Austen novel on the big or small screen, one thing can be certain: the locations will inevitably feature some of Britain’s finest stately properties. 

The property which kicks off the story in the 1995 film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, directed by Ang Lee, is the fictional Norland Park in Sussex, which is left by a dying father to his son, but due to the rules of inheritance the three daughters Elinor, Marianne and Margaret and their mother (Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Emilie Francois and Gemma Jones) are left with next to nothing.  Worse still, they are forced to move out of their lovely family home, while the son and his wife John and Fanny (James Fleet and Harriet Walter) move in.  The mother and daughters are offered accommodation by a cousin, but it is a bit of a come-down, being just a ‘cottage’ in the depths of Devon, albeit in a heavenly rural setting near the coast.

The real-life version of Norland Park is Saltram House near Plymouth, a Grade I listed George II era mansion, while the cottage, Barton Cottage in the story, is Efford House on the Flete Estate, which actually is in Devon in real life, again near Plymouth.  The waterside scenes set near the cottage were also filmed in Devon, at the mouth of the River Erme.  However, the exterior of Barton Park, the wider estate where the cottage is located, is actually further east in Wiltshire, where the scenes were shot at Trafalgar Park, between the city of Salisbury and the northern edge of the New Forest.

Efford House - geograph.org.uk - 292694. Photo by Derek Harper, via Wikimedia Commons.

Another striking property in Devon, which is seen at a distance as a large grey mass of architectural splendour surrounded by sloping green fields, is the Combe Magna estate, owned by love interest John Willoughby (Greg Wise).  In real life this is a fortified manor house called Compton Castle near the resorts of Torbay.  The manor house dates from the 1400s and was connected to Sir Walter Raleigh.  Still in Devon, the wedding scene at the end was filmed at St Mary’s Church in the village of Berry Pomeroy near Totnes.

Compton Castle in Devon enh. Photo by Smalljim, via Wikimedia Commons.

One of the most dramatic scenes in the film comes towards the end, when Marianne suffers a life-threatening illness, to the distress of Captain Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman), who has developed a soft spot for her.  She falls ill while visiting the estate owned by a couple in the Dashwoods’ social circle called the Palmers (Imelda Staunton and Hugh Laurie).  This magnificent property is the real-life Montacute House near Yeovil in Somerset, a late Elizabethan mansion with manicured lawns and gardens.

                                                                      Montacute House. 

Mid-way through the film we are transported to London, where many well-to-do people in Jane Austen’s time had their “London base” in addition to their country properties.  The London abode of the dreadful Fanny Dashwood and her husband John is represented by a house in Adam Street, WC2, while Chandos House in Queen Anne Street is the home of the Palmers.  However, the Chelsea home of the ebullient Mrs Jennings (Elizabeth Spriggs) is not in London, but in Salisbury, in reality the 18^th century Mompesson House in the Cathedral Close.

Most of the properties featured in the film are open to visitors.  Saltram, Compton Castle, Montacute House and Mompesson House are run by the National Trust.  Trafalgar Park is privately owned, but can be used for events and weddings.  Meanwhile, for anyone wanting to immerse themselves fully in the Dashwoods’ idyllic life in Devon, Efford House is available as a holiday let.

WHAT THE BUTLER SAW: THE REMAINS OF THE DAY, DARLINGTON HALL

It is a long time since I read The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, but I still remember how impressed I was by the authenticity of the dialogue of the period in which it was set, all the more so given the Japanese origins of the writer.  The focus of the story is Darlington Hall, where the butler James Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) and housekeeper Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson) develop a slow-burning relationship against the backdrop of the pre-war years (Lord Darlington is a Nazi sympathiser, a fact which Stevens turns a blind eye to).



As is so often the case in films, the scenes involving Darlington Hall were shot in a number of different properties, scattered between Gloucestershire, Devon and Wiltshire.  The scenes showing the driveway and exterior of the mansion were shot at the National Trust property Dyrham Park in Gloucestershire.  Also in Gloucestershire, nearby Badminton House was used for the scenes involving the servants’ quarters.  Some of the outside scenes were also filmed here, such as the scene where Stevens’ father (Peter Vaughan) suffers a fall and where Reginald Cardinal (Hugh Grant) is found having a sneaky cigarette.

At Dyrham Park 2018 020.  Photo by Mike Peel, via Wikimedia Commons

The county of Devon plays its part in the form of Powderham Castle on the estuary of the River Exe, which was used for the Blue Staircase, hall, master bedroom and music room.  The scene at the end featuring the trapped pigeon was also filmed there under the domed ceiling.  Corsham Court in Wiltshire, meanwhile, provided the library and dining room scenes, including the scene of the conference in the ‘Cabinet Room’.

Powderham Castle, east side-geograph-4066229-by-Stephen-Craven, via Wikimedia Commons

Dyrham Park is just off the A46 and to the south of the M4, handy for anyone staying in Bath.  The house, with treasures including a collection of Dutch Masters, dates from the 17^th century and the grounds include a deer park.  The Badminton Estate is to the east of the A46 a little further north, and is famous for its annual Horse Trials.  Visits to the house and gardens are available by special arrangement for group tours.  The estate has a history stretching back centuries: it was mentioned in the Domesday Book as ‘Madmintune’, and the grounds incorporate the remains of several Roman Villas.



Powderham Castle, just off the west bank of the mouth of the River Exe, is open from March to the beginning of November.  There are a number of special events held during the year, such as a Food Festival and the Two Moors Festival of classical music.  The original structure was built in the late 14^th century by the 2^nd Earl of Devon, but much of the present-day building dates from the 18^th century.  Corsham Court is open daily during summer but at weekends only in winter, closing in December.  It is a handsome country house built in the typical honey-coloured stone of the area, and the parkland surrounding it was designed by the prolific landscape designer Capability Brown.  The history of the estate dates back to Saxon times, when it was reputedly the seat of Ethelred the Unready.

Corsham Court. Photo by Hugh McKechnie, via Wikimedia Commons

Map of Dyrham Park

Map of Badminton Estate

Map of Powderham Castle

Map of Corsham Court

WHEN IS GUERNSEY NOT GUERNSEY? THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL SOCIETY

A seemingly inoffensive little film about post-war Guernsey and a writer who takes an interest in what it was like during the occupation has become the unlikely focus of a spat between the island and a Devon aristocrat.  The trouble has arisen because the island of Guernsey is gleefully cashing in on the film, which has enraged the owner of Hartland Abbey in North Devon, where much of the filming took place.  Some scenes were also shot in nearby Clovelly, a picturesque village famous for its steep main street leading down to a pretty harbour.  The corner of North Devon featured in the film is missing out on its share of the publicity, hence the outrage.

So let’s take a look at the actual locations used in the film.  Hartland Abbey is a former monastery dating from the 12^th century, and it sits in beautiful grounds including glorious gardens.  The present-day building bears no resemblance to the original monastery, the remains of which can be seen in the basement.  As well as the Abbey itself, there are wonderful grounds to explore.  This time of year is particularly good being bluebell time, as the woodland walk going down towards the sea is redolent with bluebells.  Earlier in the year the Abbey holds a ‘Daffodil Day’ to celebrate the appearance of the yellow lovelies.

Hartland Abbey - panoramio - PLMarriott. Photo by PJMarriott, via Wikimedia Commons

Clovelly is a privately owned village, which unfortunately means having to pay an entrance fee to go in.  However, the fee does include parking, and it would be a shame to miss out on this delightful place when visiting the area.  On the way down you pass the Donkey Stables, donkeys being a longstanding feature of the village, having been used in the past to transport fish from the harbour.  The writer Charles Kingsley, author of The Water Babies, used to live in the village, and there is a museum dedicated to him.  For refreshment there are a couple of pubs and some tea rooms, or at the top next to the entrance area there is a cafe with wonderful views along the North Devon coast.

Clovelly harbour (0942). Photo by Nilfanion, via Wikimedia Commons

Other North Devon locations which feature in the film include the nearby town of Bideford and Saunton Sands, which was used for a scene in which a Dakota aircraft comes in to land.

Map of Hartland Abbey.

Map of Clovelly.

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.

FROM BIDEFORD TO THE SPANISH MAIN: WESTWARD HO!

Those who have holidayed on the North Devon coast may be familiar with the small resort bearing the only place name in the country with an exclamation mark: Westward Ho!  For bookworms, meanwhile, the name will call to mind a 19^th century novel by the author Charles Kingsley about an expedition to the Spanish Main.  Confusingly, the early part of the novel is set, not in the eponymous resort, but in nearby Bideford, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.   Property developers of the time who were planning to build a resort around the Northam Burrows Hotel and Villa Building Company decided to capitalise on the success of the novel by christening the resulting village Westward Ho!  The “Ho!” part of the name derives from an expression used by water taxis on the Thames, who used to yell “Eastward Ho!” or “Westward Ho!” to indicate where they were going.

Bideford from Seven Oaks. Photo by Nilfanion, via Wikimedia Commons

The main inspiration for the story was drawn from the exploits of the Elizabethan corsair Amyas Preston, whose name was changed to Amyas Leigh in the novel.  Preston set sail for the New World with such luminaries as Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh.  Probably his best known exploit occurred in 1595 when he led an expedition alongside naval hero George Somers – known as the Preston Somers Expedition or the Capture of Caracas.  The expedition members made an arduous trek through the mountains of the Spanish-held Province of Venezuela before capturing Caracas from the Spanish forces.  It was this expedition which formed the basis of the Westward Ho! story.

Bideford is described by Kingsley as “the little white town of Bideford, which slopes upwards from its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands”.  Nowadays the white is interspersed with more recent red brick buildings, such as the Town Hall built in 1850 and the Police Station.  Kingsley recalls how the port “furnished seven ships to fight the Armada”.  A reminder of that time exists in Victoria Park, where eight cannons known as the Armada Guns are on display.  The guns were discovered when the quay was being widened in 1890, having been used as mooring posts.  In Chapter XII Kingsley turns his attention to the Bideford bridge, which he describes as “the very omphalos, cynosure, and soul, around which the town, as a body, has organised itself”.  The bridge was begun in 1280 as a wooden structure graced with two chapels and a large cross in the centre.  The bridge was subsequently rebuilt in stone and widened, and now stands at 677 feet long with 24 arches.  In 1968 a part of the bridge collapsed, causing much disruption due to the diversions which had to be put in place.

Bideford Old Bridge - geograph.org.uk - 36235. Photo by John Spivey, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the main characters in the novel is Sir Richard Grenville, a local nobleman, who is the godfather of the main character.  He is described as looking Spanish more than English, with “the nose long, aquiline, and delicately pointed”, and with “the mouth fringed with a short silky beard”.  The real life Sir Richard Grenville was born at Buckland Abbey in Devon, but evidently grew up in Bideford.  There are a number of reminders of him around the town, such as a housing development known as Grenville Place and a whitewashed building known as the Grenville Manor House.  There used to be a Grenville College, but it closed in 2009.

Visitors to Bideford who want to find out about the town's history should look in on the Burton Art Gallery and Museum, which has displays on the town's heritage.  Other attractions in the town include the day trips to Lundy Island and the Pannier Market. 

The River Torridge by Victoria Park - geograph.org.uk - 1392930. Photo by Steve Daniels, via Wikimedia Commons

Map of the area.

SHIPS AHOY! THE ONEDIN LINE: DARTMOUTH AND GLOUCESTER

One of the best drama series to hit our TV screens in the 1970s was The Onedin Line, which charted the fortunes of a 19^th century shipping line.  The stirring theme music set the scene for this maritime epic, starring the late Peter Gilmore as James Onedin and Anne Stallybrass as his wife Anne, which gave a fascinating insight into seafaring life at the time, both at sea and on shore.  The shore base of the shipping line was meant to be Liverpool, but much of the filming took place in Dartmouth, while many of the dock scenes were filmed in Gloucester Docks (moving to Pembroke Dock for the last series).  Dartmouth’s historic riverfront, with its reminders of the town’s seafaring past, made a convincing backdrop for the filming of a story set during this period, while the massive 19^th century waterside warehouses of Gloucester Docks, overlooked by the majestic tower of Gloucester Cathedral, served equally well for the shore-based scenes.

The action filmed in Dartmouth centred around Bayards Cove and the surrounding picturesque streets.  The 16^th century fort at Bayards Cove was used as a gun emplacement intended as an additional line of defence to the Dartmouth and Kingswear castles, which face each other at the mouth of the Dart.  The fort was deliberately sited at the narrowest point of the channel forming the entrance to the harbour.  In the period leading up to the construction of the fort, Dartmouth had developed into an important trading port, serving the wine trade with France, and later on the cloth trade.  The town went into a decline in the 18^th century, and with it the fort, but its fortunes were revived with the opening of the Naval College and the town’s popularity as a tourist destination.  The fort is now owned by English Heritage, who also own the castle.  

Dartmouth's waterfront

As well as the town’s historic sights, Dartmouth’s main appeal is its beautiful river.  Boat trips are available, some of them linking Dartmouth with Totnes, an attractive market town further upstream.  There is a steam railway on the Kingswear side of the estuary offering trips to Paignton, and tickets combining this with the boat trips are available.  The town itself is an appealing mix of pubs, restaurants, cafes and shops.  Dartmouth Museum is housed in the row of houses known as The Butterwalk, built in the 1630s as merchants’ trading houses.  

Dartmouth Castle

It was the 1827 opening of the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal, linking the city to the mouth of the River Severn and the Bristol Channel beyond, which led to Gloucester taking off as a trading port in the 19^th century.  The docks’ facilities steadily grew during the course of the century, with the arrival of the railway in the 1840s providing a further fillip.  By the second half of the century goods were being imported from Northern Europe and the Black Sea ports, and even as far afield as North America and the Russian Arctic.  The produce reaching our shores via Gloucester ranged from timber to wines and spirits and even guano for fertiliser.  In the early 20^th century steamers began running services from Gloucester to ports on the Continent.  It was the increasing size of many of the vessels which eventually contributed to the decline of the docks.  

Gloucester Docks

Nowadays, it is largely pleasure craft that make use of the facilities, with traditional canal barges rubbing shoulders with river cruisers in the 50-berth marina.  Anyone wanting to relive the glory days and immerse themselves in the Onedin Line experience should visit during the Tall Ships Festival, when visitors get the chance to view these evocative vessels at close quarters.  In the last few years, particularly since last year when the city hosted some of the Rugby World Cup matches, Gloucester Docks has really taken off as a tourist attraction, with Gloucester Quays Outlet shopping centre, a host of bars and restaurants, and a Waterways Museum from where tickets can be purchased for a boat trip along the canal.  There are also a number of other events each year besides the Tall Ships Festival, including a Food Festival, a Sea Shanty Festival and a Victorian Christmas Market.

Map of Dartmouth.

Map of Gloucester.