St Michael´s Mount of Devon
When one
visits the excellent beaches of the South Hams by Thurlestone and Bigbury one
can see a rock rising out of the sea impressively only a few hundred meters or
so out; a distance which becomes much shorter at low tide when it is possible
to walk across the sands to the small island or alternatively ride in the
converted tractor-come-trailer specially designed to wade through the incoming
and outgoing tides. Visitors today are probably unaware that they are looking
at, or walking to, the St. Michael's mount of Devonshire. The name St Michael´s has long been
forgotten and has been replaced progressively over the last four hundred years by
Burgh Island. At first glance its modern name seems probably derived from the old
English beorg meaning mountain, hill or mound rather than from burg or
burh meaning fortified place as there are no signs of fortification and no
references to anything except a chapel and a pub[i] throughout
the island's long history. But although today the island is Burgh Island, and
was advertised for sale as such when it was put on the market in 1984, it has a
long and ancient pedigree.
While researching for my cartobibliography of Devon maps[ii] was intrigued that there was this strange island off the South Hams called St. Michael's and originally thought it must be an error for the mount off the coast of Cornwall. Saxton included the island on his map of Devonshire in 1575, alluding almost certainly to the long-lost monastic chapel and as will be seen below this began a long tradition. There is a symbol of a chapel on the rock. According to records there was a family de Burgh which is mentioned as having land in South Devon (including a castle at Plympton) as well as owning the Isle of Wight and later records of 1411 mention a chapel of St. Michael de la Burgh.[iii] There is another story that a Cornish branch of the Burgh family obtained the land in the Bigbury area through marriage in the early 14th century. The chapel may well have been built by them, hence the name.
Figs. 1a & 1b. Details showing St
Michael´s as depicted by Saxton c.1575. Above from the County Map, below from his map of England & Wales.
However, it
is far from certain that the chapel referred to was still standing at the time
that Saxton drew his famous map. Nevertheless, from Saxton's time the island
was faithfully recorded in all larger maps as St. Michael's; Speed, Jansson and
Blaeu all faithfully recorded the chapel, followed in their wake by Blome and
Morden (for his Britannia). All the maps produced which were not miniature
included it. In 1701 Morden's smaller map was printed and for the first time
the island is called St. Michael's Rock, and this was copied by Owen and Bowen
in 1720.
Fig. 3. St
Michael´s Rock depicted by Owen & Bowen 1720.
Collectors note: the last horizontal bar after income denotes a first state.
It was
Hermann Moll in 1724 who first introduced an antecedent of the more modern name onto his map: Barr
Island appears for the first time alongside the traditional name of St. Michael's.
All maps derived from Moll continued to include both names side by side
(although sometimes spelt Bar), for example, Seale's map of 1732 and the Read
and Walker maps (both 1743). However, those still copying earlier maps kept to
St. Michael's.
Figs. 4a & 4b. St
Michael´s and Barr Island depicted by Moll 1724 with detail below.
Badeslade and
Toms in 1741 were the first to remove St. Michael's completely; they have
simply Barr I (added in 1742). This improvement was only copied by Kitchin
& Jefferys; the followers of Moll who included Bowen, Kitchin (who used St.
Michael's together with Barr Island in his map of 1769 for his Pocket Atlas),
Ellis, Hogg/Walpole (engraved by Hatchett) and Lodge all continued to use St. Michael's
with various spellings.
Fig. 5. Barr Island
depicted by Badeslade & Toms revised map 1742.
However, in
the meantime, Benjamin Donn's large-scale (1" to 1 mile) map, produced in
1765, was the first to introduce yet another name, although this name, too, was
reminiscent of older times.[iv]
He identified the island as Borough or Bur I. It was about this time that a shipping
disaster occurred which put this area of the coast in the limelight. In 1760
the Ramillies, a 74-gun frigate, went aground on the cliffs at Bolt Tail,
one mile south-east., with 734 men on board. There were only 26 survivors who managed
to leap from the stern of the ship and scramble onto the rocks to safety. It was
still called Ramillies Cove into the late 1800s.
Fig. 6. Borough
Island appears as depicted by Donn 1765.
Nevertheless,
with the exception of Cary (in his New and Correct Atlas of 1787 — Bur I.) all
large maps included St. Michael’s I. as late as 1788 when Lodge produced his
map of Devonshire, the last one to include St. Michael’s. In 1789 Cary,
probably using Donn as his source, referred to the alternative names and Borough
or Burr I. is found for the first time for over 30 years.
John Cary had
produced a set of maps to accompany a new translation of William Camden’s
history of Great Britain, Britannia, which was first published in 1586, seven
years after Saxton’s map appeared in atlas form. In Camden’s words:
Where
Avon’s waters with the sea are mixt,
St.
Michael firmly on a rock is fixt.
Cary’s maps,
based on original and up-to-date material, helped to establish these new names
although in 1864 S. P. Fox calls it St. Michael’s Rock, now called Burrow,
or Burr Island.[v]
She relates that her grandfather had erected accommodation for picnic parties
on the island. By the time of writing the structure was so in ruins that a coastguard
believed it had been an old watchtower for use during the (Napoleonic?) war.
Burrow Island probably referred to the countless rabbits that abounded.
The eighteenth-century
guide books are often too small to include much local information and it is the
nineteenth century guides which tell us something of the history of the island.
Richard John King[vi]
tells us that: Burr Island was once crowned with a chapel dedicated to St. Michael,
and more recently used as a station for the pilchard fishery. It is about ten acres
in extent, and connected with the mainland at low water. The sands are rich in
minute shells, which may sometimes be gathered in handfuls; and on the island, the
wild squill (scilla verna) is so abundant that in the season of flowering the ground
has the appearance of being overspread with patches of blue carpet. There are
no remains of the old chapel.
A later
edition goes on to announce that a tea house had been erected on the site of
the chapel.’ Previous editions of Murray’s Handbook had only referred to
Bur Island. The reference to Burgh Island is intriguing. But being local and an
ardent historian King probably had access to a wealth of material as well as to
local oral tradition.[vii] Murray
included maps by Walker, WA.K. Johnston and Bartholomew between 1850 and 1895
and all have Burr Island which was the name given in the original first series
Ordnance Survey of 1809 and successive editions.
Fig. 9. Burr Island
as shown by Walker in Murray´s Handbook c.1850.
Twenty years
later J. L. W. Page wrote two very good guides to Devon and from these we learn
that Borough, or Burr Island as it is called in the soft, slurring speech of Devon
. . . is the principal feature seaward. It rises from the water to the height
of about 100 feet, scarped boldly down on the western side, but on the eastern
descending in grassy slopes. At one time a chapel to St. Michael stood upon the
summit, but this has long since disappeared, and the tea house which occupied its
site has nearly crumbled away, too. The only building upon the island is a
public house. As it was unapproachable except by boat, at high water, and in a
district sparsely populated, it is not remarkable that it did not pay, and it
is now deserted. So, with the exception of the rabbits and a few sheep, the
island is uninhabited.[viii]
In the companion volume to this Page writes in very disparaging tones of the
tea house and pub: For the walls on the site of the chapel are those of a tea
house — 0 tempora, 0 Mores! — and if that were not enough there is a public
house down below[ix]
Perhaps this is a little unfair as the pub too has a pedigree; the Pilchard Inn
is said to date back to the fourteenth century. Page also recounts the story of
a famous shipwreck in Bigbury Bay that took place in 1772 which gives an indication
of the friendly welcome a visitor could expect from the locals. The Chantaloupe,
on the way back from the West Indies, ran aground. There could have been two
survivors but one of these happened to be a rich woman whose body was washed up
wearing all her jewellery. The local people stripped her, cut off her fingers
to get the rings and slit her ears in order to secure the fatal jewellery. It
was only the digging of a dog that later revealed the body and a compassionate
villager had the lady buried in a neighbouring churchyard. Page mentions that
three of the villains in the story met untimely ends but does not go into
detail. According to Murray[x]
the celebrated Whig writer and political philosopher, Edmund Burke (1729-97),
visited the area fearing that relatives of his were victims of the disaster and
stayed at Bowringsleigh, one of the large houses in the area.
Fig. 10. Borough Island appears on Bartholomew´s hugely popular half-inch maps from 1895.
The area
around the mouth of the Avon, where Burgh Island nestles, is steeped in
history. In 1953 Aileen Fox was able to identify sherds of pottery from
imported amphorae as belonging to the era known as the Dark Ages and suggested
the possibility of this area before the island as a trading centre. She also
notes in passing an indirect reference to tin trading circa the year 611 in a
life of St John the Almsgiver.[xi]
One wonders
what Page would have made of the later history of the island. It is not known at which precise point the island became Burgh Island but certainly by the mid-1920s. In 1929 a hotel
was built just above the pub. The Burgh Island Hotel must have been a glamorous
venue in the 1930s and visitors included Lord Mountbatten, Noel Coward and
Agatha Christie. Even royalty was not missing: Edward and Mrs Simpson are reported
to have stayed there. The swimming pool was a natural inlet of the sea with a
platform in the middle that converted into a bandstand where Harry Roy and his
Mayfair Four played. However, by the early 1980s this, too, was more of a ruin
than a hotel. Attempts to convert to Timeshare failed and the property was on
the market for £650,000 in 1984.[xii]
Fig. 11. The
most expensive Devon Cream Tea at Burgh Island in 1995.
Francis Bennett and his wife with the then owner Tony Porter with the author´s family.
In 1986 the
hotel and most of the island was bought by Beatrice and Tony Porter. They spent
a great deal of time and money on renovating and refurbishing the hotel. They attempted
to recreate the heyday atmosphere of the 1930s and went to great lengths to
furnish the 13 luxury self-contained suites. Very little of the original
fittings and furniture survived but no one would notice that visiting it today.
The present owner, Giles Fuchs, jokingly reported to the news that he had paid just £3.50 to buy the island with hotel using pennies he had found behind his sofa.[xiii] Once again the hotel has undergone refurbishing - reputedly at a cost of approx. £1 million - and accommodation can now be booked with rooms costing upwards of £680. One of the management’s first moves was to make the Pilchard Inn open to non-residents – sure to be a popular move!
NOTES and SOURCES of ILLUSTRATIONS
[i] The
Pilchard Inn; pilchard fishing and curing was an important industry. In the
pilchard season the summit would have made a good place to watch for the telltale
ripples on the surface of the sea.
[ii] Printed
Maps of Devonshire; 2000 and 2010; K. Batten and Francis
Bennett.
[iii] The
Place Names of Devon, Gover, Mawer & Stenton,
Cambridge, 1931.
[iv] Ibid;
the authors note that the Deputy Keeper’s Reports of 1667 name Boro’ Island.
[v] Kingsbridge
Estuary, S. P. Fox, 1864.
[vi] Murray’s
Handbook : Devon, Cornwall, John Murray, 1872.
[vii] Murray’s
Handbook : Devon, John Murray, 1895.
[viii] Coasts
of Devon, Warden Page, Seeley & Co., 1894.
[ix] Rivers
of Devon, Warden Page, Seeley & Co., 1893.
[x] Murray’s
Handbook : Devon, Cornwall, John Murray, 1872.
[xi] See Aileen Fox; Some Evidence for a Dark Age Trading Site at Bantham
…; Antiquarian Journal Vol. 35; 1955; especially pagesc62 and 64.
[xii] The
Times, Tuesday June 26th, 1984.
[xiii] In an
interview for DevonLive: Burgh Hotel Bought for Pennies; May, 1, 2018; see
their website at www.devonlive.com.
All images are from the author´s private collection unless otherwise stated.
Two images
from a DevonLive article (see the complete article at https://www.devonlive.com/news/business/burgh-island-bought-with-pennies-1520038.
The famous sea tractor will still deliver guests to the island
Image of
Burgh Island Hotel and the Pilchard Inn from Great British Life. See their
article Meet the Owner of the Best Hotel “west of the Ritz”, July 2020; https://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/homes-and-gardens/places-to-live/burgh-island-hotel-owner-giles-fuchs-tells-how-he-fell-7282242
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