Ordinary Folk of Lynton & Lynmouth's Past

ordinary folk

Discover the untold stories of ordinary folk in Lynton and Lynmouth, their vibrant spirit, and their role in shaping this Victorian-era town through the context of the Lyn & Exmoor Museum.

by Nicolas Lovell

Last month I wrote about the wonderful Victorian buildings constructed in Lynton and Lynmouth for wealthy visitors and residents. This month I want to celebrate the ordinary people of the area; those who actually built the extraordinary houses and hotels, who worked in the shops and laundries, and those who fed the people who lived and stayed here.

It is significant that the building which was saved to house the Lyn & Exmoor Museum was not one of the great Victorian villas but instead a cottage where ordinary folk once lived. No one knows much about the people who lived in what was formerly known as St. Vincent’s Cottage, now the museum. It is over 300 years old and goodness knows how many men and women and children have lived there. It is thought that for part of the nineteenth century it was used as the service wing of the much grander St Vincent’s House next door. We also know that in the 1950s it was being used to house two families. At various times fishermen and their families lived there and perhaps at some point it was used to care for babies whose mothers had to work, like a primitive crèche. It was a cottage lived in by people who had to work hard.

It was constructed in the traditional manner. Its walls were built from roughly shaped stone which had been locally quarried; a dirt infilling was used between the stones which were sealed on the outside by lime mortar, which probably came from lime burned in the Lynmouth kilns and mixed with sand from nearby beaches. The timber work was from locally felled trees and it is thought the floorboards on the first floor either came from another house or a ship’s deck. The ground floor was made from lime-ash, which was composed of reeds covered in a mixture of dirt, dung and stone chippings and then covered with lime. The roof of the cottage is unusual in that it is constructed of stone tiles, which are very rare because most roofs of this period would have been thatch.
There was of course no inside toilet and to this day there is no running water inside the cottage. A Victorian pump is located in the front garden. All cooking would have been done on the fireplace and the fire itself might well have been from peat or wood, perhaps coal later in the nineteenth century. Living in the cottage would have been hard, often uncomfortable and cramped; one has to remember that families were large in those days.

Part of the museum’s collection shows how people lived in cottages like this and how Lynton and Lynmouth and the remote surrounding Exmoor villages were virtually self-sufficient. Most food was grown and bred on the local farms or came from the sea. Tradesmen and women of all kinds made everything, from window latches to saddles. A few things were brought overland from Barnstaple or brought into the harbour by ship and I would hazard a guess that the glass for the windows probably came in by ship from Bristol.

The cottage was condemned in the early 1960s as unfit for human occupation and saved for posterity as the Lyn & Exmoor Museum. However, since then it has been a constant battle to maintain this old building. Presently the Trustees are going through the arduous process of applying for an Arts Council grant for hundreds of thousands of pounds so that the old cottage can receive essential work to maintain its roof, walls and interior plaster work, as well as to replace cast iron guttering and window frames that are in such a state of decay that most need replacing.

We also aim to build a new entrance to the museum and improve access for people with disabilities. It’s a tall order but we are trying our best to put the fabric of the building into a good state of preservation and thereby ensure the long term survival of the building and the important collection within.

There are many photographs in our possession of the wonderful scenery round here and tourists enjoying their holidays but not many of the folk who did the work. I was fortunate enough to find one quite recently at the bottom of a box of odds and ends in the museum. It is ripped and damaged but I love the image of the proud workmen with their tools, sitting outside the building they are constructing. It has taken some time to find the back story to this picture but I finally learned that it shows the men who rebuilt Hunter’s Inn (the original Hunter’s Inn burned down because of a thatch fire in 1896) and was taken on the 25th May 1897. I do not yet know the names of any of the men and would be delighted if anyone could help with this.
It is even harder to find pictures of the women who lived and worked here: the ones who worked as servants in the big houses or hotels; those who worked alongside their men in shops; farmers and fishermen’s wives; and those who toiled to care for their large families at a time when all meals had to be prepared from scratch, washing and cleaning had to be done laboriously by hand, alongside unremitting childcare at a time when nothing was disposable.

The photographs of the young women have been lent by David and Bet Wilde, who are descended from generations of local families. These are rare photographs of working women. One shows the staff of the Lynton Cottage Hotel in about 1910; the young woman in the first row on the far right is Edith Laramy Ridd and she was Bet’s grandmother. The photograph of the two smartly dressed young women, probably wearing house maid’s uniform, are Gertude Rumsam and her sister Evelyn. They lived in Croft Cottage, Lydiate Lane. Gertrude went on to marry into the Vellacott family and is David’s grandmother.

There are very few images of people who made their living from the sea. However, the painting shows fishermen returning to Lynmouth in stormy seas in 1870. Waiting for them are the women who would take the catch and then gut and prepare the fish to be eaten, sold or preserved. Fishing for the men was dangerous in high seas. The women’s job was skilled but unpleasant, their hands would have often been red raw and bleeding after they had finished, particularly if they had to salt the fish.

The spirit of hard work, independence and things being made locally by local people lives on to this day. Many of our residents can still trace their ancestry back for generations, one of the few parts of England where this is still the case. In the main their ancestors were ordinary folk who through endeavour, strength and courage helped to build this extraordinary, beautiful place. It’s essential we preserve the museum which tells their story.

Nicholas Lovell

Nicholas Lovell has been visiting Exmoor since 1967 and retired to Lynton a few years ago. He is the Vice Chairman of the Committee responsible for the Lyn & Exmoor Museum.