Dartmoor and Ottery Saint Mary

Asronomical clock at Ottery Saint Mary Parish Church dating from 1472.

Above: Me at Ottery Saint Mary, hometown of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Above: Hound Tor on Dartmoor. We climbed up to the top of those rocks. The wind was so strong I was afraid it would blow us right off.

Above: Hey Tor on Dartmoor with a wild pony grazing in the foreground.

Above: Kitty Jays grave, near the village of Widecombe on Dartmoor.


Okay so I have a few things to wrap up about my time in the Southern part of the country...

My last day there was spent studying poetry with Brian. In every church we had visited up to this point (and there were quite a few), he always made a point to show me the memorials to the 2 world wars that are in virtually every church in England. Although the impact of both world wars was profound, WWI in particular produced a wealth of poetry in England, the bitterness of which could be attributed to the perception that this war was conducted very poorly and at the price of almost a million casualties for the British Empire alone (compared to approx. 300,000 in WWII). Whereas the reasons for going into World War II were more clear cut and justifiable to the English population. Brian thought it was really important that I at least get an introduction to WWI poetry. The most memorable poem for me was Dulce Et Decorum by Wilfred Owen. This poem questions the often quoted saying, “It is a sweet and beautiful thing to die for one's country”. I don't know anyone who could read it and still hold that view. It's hard to say that I like this poem because it offers such a barbaric view of humanity but I guess it is important to be aware of our mortality and capacity for depravity if for no other reason than to be able to appreciate our normal everyday life as a blessing. The poem also arouses a huge amount of sadness and empathy for the experiences of these soldiers. That any person, in any place or time in history, should have to experience such atrocities is a shame.

We also read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner By Samuel Taylor Coleridge as an introduction to the Romantic Poets (Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Milton, etc). I have to admit that I have not exactly developed an appreciation for Romanticism. I probably wouldn't even have understood The Ancient Mariner had Brian not read it out loud and explained everything. But I would be interested in getting to know the genre a little better. The reason we read Coleridge is because his home town, Ottery saint Mary, was close by. So in the afternoon we took a trip there and visited the church where Coleridge would have spent much time.

A few days earlier, we visited Dartmoor. Dartmoor is a national park made up of huge rolling hills with hundreds of granite outcroppings. This place was spectacular! We went there because it was where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Hound of the Baskervilles (a Sherlock Holmes crime novel). We also visited Kitty Jay's Grave which was the inspiration for a short story by John Galsworthy (The Apple Tree). The legend goes that Kitty Jay was an orphan from Newton Abbot working at a nearby farm where she was raped and became pregnant as a result. She was so shamed by the local community and desperate that she hung herself and because her death was a suicide she could not have a church burial and her body was just thrown in a ditch. Years later someone found the bones and reburied them at the intersection of two roads and three local church parishes. According to legend her soul is now protected because the intersection of the two roads form the sign of the cross. Since that time people still come and leave flowers on her grave.