Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in excellent bright condition. Some light marking to inside cover due to age. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Stoke Gabriel is one of the prettiest of South Devon villages. It lies on the left bank of the lower reaches of the Dart its houses clustering at the base and clinging to the sides of a hill that rises in curving contours from the river. Looking towards the village from the quay the scene is domi- nated by the tower of the old parish church of St Mary and St Gabriel around which huddle the tombs of many generations of Churchwards and of their Jackson and other relations. Older than all the graves in the churchyard-in fact the oldest thing in all the scenery except for river and hills-is a large and ancient yew tree its great arms now supported by props stretching far out over many of the tombstones. Its age is unknown but expert opinion places it as between 1000 and 1500 years; a tree which was old perhaps hundreds of years old at the time of the Norman Conquest. It could have been old when in about the year 730 a Saxon on the western frontier of Wessex stood beneath it and looked across the Dart to Damnonia the country of his Cornish enemies. It is not known when a church was first raised at this spot on an ancient frontier but one was standing here in 1148. There is a tradition that a Stoke or Stockade was built by a Gabriel Churchward or Cyrceweard (a name which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions in connection with the events of 948) to protect the local church and that he was the first man in the district to be baptised a Christian. The present church is of much more recent construction but even so it antedates the Reforma- tion by many years. Inside the church there is evidence of the long con- nection of the Churchward family with Stoke Gabriel; for in the south wall is a stained glass window below which is a brass plate inscribed. (LL)