SHOPPING A DRAG IN HISTORIC UK VILLAGE

ONE day in 1736 Kate Lyall donned her wedding dress, stepped out of her seafront cottage in the little English village of Clovelly in Devon, and so-dressed walked along the breakwater separating village and Celtic Sea.

There, to the horror of her mystified neighbours, she simply stepped off into the ocean below, the weight of the voluminous, waterlogged dress dragging her quickly under the surface before they could rush to her rescue.

The tragic Kate had achieved what had long weighed on her tortured mind: to join her husband whom, not so long before from her upstairs window and newly-married, she’d watch drown when a squall capsized his fishing boat just off the breakwater.

Today visitors to Clovelly, one of England’s prettiest and most picture-perfect villages – if somewhat challenging for the less-nimble – can sit at the waterfront Red Lion Inn and ponder the building nearby that’s still officially known 271-years later, as Crazy Kate’s Cottage.

Clovelly’s history is lost in time, but around 1066 William the Conqueror stumbled upon a Saxon chief’s manor there, and with his thing about the Saxons, confiscated the manor and gave it to his wife, the Queen Consort, Matilda.

It was called Cloueleia and over the years became Clovelly. Fisher families built stone homes 120-metres down the rocky, near-45 degree slope to the beach below, where they launched their herring and mackerel boats.

The village is almost Mediterranean-like with white and occasionally pastel-painted houses sporting colourfully overflowing window-boxes, there are several equally quaint shops, a couple of chapels, two pubs and museums, and a few tea houses, all clinging down a single, precipitous and stepped ‘high street’ made from cobble-stones brought up from the beach below.

And making that narrow ‘high street’ even more unique is that fact that it’s probably the only street in the world to have two official names: depending on whether you’re at the top of the bottom, it’s Down-Along Street or Up-Along Street, and is vehicular-traffic-free... the few hundred villagers use either donkeys or hand-sledges to bring in all their needs, and to take out all their detritus.

For centuries after William the Conqueror happened along, Clovelly remained in royal ownership, but in 1738 it was sold to the Hamlyn family that’s maintained it ever since as one of England’s few wholly family-owned communities.

As well as its picturesque shops, amongst other must-see’s while visiting are the Fisherman’s Cottage whose kitchen, sitting room, two bedrooms and attic have been restored and furnished as they would have been in times before, and the Oberammergau Cottage that’s so-named because of its unusual wooden carvings brought from Germany in 1910.

There’s also the Charles Kingsley Museum: the author thought-up the Water Babies to amuse his son while living here, and Westward Ho! in which his character “Will Cary of Clovelly” was based on William Carys, the son of the Sheriff of Devon who built the village breakwater in the 1500s.

(Charles Dickens also based the village of Steepways in his 1892 novel Message from the Sea on Clovelly after a visit there, describing Steepways as “built sheer up the face of a steep and lofty cliff…with no road in it, no wheeled vehicle in it and not a level yard in it…”)

The Visitor Centre includes a fascinating audio-visual, and as well as the Red Lion Inn on the waterfront, at the top of the village is it’s other inn: showing how time means little in Clovelly, although this one was built in the 1600s, it’s still known as The New Inn.

Visitors need stout shoes and reasonable fitness to negotiate the steep, cobble-stoned and at times slippery Clovelly, that’s open from 9am to 5pm daily January to November; entry fees start at 4.95-pounds per adult, with child and family rates. Details www.visitbritain.com.au

TIP: Avoid June to August when coach groups can over-run the village; and if you get to the bottom and Up-Along looks pretty daunting, there’s a man behind the Red Lion Inn has a LandRover, and will take you to the top for a coupla quid.

Clovelly village: www2.clovelly.co.uk

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