It was said to have been carved from the trunk of a single oak tree and
ornamented in gilt and colours.
The number of screens in the churches near the sea-coast caused us to
wonder whether some of them had been brought by sea from Flanders or
France, as we remembered that our Cheshire hero, and a famous warrior,
Sir Hugh de Calveley, who kept up the reputation of our county by eating
a calf at one meal, and who died about the year 1400, had enriched his
parish church with the spoils of France; but the lovely old oak
furniture, with beautifully figured panels, some containing figures of
saints finely painted, which he brought over, had at a recent
"restoration" (?) been taken down and sold at two pounds per cartload!
We sincerely hoped that such would not be the fate of the beautiful work
at Kenton.
We now came to Star Cross, a place where for centuries there had been a
ferry across the River Exe, between the extreme west and east of Devon.
The rights of the ferry had formerly belonged to the abbots of
Sherborne, who had surmounted the landing-place with a cross, which had
now disappeared. The ferry leads by a rather tortuous passage of two
miles to Exmouth, a town we could see in the distance across the water;
but troublesome banks of sand, one forming a rabbit warren, obstructed
the mouth of the river.
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