Today’s traveller between Kingsbridge and Salcombe has two options: road or water. The former is much the quicker, the route along a well-maintained ‘A’ road normally taking little more than 15 minutes. The latter is for those who are in no hurry, seeking instead a leisurely, relaxing trip through some of the most picturesque scenery to be found anywhere. The road is therefore the everyday means of travel, the water journey is for summertime and meandering visitors.
It has not always been so. Go back 80 years and more and the normal journey between the two towns was by water. When the state of the roads at that time is taken into account, it made sense.
Throughout the country roads were often in what has been described as “a parlous state”. The social historian Roy Porter says that they “were perhaps worse than the Romans had left them”, castigating them as “atrocious”. For centuries they had been pounded by horse’s hoofs, the solid wooden and iron wheels of wagon and carriage had deeply rutted them and, Porter comments, “livestock droves turned them into ribbon dungheaps”. Their hazardous state therefore comes as no surprise.
Some road improvements had been made throughout the 18th century, but as Salcombe was then only an isolated hamlet – the population at the census of 1791 being a mere 271 with about 50 houses – its access route did not warrant much expenditure. Even as late as the early 20th century one report described the country’s roads as still “filthy”, adding that cars “progressed through a sea of mud over surfaces of the most sodden and heavy going character”.
Such conditions were replicated locally, as is clear from a paper a certain Mr A Hingston read to the Kingsbridge Mutual Improvement Society in the early 1880s. Describing the Kingsbridge of 50 years before, including its surrounding routes, he says that the road to Dartmouth, to take but one example, was “fearful”.
The earliest vehicles had solid tyres, with imaginable consequences for passengers’ comfort. When pneumatic tyres first followed the solid sort they often proved too fragile for the load they had to bear and were liable to be punctured on the rough, unmade roads. When they escaped punctures, mechanical parts such as axles broke as a result of violent jolting.
Little wonder that most people opted for a placid journey by water, the Kingsbridge and Salcombe passenger steamers providing just what they needed. In the second half of the 19th century and first decades of the 20th the Salcombe Castle and the Ilton Castle plied between the two towns three or four times daily as the tide allowed. Passengers arriving by train at Kingsbridge and intent on continuing to Salcombe would, so James Fairweather says in his history and guidebook, Salcombe and Neighbourhood edition 3, “find a conveyance in the station yard to take both passengers and luggage to the commodious steamboat”.
At that time the estuary came right up to Prince of Wales Road and near the head was ample quay room not only for the steamers, but also “for the import and export of merchandise of all descriptions” and it was here that steamer passengers would embark and disembark. When the tide was out, the steamers stopped at Highhouse Point, about a mile from the town.
Fairweather says, “The visitor is certain to be delighted with this trip,” going on to describe some of the features passed on the way. The steamers stopped at Halwell Wood to allow those who wished to do so to embark or disembark, “for there is a field path and road from here to South Pool village.”
He notes that Ilbertstow Point on the trip “is the site originally selected for the railway station in connection with the extension of the Kingsbridge Branch Railway, and with a view to the development of the estate the late owner [in the first edition of Salcombe and Neighbourhood published in 1884 Fairweather identifies him as W R Ilbert] cut a road from Lincombe Cross terminating at the Point… It was also proposed to connect Ilbertstow by means of a bridge with the Island.” Arriving at the Salcombe end, steamers made for Custom House quay or, if the tide did not permit this, then the Pier.
When normal travel between Kingsbridge and Salcombe was by water
By John Fairweather-Tall
There was, however, a much earlier service along the estuary, albeit of a more limited kind, provided by owners of small boats plying daily between the two towns. Best known of these was Sarah Stone, known locally as “Poor Sally Stone”, whose full story is a tale on its own. Sally had known better days as the wife of the master of a small vessel, but was widowed when her husband dropped dead on board his ship.
With no Welfare State she was left to depend on her own exertions and, in days before a regular postal service, she undertook small errands between Salcombe and Kingsbridge. Not only did she take letters daily, for which she charged a penny (old money) for each, but so skilfully did she manage her boat that she started taking passengers and parcels too. Such confidence was placed in her integrity that people entrusted her with large sums of money to and from the banks, preferring travelling in her boat to any of the others.
Besides the two options already mentioned for making the journey, road and water, there is in fact a third: walking. In younger days I once did this – only once – when roads were safer with many fewer vehicles on them. I was a theology student at the time, staying for part of my vacation with my grandfather and aunt in Salcombe, and I had been booked to conduct Sunday worship morning and evening at a Kingsbridge church. After the morning service, aware that the bus back to Salcombe was not due for some time, I set off to walk part way until the bus came, and ended up going the whole way. I did not, however, fancy repeating the experience later, after evening worship, opting rather for the comfort of the bus.
Yet Sally began her errand-running by walking to Kingsbridge every day heavily laden with letters, parcels and other missions, and returning each night equally heavily laden. The very next day she would do the same and the next and so on. Only in later years did she use a boat.
Some years after, she was appointed postmistress at the munificent salary of £5 a year when Salcombe’s first Post Office was opened in 1821, her salary later being doubled.
A steamer from Salcombe bound for Kingsbridge, having just left Custom House Quay, while a second waits its turn at its moorings. This scene achieved wide fame as one of a series used by the Great Western Railway in days when individual compartments in carriages boasted glass framed pictures of places the Company served on its routes
A crowded steamer about to leave Custom House Quay bound for Kingsbridge. The smaller advertising board on the side of the sail loft is for fertilizer, and the larger urges, "Read the Evening Herald, smartest evening paper in the provinces, agent, W Thorning", a Salcombe stationer and newsagent
This means of travel lasted for 90 years, from 1841 to 1931. The earlier of these two dates accords with whole-page advertisements taken by the steamboat proprietor, Nicolas March, in the second and third editions of Fairweather’s book, both stating, “Established 1841”.
Minor differences in the two advertisements are of some interest. The steamer Salcombe Castle is common to both, but its companion in the earlier edition is Reindeer, replaced by Ilton Castle in the later edition. The proprietor is simply, “N March, Steamboat Agent and Waterman, Union Street, Salcombe” in the earlier version, but by the later has become, “N March & Co, Steam Boat Proprietors and Goods Agents, 5 Fore Street, Salcombe”. The “Union Street” of the earlier edition and the “Fore Street” of the second denoted not any change of premises, but simply that at the earlier date Union Street began at the foot of Market Street. The later advertisement states, “’Bus in connection with steamers and trains”, but there is no mention of ’bus (an abbreviation for omnibus) in the earlier. Both, however, are adamant that though steamers run daily throughout the year, Sundays are excepted. When the Pier at Salcombe was constructed in 1871, shareholders of the steamer company were among the chief contributors.
As to the date of 1931, this is found in a four-page leaflet printed after the Second World War in which Salcombe photographer Alfred Fairweather, one of James’s sons, up-dates some facts given in his late father’s book, by then over 30 years old. The leaflet says of the steamer service that this “was discontinued in 1931 after a run of over 50 years”.
Nicolas March, pictured in 1909, the year in which he and his wife celebrated their golden wedding anniversary
Photo credits: AE Fairweather