Three-and-a-half Murchington sisters: Mary, Louisa, Catherine…and little Annie

It’s very likely that at some point when he was leaving or arriving at St Olaves, in the early 1870s, the Rev John Ingle would have noticed the three little girls who lived in a nearby Murchington farmhouse - the three Dicker sisters. Mary, the eldest was born in April 1862, Louisa was just eighteen months younger and born in November 1863 and the little one, Catherine, was born two years later in October 1865.

They are all recorded as living in Murchington in the 1871 census, and we might imagine them in the spring of 1871 skipping along the lane together, Mary aged nine, Louisa aged seven and Catherine aged five.

Perhaps they walked with their father, William Dicker, through Providence and Forder and along Deave Lane to the church in Throwleigh. Or more likely they got dressed up in their Sunday best and had a horse and cart, to take them along the narrow lanes to Church.

Sadly their mother Susan Litton Dicker (née Nickels) had died of consumption in January 1869, she was only 36 years old. William and Susan had married just seven years and one month earlier in Throwleigh Church, on Christmas Day 1861.

Throwleigh Church - Spring 2020

By using the enumerator’s records from the decennial population census we can get some fascinating glimpses into these girls’ lives. We know that in 1871 they lived not just with their father William (age 33) but also with their grandparents John Dicker (age 73 ) and Johanna Dicker (age 66), all born in the parish of Throwleigh. In addition there were two boys lodging with the family – Robert Cann (14) and Alfred Leamann (10) who helped with the farm.

The lane from Murchington to Providence

It is tempting to imagine the girls walking down the hill and up again to the small school at Providence, which can be seen so clearly now from the lane that leads from Higher Murchington to Blackaton Brook and Blackaton House. However, this school was not built until 1877 so it is more likely that the three girls were taught in the school room, added to the Providence Chapel in 1869, or perhaps at one of the other small ‘dame schools’ operating in the area before the 1870 Education Act began the shift to universal elementary education. 

It is difficult to piece together the fragments of these three sisters’ childhoods, but we do know that their father married again in March 1872 (to Mary-Ann Clarke), and on the 1st May 1876 their new baby sister was born – Annie Dicker. By the time of the 1881 census William and Mary-Ann were still living in Murchington, but William’s father John had died in 1874. Louisa (17) and little Annie (4) were still with the couple, and they also had two farm lads (William and Arthur Perriman) living there. But by spring 1881, Mary was nearly 19 and working as a governess in Bury Barton near Crediton and Down St Mary. Fifteen year old Catherine Dicker also seems to have been living away, possibly at a boarding school (this would be consistent with her occupation recorded in 1891 and her older sister being employed as a governess – a responsible position that could not be secured without more formal education than provided at a local elementary school). By the time of the 1891 census Catherine Dicker is back living at home in Murchington (with her father and step-mother, her older sister Louisa and Annie). In 1891 Catherine is described as an Ex-Schoolmistress, while Louisa as a ‘farmer’s assistant’.

Violets and Primroses in a Murchington garden

It is tempting to wonder whether the three Dicker daughters welcomed their new step-mother and whether they were pleased to have a little sister to play with. The Dickers were a well-established farming family with deep roots in the parish, but they would not have been so wealthy that the girls were exempt from helping out on the farm. It is likely they would have played a full part in important rituals like churning butter, and they might also have helped with milking, feeding and other daily chores of a Devon hill farm. They would have needed to learn such farming skills to ‘marry well’ in this remote community, but equally they would probably have escaped the hardest labours as the daughters of a well-to-do farmer. Perhaps they had enough free time to do well in their school work, and even to wander the Dartmoor lanes enjoying the wild flowers and the bird song. 

Wildflowers in Murchington hedgerows

Old Dick Perrott: A chip off the block

by Colin Burbidge

Richard Perrott, eldest son of James Perrott was born in 1840. He would follow in his Father’s footsteps as a wheelwright, Dartmoor guide and a supreme fisherman.

The Upper Teigh River near Chagford

 In a 1932 interview with the “Western Times “he recalled helping his father as a youngster take the Rev. Alfred Earle (later Dean of Exeter and Bishop of Marlborough) on a day’s fishing on the Teign. Richard carried the Reverend’s lunch basket and rod, and they caught 62 trout that day. As he got into his carriage, he gave Richard half a sovereign “I had never been so rich in my life” he declared. In the same interview he recalled that on his 80th birthday, he walked 8 miles and caught 18 trout.

“Trout are not so numerous as in the old days. They were more plentiful when the lead mines at Christow prevented the salmon from getting into the upper reaches. On one occasion I killed 1000 trout in 10 days and on one day alone, 122. I started at 5 a.m. and finished at 2p.m. It is not the neatest fly that kills. The modern fly is too small. Fish rise to them but do not take.”

 The cause of the pollution in the Teign, was the Wheal Exmouth mine at Christow. Developed in 1850 to mine lead and barytes. At its height it had 70 underground workers.

In 1878 the “Western Times” devoted a full column, to this problem.

“No fish, of course could withstand this deadly torrent of noxious washings of virgin ore.

A short period of such pestilence sufficed to destroy all animal life in the doomed river, and as no salmon were able to make their way from the sea to their breeding grounds, the Teign might be struck off the roll of England’s salmon rivers”.

Due to cheaper imports, Wheal Exmouth at Christow was shut down in 1880.

His finest skill was the making of small, intricate flies for fishermen. Among his customers for flies were, Charles Dickens, Baring Gould, Lord Grey of Falloden, R.D. Blackmore and Charles Kingsley.

In 1934, 2 years before his death, Old Dick read of the forthcoming marriage of Princess Marina of Greece to the Duke of Kent. He took it upon himself to make a salmon and trout fly in royal colours, and sent them, in a presentation box to the Princess.

He duly received this royal reply:

“The Duchess of Kent desires me to thank Mr. Richard Perrott for his wedding gift of trout and salmon flies. Her Royal Highness is greatly touched by the gift, and amazed that Mr. Perrott should be able to do such fine work without the aid of glasses”.

 Richard Perrott died on May 1st, 1936 aged 96.

'Old Perrott' - A Chagford Worthy

by Colin Burbidge

James Perrott was born in the parish of Throwleigh in 1815. The family moved shortly after to Chagford, where he remained his entire life, until his death in 1895. According to Edward Barnwell’s Notes on the Perrott Family, he was from an ancient family of Norman ancestry.

 In 1839 he married Mary Harvey, they would go on to have four sons and three daughters. His wife’s family were descended from Sir Robert Jason, whose 1588 coat-of-arms James Perrott is said to have kept on the wall of his home.

 Census records show him as a wheelwright, and later three of his sons also as worked wheelwrights. It is not until the 1891 census that he is recorded as a Fishing tackle manufacturer. However, his son, Richard later recalled in an article in the Western Times that they would make fishing rods from old lancewood spokes salvaged from damaged or old coach wheels.

 James was for over 50 years a Dartmoor touring guide, a renown angler and a maker of fine fishing tackle and flies, such as Blue Grizzle, Red Palmer, Blue Upright and Red Maxwell.

In 1869 he joined the newly formed Upper Teign Fishing Association, chaired by the Earl of Devon and including many of the riparian landowners of the Upper Teign, including Rev. John Ingle, owner of St. Olaves, Murchington. Perrott carried out the role of water bailiff for them and supervised the care and condition of the river and its banks, in addition to selling Day Permits to anglers.

 He was a supreme angler and encouraged many a well-known client. The writer Charles Kingsley was a regular companion, as was novelist R.D. Blackmore who fictionalised Perrott in some of his novels, and he is also featured in Fisherman’s Fancies by F.B. Doveton. On their golden wedding in October 1889 Mr. & Mrs. Perrott received a congratulatory address from the townspeople of Chagford.

Upon the news of his death in May 1895 the editor of the Western Morning News launched into fulsome praise:

 “Rugged, frank and of cheery disposition, his sterling worth caused him to be respected by those who made his acquaintance. There was not a tor or hill to which he could not conduct his visitors, nor a stream in which he knew not the pools and stickles most likely to afford sport. A deft fisherman himself and entering keenly into the pleasures of the gentle art, he was always desirous that those who accompanied him should realise the delight of returning with a well filled creel”.

 In Chagford churchyard there is a polished granite tomb, erected to the memory of this Dartmoor worthy, by the Rev. A.G. Barker, one of Ingle’s successor’s as owner of St. Olaves, Murchington.

 His son, Richard carried on his father’s work as Dartmoor guide, expert angler, and tackle maker throughout a long life – he died aged 96 years.

 For a fuller account see Devon perspectives.

Murchington

Hand-tinted postcard of Murchington’s main street, c. 1910 showing Woodland Farm and the Anglican Chapel

The hamlet of Murchington lies just outside the parish of Chagford, which is bounded on its northern edge by the course of the River Teign. But though it lies within the parish of Throwleigh, the pull of the larger, and much nearer settlement of Chagford must always have ruled here. Even before Chagford Bridge was first built at the bottom of Walland Hill (probably in the early thirteenth century), the Teign was no real barrier as it could be forded at various points hereabouts.

1884 OS 6-inch map showing Murchington and the course of the River Teign

For much of the nineteenth century, Murchington was also significantly more populous than the village of Throwleigh, thanks in part to its proximity to the small town of Chagford with its textile factories and growing tourist business. In 1841 there were 158 people living in Murchington, compared with just sixty in Throwleigh. Those passing through Murchington on their way to Gidleigh might be surprised (then and now) that the handful of homes on each side of the road could house so many people. Much of Murchington is slightly hidden from the incurious traveller who sticks to the road. Besides the main farm there have long been a cluster of dwellings at Higher Murchington, to the north of the main Gidleigh road, and the narrow lane that disappears beyond the post box in the centre of the hamlet leads to a further group of cottages: St Olaves―a hamlet within a hamlet. Until the late 1860s there were even more cottages here.

The front of St Olaves in c.1910 - the extension to the left was finished in 1906.

In addition, we can see from census records that households were much bigger in the mid-nineteenth century than they are today. In 1841 farm labourer George Dicker, 55, headed a household of nine. This included his wife and their son and three daughters aged between 15 and 20, an older couple (another farm labourer and his wife) and a 5 year old child with a different surname (possibly a grandchild born out of wedlock). Next door, local farmer John Dicker aged 40 (possibly a relation) headed a household of seven including his wife Johanna, their three children and two farm hands. John Dicker’s three-year-old son William lived and farmed in Murchington for the rest of his life. He went on to have four daughters by two wives and in 1909 was buried in Throwleigh Churchyard next to his first wife Susan Litton Nichols, who had died in 1869.

Page from the 1841 Census showing part of the return for Murchington including the two Dicker households

The local economy, like that of much of West Devon, was overwhelmingly agricultural, but the hamlet also boasted a pub, a blacksmiths and for a while a working quarry.  There was talk of Murchington being more unruly and irreligious than most Devon settlements, presumably because it lacked the powerful controlling influence of a big landowner or resident parson. But things began to change from the late 1860s with the arrival of a succession of wealthy, non-resident landowners attracted by the hamlet’s remote beauty and the sporting possibilities of its upland river and dense woodland.

First on the scene was the Reverend John Ingle, an Exeter-based Anglican priest associated with the High Church (opponents said ‘papist’) Oxford Movement. Ingle was the vicar of St Olave’s Church, a Saxon foundation in the medieval heart of Exeter, when, in 1868, he bought fifty acres of Murchington farmland, including farm buildings and three rows of labourers’ cottages. He renamed his new estate St Olave’s in honour of his parish church (this hamlet within a hamlet survives, but as ‘St Olaves’ having mysteriously lost the apostrophe).

A photograph believed to be of Rev John Ingle in the early 1860s

Ingle demolished many of the properties he acquired, presumably evicting the poor tenants, and renovated the finest cottages to provide a spacious country retreat (although according to the Chagford Parish Magazine of June 1868, his original plan had been to build ‘an elegant Elizabethan mansion … on a lovely site overlooking the vale of Holy Street’). The 1840 Throwleigh Tithe map records a range of properties called ‘Waste Houses Court’ on precisely this site―their swift demolition by Ingle may have been intended to facilitate his grand building plans. Ingle quarried stone from the site and used this to help build the enormous granite retaining walls that can still clearly be seen from the top of Nattadon or Meldon Hill. He also began planting specimen trees imported from around the world, starting the collection that now includes the stands of Giant and Coast Redwoods, Grand Firs and Douglas Firs that are equally visible from afar. Part of this collection of specimen trees can also still be seen in the adjacent Milfordleigh plantation, then part of the estate but now owned by the National Trust (see 1884 OS map above).

A section from the 1840 Tithe map of Throwleigh parish (Waste Houses Court is plot 207)

Ingle sold up within a decade, never realising his ambition to build a fine mansion. He was succeeded by a series of other rich clergymen who further developed the estate as a gentleman’s country retreat. They used their wealth and influence to strengthen the Church of England’s presence in the hamlet, including supporting the construction of Murchington’s small Anglican Chapel, finished in 1890. The Sutton family, who owned St Olaves from 1907 to 1960, were also strong supporters of Anglicanism―indeed Edmund Sutton bought the right to appoint Throwleigh’s clergy at the same time as he acquired his Murchington estate.

However, the family’s influence in the district waned considerably after Edmund’s son Ralph suffered a stroke in the early 1950s.  Between 1954 and 1971, the estate was gradually broken up, returning more or less to its original constituent parts. Milfordleigh plantation was sold off, Murchington Farm lost its land-holdings, the farm’s outbuildings became separate dwellings, and the various cottages and outbuildings that had formed the Suttons’ private residence were reconstructed as four separate properties.

A plan of the proposed Anglican Chapel for Murchington

Murchington Chapel also experienced a re-incarnation with the passing of the Suttons. In 1975 it was finally decommissioned as a place of worship and sold for redevelopment. Sympathetically restored, it is now a private residence and the only holiday let in the hamlet.

But if Murchington has not succumbed to the curse of second homes, it has nonetheless changed drastically in recent years. In the nineteenth century there were at least five separate farms in Murchington, mostly small-scale mixed farms of between twenty and seventy acres run by local families with deep roots in the area. There was also a pub and a small shop. Today there is only one working farm, and a small-holding – the other farms, along with the old pub, have become private residences for people drawn to the area by its beauty and relative tranquillity; just as Ingle, Radford and the Barkers had been in the nineteenth century.

Jon Lawrence

(drawing on research by Colin Burbidge and Judy Moss)