Sticklepath, Devon

The Quaker graveyard in Sticklepath

I came to Sticklepath by accident, stopping there because the village shop advertised coffee, which I needed. I didn’t have time to visit the place’s most obvious attraction, the Finch Foundry (a working forge, not a foundry) other than pausing to admire its water wheel from beneath the head race, dodging drips as I watched the ironwork turn. But I did stop for a moment in the Quaker graveyard behind the forge, for a short contemplative break, and to wait for the clouds to part and the sun to shine on the tiny structure in my photograph.

It’s a shelter in one corner of the graveyard. I’ve no idea how old it is – the very solid looking walls seem to have some age, but the lovely thatched roof is recent, though no doubt a replacement of earlier thatch, perhaps of many generations of earlier thatch. It’s tiny, just big enough to contain a bench seat with room for two, looking out over the graves. It seemed to me to be an excellent example of the value of taking pains over a modest structure: how much pleasure it must have given, over the years, to people who need a rest, and to those who just like to see something well made.

I don’t usually feel morbid in graveyards and, in spite of the proximity of the tables where visitors to the forge could take refreshments, the place was quiet and peaceful. Could I hear the occasional drip and splash from the water wheel? Maybe. I’m not sure. I don’t recall noticing it, but if I had it would have seemed a sound fit as much for calm as anything. The mood was enhanced by a poem by the hymn-writer and humanitarian James Montgomery (1771–1854) about just such a place.* The words are hand painted on a noticeboard attached to the back of the shelter. The poem seemed apposite: it ends:

Green myrtles fenced it, and beyond their bound
Ran the clear rill with ever-murmuring sound.
Twas not a scene for grief to nourish care,
It breathed of hope & moved the heart to prayer.

They’re lines very much of their time, and somewhat conventional, but well made and right – like the little shelter that contains them, and no doubt the products of the forge nearby. Fortified by such thoughts – or maybe by the coffee – I went on my way.

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*James Montgomery was just a name to me, someone whose work was praised by Lord Byron. He seems to have been a good egg, supporting abolitionism, upholding the right of protestors to make their case, and writing a poem against the practice of employing small boys to climb up chimneys to sweep them. He wrote the carol ‘Angels from the Realms of Glory’ and adapted Psalm 23 to create the hymn ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’.