Kingsbridge Estuary, with Rambles in the Neighbourhood

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Describe the Borough?can we so describe, That you shall fairly streets and buildings trace, And all that gives distinction to a place Crabbe. The principal street in Kingsbridge, Fore Street, runs nearly the length of the parish, from south to north; and rising from the Estuary like the crest of a helmet, commands a view of the water, almost to the harbour of Salcombe, being obstructed only by a sudden turn in its course, which leaves the prospect to be terminated by the parish church and green hills of Portlemouth. Behind the houses on each side of the street are gardens and orchards: these grounds decline to the east and west, and are bounded by two brooks, which form a junction of their waters near the bottom of the hill on the west side, and there become of sufficient force to turn the town mills. Hawkins mentions six bridges within the limits of the town: it would puzzle a stranger to find them, for they are now little more than covered water-courses. They were as follows: ?the first, called pre-eminently The Bridge, was near the bottom of the town; the second is Gallant's bridge, at the further end of Mill Street; the third, Duck'sbridge; the fourth, Quay bridge; the fifth, Buncombe's bridge; and the sixth is that which crosses the stream dividing the two parishes. Previous to the construction of some of these bridges, foot passengers were dependent on stepping-stones, while horses and carriages waded the brooks. Some years ago, when an alteration was made in the course of one of these streams, an engagement appears to have been entered into, that the owners of the land through which the new channel was made, should be allowed, by way of compensation, to have their corn ground at the mill, gratis, for ever. Nearly at the upper end of Fore S...