Lopwell to Blaxton Creek

Lopwell is a popular, yet not over-busy estuarine leisure destination. As a child I was brought here, enjoying the thrill of carefully walking across the slippy pedestrian causeway below the dam, and the jeopardy of needing to be back across before it submerged under the high tide. As an adult the tide still pulls me, particularly at the ‘King Tide’ – the highest tide of the year. I have developed my own little ritual of buying fish and chips on my way, timing my arrival so I can park up, watch the estuary waters rise ominously above their normal tide-mark, whilst I scoff my fatty, paper-wrapped, salt and vinegar doused, takeaway dinner.

Unlike coastal high tides, whose waves, with noisy swashing energy, inundate the back of beaches, estuarine waters at high tide have a silent, calm, and more sinister insistence. The water here creeps over the car park and across the roads, deepening and deepening. In fact, the power of the tide is so strong that Lopwell Dam, which normally imposes its breastwork above the tidal Tavy below, can completely disappear under water.  Last year as I watched, it created a miraculous illusion – two teenage boys, jumping from the dam appeared, from my vantage, to be walking on water, so high was the tide as they walked out across it (see image below).

But enough of my personal pilgrimages to Lopwell. What are the interesting things in this landscape that I want to pick out? This route starts at Lopwell Dam and follows a there-and-back walk from Lopwell to Blaxton Creek staying close to the estuarine edge.

7 Interesting Things

1. Lopwell and its Dam

Lopwell has a serene, if engineered beauty. It is a place where, at high tide, salty water funnels and piles, moon-pulled, against the imposing slanted face of the dam; an obstacle that prevents the Tavy’s estuarine brackishness from penetrating upstream to its natural tidal limit. The freshwater also piles, but behind the dam, creating pacific waters that stretch a kilometre up-river. The ‘piling’ of water above and below the dam echo, if only phonetically, the earliest recorded name of Lopwell – la Lobbapilla, from 1291 AD (Gover, et al., 1931).

The dam of Lopwell has caused a significant landscape impact, but one that is juvenile. It was only constructed in 1953, to help provide water to the city of Plymouth (South West Lakes Trust, n.d.). In damming the river to create a head of water, a deep pool was manufactured that drowned the natural river valley; a landscape that included a saltmarsh meadow that was known as Tarres/Taris Meadow. Also drowned beneath the weir waters is the old ‘Lopwell Ford’, connecting from the Bere to Buckland bank in days gone by. There is still a ford here, but this is a modern replacement which parallels the raised footway. The ford and the causeway allow vehicles and walkers to  travel between the two parishes at low tide, although they can be prone to flood damage and are sometimes out of action.

Time takes its toll on a place’s form and purpose. At Lopwell, not only has the dam changed its raison d’être to one of water supply, but changes in transport (the rise or road, rail and plane) have erased Lopwell’s function as an historic quay, stretching back at least as far as the 13th Century. By 1953, when the dam was erected, there would have been limited river traffic – just the odd small fishing boat but mostly pleasure boats, travelling up river on the flood tide to this popular beauty spot. And it is one such fated pleasure boat which we will now hear about in the next interesting thing …

2. A Tragic Accident

On Wednesday, 14th June 1920, a tragic accident occurred at Lopwell involving a pleasure boat (GENUKI, n.d., a.). The inquest was held swiftly on 16th and 17th June at Bere Ferrers and was covered by the Western Evening Herald. Mr R. Robinson Rodd presided over the inquest, identifying the victims as Alfred Stanley Peters, 31, a hairdresser and tobacconist; Gertrude Laws, 37, a war widow; and her sons Ronald, 9, and Edward, 5, all from Devonport. A thorough search had been made for their bodies, but it wasn’t until 9pm that all were found in the vicinity of the boat. Another motor boat was called to assist, but it also came to grief. The bodies were taken to the Bere Ferrers Reading Room.

John Peters, a naval pensioner, and the owner and skipper of the boat recounted the day’s events. He and eight others set out from Moon Cove, Morice Town, at about 2 o’clock on his 20 ft motor launch, which was only about six years old and ‘perfectly sound’. They reached Lopwell Marshes where they had tea. As the tide turned, Peters called out “Come on, people”. They got going and he steered the boat, while his son managed the engine, moving at a slow pace according to Peters (though other witnesses reported they thought it was travelling too fast)

An apprentice, William Nicholls, was checking the water depth with a boat hook and reporting “Plenty of water, sir”. Suddenly, the boat hit something (a tree, lying in the water), causing water to rush in. Despite efforts to steer towards the bank, the boat capsized, throwing everyone into the water. Peters managed to reach the bank with his wife using a boat-hook and a flotation cork cushion. Two young ladies named Miss Rothery and Miss Webber saved themselves by clinging to a branch of a tree, and the apprentice Nicholls jumped to the bank from the bow before the boat capsized. Anyone who has observed the Tavy on the ebb tide, as the waters surge back out towards Plymouth will appreciate just how dangerous these waters were to those poor souls, thrown into the turbid waters.

The next day, the inquest continued. Charles Reeves, a gamekeeper, to Lord Seaton of Buckland Abbey, was called as a witness and he mentioned the tree near the capsized boat had spurs and had been lying in the river’s bed for 25 years. John Neal McCloud, a retired lieutenant-commander, R.,N., and resident of Lopwell, warned against boating beyond a place called ‘The Needles’ at Lopwell Marsh due to the river’s current state. It was noted that there were no warning notices displayed. Lady Seaton stated that no parties were allowed to land on the side she owned, whilst Mr Cook, representative for the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, said they only allowed persons to land who had been given permission.

The coroner concluded that the river was tidal and under Crown jurisdiction, suggesting the public used it at their own risk. He noted the responsibility of riparian owners and the Crown to address obstructions like snags. The cause of the accident was likely the boat’s speed colliding with a tree spur, causing it to fill with water and capsize, resulting in the drowning of the victims. Finally, he found that the four deceased had died by accidental drowning.

Fifteen years earlier, in 1905, Robert Henry Lawrence drowned at Chuck’s Ford, opposite Maristow, with the evidence showing that the deceased must have attempted to cross the ford with his horse and waggon, and been washed away by the tide (GENUKI, n.d., b.). Only in Nov 2023, the river took the life of its latest victim, in a tragic drowning in the floodwaters of Storm Ciaran.

These are but the contemporary and 20th Century accounts of accidental deaths. The tidal Tavy, busy with past shipping, and crossed by fords, will have been responsible for many more lives, stretching back over the centuries. These recorded deaths are a reminder for us to take the Tavy waters seriously.

3. Maristow House

Implanted in classic oak parkland above the Tavy, watches the 18th Century terracotta coloured mansion called Maristow. Now divided into luxury apartments, this house, in its current form, was built c. 1760, and re-fronted in 1907-09. The house is older than this though. On 1st March 1539 land and property at Maristow was reluctantly signed over to the crown as the monasteries were dissolved; this estate being held by Pympton Priory. Most of the land was then purchased in 1544 by the Champernowne family who did not seem to take up residence, for they leased the Grange and the ‘Mansion House’ for a period of 60 years to Sir Richard Edgecumbe (Cross, 2022, p. 4). This is the first written indication that a substantial house existed here from at least this date. By 1550 however, the Champernowes had sold off some of the Maristow land to John Slanning and, according to Cross, by 1560 Slanning held the entire estate.

Presumably over the years, the ‘mansion house’ described in the 1540’s, had been renovated and extended but nonetheless, it was described as being ‘very ruinous and out of repair’ by the 1730s (Cross, 2022, p. 86) at which point came a great fire which raged through part of the house. The house, which had passed through marriage into the Modyford/Heywood family, was largely empty for a couple of decades after the fire. The house, as we see today, is largely the result of major work in the 1750s and 60s by James Modyford Heyward, primarily financed from family wealth acquired in the Jamaican plantations, capitalised through slavery. On James’s death the house was purchased by another family whose wealth came from the Caribbean plantation economy. Sir Manasseh Messeh Lopes bought the property in 1798. He was a Jamaican-born Sephardic Jew whose family had fled from persecution in Portugal (persecutions started in 1536) (Cross, 2022, p. 201).

Sir Henry Lopes, who became Lord Roborough, was the last of the enobled classes to reside at Maristow. He died in 1938 shortly after which the house was requisitioned by the Royal Navy for the war years as an auxiliary hospital until 1947. For five years the house was re-fitted to turn it into a care home for retired clergy and their wives but in 1952 the house suffered another fire. After more repairs the house re-opened in the guise of a Devon County Council residential school for educationally challenged children until 1976. After an interregnum of two years, Maristow re-opened as a field study centre, only for another fire to part destroy the house in 1981 and, unbelievably, another fire three months later in 1982 (p340). With the house mostly ruined, the Lopes family applied to have the house demolished but this was opposed on grounds of the heritage value of the building, finally leading to the house being preserved and re-modelled as luxury apartments.

In this potted explanation I have focused mainly on the house itself and rattled through the people who lived there. Their lives, for those who are interested, is of course nuanced. Their story tells us not just their individual histories but also of a wider national and international history. For those who are interested in the people that lived at Maristow I recommend Cross’s recent book ‘A House by the River – West Indian Wealth in Devon: Money, Sex and Power over Three Centuries’.

4. The Chapel of St Martin

The mansion house of Maristow takes its name from a medieval chapel, with the earliest surviving mention in a 12th C charter from the reign of Henry II (1154-1189), as the ‘capellam S. Martini de Blakestana (Oliver, 1846, p. 135). This was in a charter confirming the lands at Blaxton being gifted to the Priory of Plympton by the de Ferrers family. Over the years the Chapel of St Martin of Blakestana morphed into Martinstowe, and then, oddly, to Maristow, making it sound as if the chapel was dedicated to St Mary rather than St Martin.

With its -stow/stowe suffix, the chapel may be much older even than its 12^th C recorded history (Rees, 2020, p81). ‘Stow’ places names are Old English and are associated with early religious sites; the implication being that the chapel was a pre-conquest foundation. I think it is even possible it could date to the early Celtic Christian period, in which Christianity spread in the southwest from the 4^th Century. Many known Celtic Christian sites within the south west are in coastal and estuarine locations, and some have geographical links to area with inscribed stones (Rees, 2020, chapter 3), of which several have been found in this Buckland/Roborough area.

In 1877-79 a new chapel dedicated to St Martin was erected at the rear of the Georgian mansion (HERa, No Date). This is reported to have been placed over the foundations of the medieval chapel, the remains of which were supposedly demolished and reused as folly, under the instructions of the architect, St Aubyn, just to the east of the chapel. Unfortunately I cannot find any photographs nor any detailed investigation either the folly or the chapel site, which is a shame, given that this chapel is potentially the oldest archaeological site in this landscape.

5. Blaxton Woods

One of the defining features of the estuarine portion of the greater Tamar Valley is its fringe of deciduous woodland. Blaxton Woods is a fine example. I find these waterside woods particularly lovely in winter, when the trees, in seasonal skeleton mode, yield views of the Tavy with its mud and creeks, and whose shining waters dazzle behind the silhouetted branches.

Heading to Blaxton Point (it doesn’t have this name on the map but I think it is befitting) you have the choice of two paths. The lower and narrower path brings you to closer to the estuary. From this path you will encounter a tall but ruinous boat house. If, on the other hand, you take the higher path, you will find a wider route, slightly more disconnected from the river, but nonetheless delightful. On this track, chiselled out of rock, you will be rewarded with an unexpected well and, about forty metres away, an odd semi-circular wall, the purpose of which is opaque, but it looks like it used to be an ornamental structure – a place to sit and look across the river perhaps?.

On reaching Blaxton Point it is clear what defines this part of the landscape. Like all headlands, this a look out. Today the headland is crowned with a semi-circular crenelated low turret with a military countenance and nearby is another . It draws you to step towards it, stand behind its battlement, and survey the nautical scene. Here one can view any traffic passing up or down the Tavy, the entrance to Blaxton Creek, and spy the village of Bere Ferrers on the far bank.

What are all these features? According to an archaeological study this ‘turret’ is mostly modern but, mysteriously, some masonry is described as much older and more ‘functional’ (HERb, No Date). Nearby there are also the ruins of another building, described as having a possible ‘communications’ purpose, although the HER record does not explain the basis of this interpretation.

The semi-circular wall, look-out turret, and the ‘communications’ building – are not on the 1892 map and only appear from 1905 leading one to conclude that they are most likely part of a phase of late Victorian ornamental landscaping, but this may be incorrect. Reported in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1789 is an account of a visit to Maristow by George III, Queen Charlotte, their three eldest daughters, and others in the royal retinue[1]. The diary of their visit (p1144) describes them spending time in the ‘most striking and romantic woods’ which had in many places ‘dreadful precipices’. Significantly, the article states that ‘several new roads were cut thro’ these woods’. Perhaps then, these ornamental features were missed off earlier maps and instead date from the late 18^th C, built for the royal visit.

6. Blaxton Mill and Quay

On rounding Blaxton headland and turning inland away from the light-dazzle, sharding off the estuarine waters, you quickly spy industrial looking ruins in the creek. Here, in 1822, Thomas Menhinnett of Tamerton Foliot was given permission from Sir Mannaseh Masseh Lopes of Maristow to ‘make an embankment across Blaxton Creek and to built a mill house for grist and flour milling‘ (HERc, No Date). This embankment did not completely block the entire mouth of the creek but instead extended from the southern Warleigh side, leaving a purposeful channel, open to the northern Blaxton bank.

The remains of this mill cut a slightly odd image, what with their castellation – more the sign of a medieval fortress than a 19^th C mill. Under the castellated wall are two sediment choked arches which formerly carried the ebbing tidal water under the building in order to harness its kinetic power.

Unlike standard mills, which take water off a river via a leat, this tidal mill was designed to be powered by tidal water movements. The mill was built on top of the embankment. As the tide rose, water spilled into the mill pool behind the embankment via the channel, which would have had a sluice gate, presumably shut at high tide. Then, as the tide fell, the water flowed, in a controlled way, out of the mill pool, through the channels that ran under the mill, this powering the grist milling gear.

According to historic records the mill had an unlucky beginning. It was blown down in 1828 and destroyed again by fire in 1837. It was certainly back in action by 1841 because a family called ‘Cruch’ (or perhaps Crouch or Corich – the census record is unclear) was living there at this time (Ancestry.co.uk). James Cruch, aged 60, is the miller. With him is his wife Ann, also 60, and three of their children – Agness (25), James (20) and Ann (15) plus an agricultural labourer called John Collins (15). They would not have been living in the mill over the tidal inlet, which was a working building, but in one of the two cottages on the southern bank.

Today, deserted places like the ruinous Blaxton Mill seem peaceful, but in 1841, as well as the noise of the grist mill, this would have felt a busy place. There would have been quayside hubbub, including the unloading of coal from South Wales for the burning of lime in the Blaxton kilns, and people taking the ferry to Bere Ferrers. The ferry is shown on maps into the 1920s but is first recorded as far back as the 13^th Century (HERd, No Date). There would also have been the voices and shouts from the other people that lived here, for the Cruch family were not the only ones who called Blaxton Mill home. Also listed on the 1841 census were the Prior Family, comprising Phillip (25) and his wife Maria (30), and their young children Edward (7), William (3) and Maria (2), and the Watts family of John and Ann (both 40) and two sons, John (18) and Richard (8). Blaxton Quay certainly, in days gone by, was a busy place.

7. The Roborough Hoard

In AD 43 Aulus Plautius, a Roman general, led the invasion of Britain for Emperor Claudius (Pattison, No Date). Historians think that around 40,000 soldiers landed in the south east. Details of the conquest are fragmentary, and knowledge is particularly sparse for the south west. However, the invaders are thought to have spread across the south and midlands by AD 47 (Grigsby, 2021).

New to this foreign land of the Britons, a Roman soldier, possibly in a hyper-vigilant and battle-hardened state of mind, tired out by the demands of invasion, dropped or purposefully secreted a number of coins in the soil of Blaxton. Known as the Roborough Hoard, this find-spot includes coins that date to the very start of the invasion – nine Claudian sestertii of c. AD 42, and an earlier sestertius of Gaius (also known as Caligula), dating to AD 37-41.

Rippon and Holbrook (2021, p454) interpret this, along with other numismatic (coin/currency) evidence as pointing to an early date for Roman military activity west of Exeter. This is part of the wider evidence that counters the view that existed until recently, that there was no distinct Roman presence west of Exeter; a view now well and truly dispelled by the growing  Roman signal from several Roman fort sites such as those at Okehampton, Caltock, Restormal and Nanstallon.

Blaxton seems to tell us that invading soldiers passed through here, or maybe even set up temporary camp in this landscape in the first wave of Roman invasion. The landscape context, in relation to these coins, is worth considering. Did the soldiers march here over land as they pushed westwards towards Cornwall, or did the invaders reach this spot – which after all, is next to a navigable estuary – by boat? Certainly many Roman forts have an affinity for such locations, which are clearly strategically important. Perhaps then, the Roborough Hoard, is more than a chance find of deposited coins. Its placement may also be giving us clues to invasion military tactics and the strategic importance of Blaxton for its navigable penetration of the land, coupled with the lowest fordable crossing of the Tavy to the Bere peninsula (which, incidently, had silver deposits! (Claughton and Smart, 2010). I think if I were a military tactician from two thousand years ago, I would be listening to my intelligence scouts, and made sure I secured Blaxton.

Summing Up

The local landscapes in which I walk are frequently characterised by being rural, yet redundant former industrial places. This quality, of a place no longer being ‘what it was’, is therefore common. However, at Lopwell and Blaxton, I sense this loss of purpose more acutely. This is partly unfair because this landscape does have purpose – it is farmed, is sparsely lived in, supplies water to Plymouth, and is used for leisure. However, gone are the fishermen and fishing boats, gone is the commerce and transportation of commodities at the quaysides, gone are the ferries, and gone are the mines and mineral processing. A 19th C private chapel peeks from behind the Georgian Maristow mansion, but gone is the medieval place of worhship – perhaps originally erected here to serve all this medieval bustle. More than anything I feel that, what is gone, is any sense of Lopwell and Blaxton being a strategically important place within the greater Tamar estuary. It is a delightful place to visit, but now, this is precisely because it is a quiet tidal cul-de-sac. I reckon though, its history is big, busy, noisy and more important than we realise.

[1] Thanks go to Clive Charlton of the Bere Local History Group for pointing me to this information.

The Route

• The route is a there-and-back walk, starting from the car park at Lopwell. From here you can first head to the dam (1), with views up river, across the pool behind the dam (2).
• Retrace your steps back past the car park and follow road. Where it splits, take the right fork and then look for footpath on the right to follow the river’s edge. This footpath can be wet and muddy so if you prefer, stay on the road.
• The footpath re-joins the road at the southern edge of the bend. From here you can look across to Maristow House (3) and its chapel (4).
• Take the road south, past the quay. At Mount Jessop, leave the road and take a footpath on the right into Blaxton Woods (5). Initially there is only one path but where it crosses a small stream there are two options, to take the lower path or the upper one. Either is fine, and you can always walk out on one and back on the other.
• Whichever path you take, both head in the direction of the headland, with its views over the Tavy to Bere Ferrers.

• Round the headland, and from here you can look over Blaxton Creek where you will see Blaxton Mill (6). If you are nimble and the tide is out you can clamber down the bank to get a better look.
• If you want to look at the Blaxton Mill buildings on the other side, these are on a public right of way but you will need to walk up one side of Blaxton Creek and then back down the other side. In dryer weather you may be able to take the shorter detour and cross at Mill Ford. Otherwise, cross at Peter Hopper’s Bridge a little further up-stream.
• Return back the way you came, perhaps taking the different footpath/road options to vary your steps. At the place called Mount Jessop, look up the valley. Somewhere in this valley was found the Roborough Roman coin hoard (7).

References

Claughton, P. and Smart, C., 2010. The Crown silver mines in Devon: capital, labour and landscape in the late medieval period. Historical Metallurgy, 44(2), pp.112-125.

Cross, M. 2022. A House by the River – West Indian Wealth in West Devon: Money, Sex, and Power over Three Centuries. Signal Press.

Gentleman’s Magazine. 1789. Diary of Their Majesties Journey to Weymouth and Plymouth. The Gentleman’s magazine v. 66 (July – Dec. 1789), p1144. Hathi Trust.

GENUKI, No Date (a). Inquests Taken Into Suspicious Or Unexplained Deaths For the County of Devon Articles taken from the Western Morning News and Western Evening Herald [printed in Plymouth.]
1920. Transcribed by Lindsey Withers. Entries for Friday 16 July and Saturday 17 July 1920.

GENUKI, No Date (b). Inquests Taken Into Suspicious Or Unexplained Deaths For the County of Devon
1905-1914. Articles taken from North Devon Journal. Entry for Thursday 16 March 1905.

Gover, J.E.B., Mawr, . and Stenton, F.M. 1931. The Place-names of Devon, Part 1. English Place-Name Society. Volume Viii, Cambridge University Press: London.

Grigsby, P. 2021. The Roman Invasion of Britain. University of Warwick, Classics & Ancient History -Warwick Classics Network.

HERa. No Date. St Martin’s Chapel, Maristow House. MDV4059. Heritage Gateway.

HERb. No Date. Buttressed Turret, Blaxton Creek Peninsular. MDV80841. Heritage Gateway.

HERc. No Date. Blaxton Mill, Bickleigh. MDV18382. Heritage Gateway.

HERd. No Date. Blaxton Quay, Bickleigh. MDV59776. Heritage Gateway.

Oliver, G., 1846. Monasticon Diocesis Exoniensis, being a collection of records and instruments illustrating the ancient conventuel, collegiate, and eleemosynary foundations, in the counties of Cornwall and Devon... Hannaford, Longman.

Pattison, P. No Date. The Roman Invasion of Britain: The Earliest Campaigns, AD 43–7. English Heritage.

Rees, E. 2020. Early Christianity in South-West Britain: Wessex, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and the Channel Islands. Windgather Press.

Rippon, S. and Holbrook, N. eds., 2021. Studies in the Roman and Medieval Archaeology of Exeter: Exeter, A Place in Time Volume II (Vol. 8). Oxbow Books.

South West Lakes Trust. No Date. Lopwell Dam, Devon.