‘He that prays and preaches best will fight best’ Oliver Cromwell.
We were staying on the inland side of Aveton Giffard and returning from our day at Ringmore and Ayrmer cove, stopped off to discover more about the place, off the roundabout on the main road, near where the River Avon turns tidal.
Walter Giffard was a serious backer of William of Normandy’s invasion of England in 1066 having provided 30 ships and 100 Knights. Giffard (the name means ‘chubby cheeks’ in old French) was richly rewarded by the Conqueror. The ton, or settlement, on the Avon was one of hundreds of manors granted him. Walter went on to become one of the King’s commissioners responsible for compiling the Domesday Book. Later, in 1178, the Giffard family added Challington in Staffordshire to their tally of land. Boscobel – that I wrote about four diaries ago – was part of that estate. Remarkably Challington remains the Giffard family seat.
Aveton Giffard – AG – lies at the tidal high reach of the River Avon, and is the lowest crossing point, originally by a ford over bedrock, and from the C15th by a bridge. That bridge, widened and strengthened is now the A379 today, linking the market towns of Modbury and Kingsbridge.
When Civil War broke out in 1642 the towns in the far south-west by and large sided with Parliament and the rural areas tended to favour the King’s side.In the last diary I mentioned the Royalist rector of Ringmore, Reverend William Lane, who, as it happens was also Rector of AG and equally active in raising a Royalist militia here. He had a small wooden stockade built on one the hills on glebe (church) land overlooking the vital river bridge, intending to halt Parliamentary forces crossing. However, the range and power of their muskets was insufficient to stop the Roundheads, and the bridge and village was taken and the clergyman and his men had to retreat in haste. It was for this act of resistance, as well as his activities in Ringmore, that caused him to be a fugitive, as described in my last diary.
We started our stroll downstream from a car park, formerly the site of a sawmill. On the opposite bank is some 42 acres of former grazing marsh, a nature reserve today, run by Devon wildlife Trust. The site’s name, South Efford, betrays its origins as the river’s southernmost fording place at ebb tide. We followed the single track tarmaced road, hugging the shallow winding waters, and which floods every high tide, as the roadside markers clearly demonstrate. Before the road was built walkers used irregular stepping stones, known as ‘the dog biscuits’ to pass over the marsh. This is clearly not a place to get stuck or ‘run the tide’ and there are few passing places.
The Avon, or Aune, is one of the many Devon rivers that rise on Dartmoor and end their course as Rias, or sunken river valleys. Avon or Afon in Welsh means river in old English. Some 23 miles long, with the last three miles of its course as a sunken river valley, or Ria. This opening up as shallow estuary, bordered by marsh pasture and steep sided wooded hillsides makes for a topography that is particularly rich in animal, bird and marine life. Because of that the estuary itself was designated a Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) by DEFRA in 2019.
A little egret caught our attention as it fished the mud with a studied long limbed urgency, but the most striking sight to meet our eyes were two two yachts that had somehow come to grief, marooned on mudbanks mid-stream. Their slimy green glow lent a distinctly haunting presence to the waterway here at low tide. A sharp contrast to the smart little motorboats we saw their proud owners happily working away on.
More time and we’d have made a circular walk of it, coming back via woods and fields over the down with the views of village and valley it would have offered. Incredibly Aveton Giffard’s narrow winding Fore Street of cream coloured terraced houses carried the A379 right up until 1990. Small wonder the villagers held a street party here when the by-pass opened.
STEPHEN TOMLIN 