Picturesque Clovelly commands glorious views over the coast of North Devon.  It combines a rich environment and an historic village.  Stories of cannibals and unsolved murders, an ancient Iron Age fort, Norman church, a village tumbling down the cliff with cobbled streets and donkeys, links to the Armada, Charles Kingsley, Turner, whose painting of Clovelly is below, and Dickens all help to make this a unique experience.

A visit to Clovelly provides an opportunity to step back from the modern technological world into a thriving community whose buildings have remained unchanged for centuries, whose history straddles 3 millennia and whose people offer a warm Devon welcome to their guests.

An excerpt from 'A Message from the Sea' (1892) by Charles Dickens in which the village of Clovelly is called Steepways:

'The village was built sheer up the face of a steep and lofty cliff.  There was no road in it, there was no wheeled vehicle in it, there was not a level yard in it.

From the sea-beach to the cliff-top two irregular rows of white houses, placed opposite to one another, and twisting here and there, and there and here, rose, like the sides of a long succession of stages of crooked ladders, and you climbed up the village or you climbed down the village by the staves between, some six feet wide or so, and made of sharp irregular stones.

The old pack-saddle, long ago laid aside in most parts of England, as one the appendages of its infancy, flourished here intact.  Strings of pack-horses and pack-donkeys toiled slowly up the staves of the ladders, bearing fish, and coal, and such other cargo as was unshipping at the pier from the dancing fleet of village boats, and from two or three little coasting traders.  As the beasts of burden ascended laden, or descended light, they got so lost at intervals in the floating clouds of village smoke, that they seemed to dive down some of the village chimneys, and come to the surface again far off, high above the others.

No two houses in the village were alike, in chimney, size, shape, door, window, gable, roof-tree, anything.  The sides of the ladders were musical with water, running clear and bright.  The staves were musical with the clattering feet of the pack-horses and pack-donkeys, and the voices of the fishermen urging them up, mingled with the voices of the fishermen's wives and their many children.  The pier was musical with the wash of the sea, the creaking of the capstans and windlasses, and the airy fluttering of little vanes and sails.

The rough, sea-bleached boulders of which the pier was made, and the whiter boulders of the shore, were brown with drying nets.  The red-brown cliffs, richly wooded to their extremest verge, had their softened and beautiful forms reflected in the bluest water, under the clear North Devon sky of a November day without a cloud.

The village itself was so steeped in autumnal foliage, from the houses lying on the pier to the topmost round of the topmost ladder, that one might have fancied it was out a bird's-nesting, and was (as indeed it was) a wonderful climber'.

Hartland Abbey.  www.hartlandabbey.com, email: ha_admin@btconnect.com
Heddon Hall.  www.heddonhallgardens.co.uk, email: info@heddonhallgardens.co.uk. 
www.marwoodhillgarden.co.uk, email: info@marwoodhillgarden.co.uk
Rosemoor.  www.rhs.org.uk/rosemoor, email: rosemooradmin@rhs.org.uk
Walled Garden.  www.winsfordwalledgarden.co.uk, email: muddywellies@winsfordwalledgarden.co.uk

CLOVELLY’S SPECIAL CLIMATE

 

You only realise just how much we owe to the effects of the warm Gulf stream and our enviable sheltered position in the Bristol channel when you learn that Clovelly lies upon the same 51 deg. latitude as such other coastal towns and villages (travelling East around the world): De Kastri (USSR) - Katangli (Sakhalin Island) - Cape Lopatka (Kamchatka peninsula) - Cape Scott (Vancouver Island) - Allison Harbour (British Columbia) - Ha-Ha Bay and Croque (either side of Newfoundland).

 

De Kastri and Katangli lie opposite each other across the narrow and shallow Strait of Tartary, which often freezes in winter.  The climate is severe the whole year through and the vegetation mostly coniferous.  There are bears, foxes, otters, sables, and deer, while the rivers swarm with fish, especially salmon. The growing season averages less than 100 days a year.  Vancouver Island and Cape Scott are primal wilderness; no roads, only trails through thick forests hiding dangerous bears.  Adverse weather conditions are the rule all year. Allison Harbour too has a severe climate the whole year round and Newfoundland is sub-arctic tundra country with whales and iceberges.  Its seas abound with cod, herring, giant crabs and scallops.

  

If the benefit we now receive from the Gulf stream were to disappear due to the melting ice-caps, our seas would become unswimmable; icy cold at the height of summer with floating icebergs in winter.  We could only grow just a very few edible things during a very short growing season and the deciduous part of our woods and forests would largely disappear.  The landscape would look bleak, except in late spring and summer with a brief appearance of tundra flowers and grasses. 

 

Happily Clovelly today enjoys a unique micro maritime climate, thanks to the Gulf stream and its sheltered position. Flowers can bloom all the year round and tender and exotic plants thrive within the walled Victorian kitchen gardens of Clovelly Court.

 

WALKING

Clovelly is a beautiful base for North Devon Coastal walking. Hobby Drive, below, winds along through woods and offers superb views of both Clovelly harbour and Bideford Bay.

Walking the other way along the coast, takes you along the dramatic North Devon stretch of coastal cliffs to Hartland Point, taking in the little carved shelter of Angel's Wings, then on to the dramatic headland called Gallantry Bower and forward to Mouth Mill Cove once popular with smugglers, and thence to Hartland Point with it's lighthouse.

The woodland areas on top of the cliffs around Clovelly are full of wildlife, including a variety of birds, butterflies and small mammals. Beautiful foxgloves, primroses and bluebells abound at certain times of the year.



Angel's wings

A former butler at Clovelly Court made the carvings on this folly.



Please click leaflet below to view or [right click] and [save target as] to download it to your computer.

For leaflets and maps of Devon walks. www.walkingindevon.co.uk

 and  www.westcountrywalks.co.uk