Abstract
Berry Pomeroy Castle, in South Devon, has been a ruin since the early eighteenth century, and a tourist destination for over 200 years. Coming upon it is always a surprise. It is, as the English Heritage website states: ‘Tucked away in a deep wooded valley’.3 The main approach winds through woodland that suddenly opens into level and cleared ground where the castle sits. Before you are the gatehouse and the curtain wall. Within the walls are the remains of its towers (in varying degrees of preservation), the shell of a Tudor mansion, and (only relatively recently revealed) the remains of a colonnaded loggia, dating from around the year 1600. The back wall overlooks a steep bluff along the bottom of which runs the Gatcombe brook.
What a luxury thus to muse away a not unprofitable hour, among such Scenes of grandeur, solemnity, and solitude! longer much longer could I have sat, and indulg’d the penseroso sensations amid these charming Ruins had the time permitted — but I had eight miles to ride — I had seen the Evening star arise.
The Reverend John Swete, writing of his visit to Berry Pomeroy Castle in his Devon Tour of 17931
As a child I used to have nightmares about an unknown castle and this remained unidentified for 40 years. And then one day I visited Berry Pomeroy in South Devon. I don’t believe in reincarnation and therefore can’t explain why this place is so familiar and so horrible to me.
Robert Graves, 15 July 1953, introducing his poem ‘The Devil at Berry Pomeroy’.2
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Notes
Keith Poole, Britain’s Haunted Heritage (London: Robert Hale, 1988), page 138.
Deryck Seymour, The Ghosts of Berry Pomeroy Castle (Exeter: Obelisk Publications, 1990), pages 3–4.
William George Maton, illustrations by the Rev. J. Rackett, Observations Relative Chiefly to the Natural History, Picturesque Scenery and Antiquities of the Western Counties of England, made in the Years 1794 and 1796 (Salisbury: J. Eaton, 1797), page 112.
Richard Warner, A Walk Through Some of the Western Counties of England (London: G.G. and J. Robinson, 1800), page 192.
Edward Montague, The Castle of Berry Pomeroy (1806) ed. James D. Jenkins (Richmond, Virginia: Valancourt Books, 2007), page 3.
Sam Smiles and Michael Pidgley, The Perfection of England: Artist Visitors to Devon c. 1750–1870 (Exeter: Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Djanogly Art Gallery, University of Nottingham, 1995), page 74.
See for example, William Marshall Craig’s ‘Berry Pomeroy’, engraved by William Hawkins, in The Beauties of England and Wales, vol. IV Devonshire and Dorsetshire (London: Vernor and Hood, 1803).
R.N. Worth (1878) Tourist’s Guide to South Devon: Rail, Road, River, Coast, and Moor (Edward Stanford: London 1880) (second edition), page 56.
Anna Bray, Henry de Pomeroy; or, the Eve of St. John, a Legend of Cornwall and Devon (London: Richard Bentley, 1842) volume I, pages 10–11.
Elizabeth Goudge, The Castle on the Hill (London: Gerald Duckworth and Co., 1949), pages 53–54. Curiously in Goudge’s description the orientation of the castle is reversed: north is south, east is west.
Deryck Seymour, The Ghosts of Berry Pomeroy Castle (Exeter: Obelisk Publications, 1990), page 31.
Charles Kightly, Berry Pomeroy Castle (London: English Heritage, 2011), pages 5–6.
James D. Jenkins, introduction to The Castle of Berry Pomeroy (Richmond, Virginia: Valancourt Books, 2007), page viii.
Edward Montague, The Castle of Berry Pomeroy (1806) ed. James D. Jenkins (Richmond, Virginia: Valancourt Books, 2007), page 1.
Murray’s A Handbook for Travellers in Devon and Cornwall (London: John Murray, 1851), page 42.
Nicola J. Watson in Chapter 4 ‘Ladies and Lakes’ of The Literary Tourist: Readers and Places in Romantic and Victorian Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), page 137.
T. and A. Mortimore, Berry Pomeroy Castle: An Historical and Descriptive Sketch (Totnes: printed at the ‘Times’ and ‘Western Guardian’ Offices, by T. & A. Mortimore, 1876), page iv.
T, and A. Mortimore, Berry Pomeroy Castle (1876), page xxxvii.
T. and A. Mortimore, Berry Pomeroy Castle: An Historical and Descriptive Sketch (Totnes: printed at the ‘Times’ and ‘Western Guardian’ Offices, by T. & A. Mortimer, undated, but probably 1930s, the British Library catalogue suggests 1933), page 43.
Richard Harold St Maur, Annals of the Seymours (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1902), page 444.
John H. Ingram (1884), The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain (London: Gibbings and Co., 1897). The account of Berry Pomeroy is on pages 336–341. This quotation is to be found on page 341.
Erskine Neal, Whychcotte of St John’s; or, the Court, the Camp, the Quarterdeck, and the Cloister (London: E. Wilson, 1833), page 50.
Owen Davies, The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2007), page 8.
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© 2016 Emma McEvoy
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McEvoy, E. (2016). Becoming a Haunted Castle: Literature, Tourism and Folklore at Berry Pomeroy. In: Gothic Tourism. The Palgrave Gothic Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137391292_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137391292_6
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