Clovelly village
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.
Turner's painting of Clovelly is owned by the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.
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' (1860) 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.
Donkeys on the High Street with pack saddles and
pannier baskets, called mawms.
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'.
 
Autumnal view over Temple Bar Cottages festooned with flowers
Clovelly Court Kitchen Gardens
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Spring time at Clovelly Court kitchen gardens
Clovelly Court kitchen gardens are a classic example of a Victorian walled kitchen garden including magnificent glasshouses sheltering peaches, apricots, melons and grapes. The unique maritime micro-climate also allows the growth of tender and exotic plants.
Clovelly vegetables, grown to organic principles, and plants are available for sale in season.
Other local gardens to visit:
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 other coastal towns and villages around the world where the climate is severe the whole year through.
Happily Clovelly today enjoys a unique micro maritime climate where flowers can bloom all the year round and tender and exotic plants thrive within the walled Victorian kitchen gardens of Clovelly Court.
Clovelly harbour and the Red Lion Hotel on the C14th quay.
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.
 
Hobby Drive View of Clovelly harbour from Hobby Drive
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.
www.westcountrywalks.co.uk
www.walkingnorthdevon.co.uk
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