Beer Village in Devon

Friday 13 (eek!) August 1993. We have travelled from our campsite to Beer, just a few miles to the east of Sidmouth and on the edge of the Jurassic Heritage Coast.

It is a very old village. At the time of the Domesday Book survey in 1086 it had 28 households. It now numbers over a thousand inhabitants. Tourism is its main source of inclome these days but lace making, quarrying of its chalk and flint cliffs and smuggling were all local industries at one time or another.

It is a delightful little village. I was kicking myself for forgetting to pick up the sketch pad which was still in the tent back at Sidmouth. The name of Beer incidentally is nothing to do with the drink, but derives from the Old English word Bearu which means a grove (a group of trees standing so close as to allow only the bare minimum of shrubbery or other growth between them).

A small stream flows down the main street, channelled into an open stone conduit that is far too modern looking due to the extension of the modern footpath to its edges. Here and there are stone structures housing a pump that could be used for washing or drinking. It would have been a risky thing to do perhaps. Before the conduit, the stream used to run down the middle of the street, spread wide and shallow, yet joined by each household's effluent and the guts of fish that the village women would sit outside, cutting out of the fish and flinging into the stream in the hope that rain would soon swell the stream making it strong enough to carry them down into the sea. The street smells much better these days I should imagine.

The village today is extremely lovely. In fact almost no matter which way you turn, whatever direction you look, you could take a pleasing photograph. The buildings are mostly made of local stone and faced with the glassy flints that are found within the chalk caves of the quarry.

The road becomes steeper as you approach the beach, which is shingle. A part of the cliff at the side of the road and fronting onto the beach has been turned into a large platform, now a great place to sit on the benches provided to gaze out to sea.

It looks so innocent, yet during World War II when invasion was thought to be likely, it disguised the entrance to a gun emplacement, given away by the broad slit in the cliff face below it which allowed a wide field of fire cover the beach on which enemy troops would have been likely to land if an invasion had gone ahead.

The shingle beach looking east. The limestone cliffs were quarried from at least Roman times and perhaps even earlier. A thirty foot (9.14 metres) layer contains fewer flints and is the main seam for quarrying. The stone can be easily cut in any direction when first quarried but exposure to the air makes it go extremely hard. Stonemasons would therefore work within the caves to shape the stone before it became harder and more difficult to saw and sculpt. Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey and St Pauls are just some of the buildings that are built of it.

The beach looking west. There is no harbour here. Boats are dragged up the steep shingle slope, now by chains connected to engines and in the past by a capstan high on the beach which could be turned by up to 20 people so presumably was capable of hauling quite large fishing boats up the beach. The shingle makes for uncomfortable walking but here and there are long strips of rubber forming paths. They turned out to be old converyor belts that had become too worn for their original purpose, when I enquired.

We had lunch in a tea rooms. Is there anything as satisfying as taking a break in a traditional tea rooms rather than a common cafe? Perhaps there is no difference but a tea room always seems a bit more refined somehow. This one was licensed too, so we went for a refined booze...

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