AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. 103 



In the Journal of Horticulture of August 31, 1871, there 

 is an interesting paper describing Combe Royal. It is 

 here inserted, with one or two corrections. 



"'Who are you?' 'Visitors to Combe Royal.' 'Ha! 

 Ha !' Such was the query, reply, and final laugh which 

 occurred at the door of the Malster's Arms, at Harberton, 

 where we pulled up on a 120°-in-the-sun day of this present 

 month of August, to give our horses a few mouthfuls of 

 water. If our interrogator had been even a better authority 

 than a parrot we should not have been deterred from pro- 

 ceeding to our destination, for we were assured by good 

 judges that we should be well recompensed for enduring a 

 drive of thirty miles under such a sunshine; those judges 

 were right, without any reference to the specially excellent 

 cider made in the parish. That parish is West Alvington, 

 in Devonshire, about a mile from Kingsbridge. The Manor 

 was an ancient demesne of the crown in the time of the 

 Norman monarchs, if not even previously, and was given by 

 King John to Alice de Rivers, Countess of Devon, but 

 reverted to the crown, and was subsequently granted by 

 Henry III. to Matthew de Besils. Afterwards it was divided 

 into various smaller estates, one of which was certainly ' all 

 that barton known as Combe Royal,' for a barton was the 

 demesne lands of a manor, and is named in an existing deed 

 of the time of Edward III. This barton passed to various 

 possessors until the Gilberts became its possessors, and one 

 of the Gilberts of Holwell sold it in 1722 to an ancestor 

 of the present proprietor, John Luscombe Luscombe, Esq.* 

 Luscombe is a truly Devonian name (and is Anglo-Saxon 

 for 'a valley of delight'), and the Luscombes of Luscombe, 



* " Great gnat grandfather of the present proprietor. He was High Sheriff 

 of Devonshire in 1740."— J. L. 



