AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. 195 



Unless your walking powers are very small, we would 

 advise a ramble over the cliffs between Hope and Thurle- 

 stone, for carriages have to make a considerable detour 

 inland, through the village of Galmpton; consequently you 

 would miss a sight of the rocks and white pebbly beaches 

 along the coast. 



Thurlestone is a village and parish, about four miles 

 west of Kingsbridge, and near the junction of the Avon 

 with Bigbury Bay. The village is situated on high ground, 

 about half a mile from the sea. It is a straggling place, 

 with pretty rural cottages, the fronts of which are, many 

 of them, covered with roses, woodbine, and fuschias. 



It is worthy of remark that neither in Thurlestone nor 

 Buckland (as is the case with South Milton) can you find 

 a single public house. The Rector has, so far, been suc- 

 cessful in his determination to prevent the opening of any 

 place for the sale of strong drink; knowing well its 

 demoralizing effect on a rural population. 



"This parish is called Torleston in Domesday Survey, 

 and is there described as having 'two meadows and two 

 pasture lands ; it seems to have been, about the time of 

 Edward the Confessor, the property of Ordgar, or Algar, 

 the Saxon Earl of Devon. About the thirteenth or four- 

 teenth century, it appears to have passed into the possession 

 of Courtenay, the Norman Earl of Devon, from whose 

 family it has but recently passed away. 



Thurlestone, (or Torleston, Saxon) takes its name from 

 a curiously arched rock of conglomerate, of so hard a 

 character, that while all the other rocks around, being of 

 clay slate, have been washed away by the violence of 

 the waves, this arch which is a small isolated portion of 

 the D e yonian y-Qt-old red formation, still stands erect, and 



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