THE WATCHMAN AT EAME, 



Bt R. N. worth, F.G.S., Corresponding Member. 



Some of the most prominent headlands on the Channel coast 

 are crowned by the remains of little buildings of mediaeval 

 character, which appear to have served the double purpose of 

 votive chapels and of giving shelter to warning lights. Many 

 such have no doubt disappeared, and of those that remain there 

 is not a more interesting example in the West of England than 

 the tiny Chapel of St. Michael, which has formed for so many 

 centuries a distinguishing feature of the grandly-outlined Eame 

 Head. It is not my purpose to attempt any description of this 

 quaintly-massive edifice, perched so boldly on its peak. That may 

 come more fittingly from another pen when the work of restora- 

 tion which our noble President — with that wise and reverent 

 spirit ever characteristic of the true antiquary — has devised, is 

 completed. 



My only object is briefly to call attention to the fact, that what- 

 ever may have been the original purpose of its founder, the 

 Eame Chapel was utilised throughout the middle ages by the 

 Corporation of Plymouth as the station of a watchman, whose 

 duty it was to give warning of the approach of strange fleets, 

 and who, to some extent at least, acted under the direction of the 

 minister of the parish, bluntly described as the " parson of Eame." 

 So far as it had a warning purpose for the seaman, the Chapel 

 seems to have been associated with two other buildings of kindi'ed 

 character — the Chapel of St. Nicholas on what is now called 

 Drake's Island, but which until the commencement of the last 

 century was hardly ever known by any other name than that of 

 its patron saint, and the Chapel of St. Catharine on Plymouth 

 Hoe. The lights shown from these three buildings would give a 

 safe course to the sailor into Plymouth Harbour, anciently Kmited 

 to Sutton Pool and the Cattewater ; and they afford an examj^le 

 of what must have been for the time a very complete pilotage 

 arrangement. Of the three Chapels, that upon Drake's Island 



