CLOVELLY 
147 
down by a series of paved steps. Then it winds and winds 
down to the beach, the houses being placed one over the 
other, each with its bit of garden railed off. The houses 
seem to adhere as by an effort to the wooded hill-side — a hill 
which is, in fact, so steep that it may be called a cliff. Let 
us begin our exploration of this singular place from the 
Beach. 
Around the quay at Clovelly, and opposite the small 
breakwater which is built up to enclose its tiny harbour, 
small houses cluster, built on rocky foundations, which are 
daily washed by the tide. These houses are curiously 
arranged, some of them with wooden balconies, erected pro- 
bably to keep children from tumbling out on to the Beach. 
Turning away from the Beach in commencing our ascent 
through the heart of Clovelly, hung on the steep and 
wooded hill which rises over the sea, we enter, passing under 
an archway, the lower end of the High-street, corresponding 
to the bottom of the town. In doing this, we actually are 
passing bodily under the foundations of a house, which has 
been built on the archway in question. 
And now we commence the singular ascent to £ the top of 
the town.’ To make this ascent as easy as possible for the 
pedestrian, the entire road through the heart of Clovelly is 
not only paved with rounded stones like very big pebbles, 
but the whole of the way is divided into broad steps, each 
somewhat the shape of a parallelogram, and rising two or 
three inches above the other and lower one — the division, 
where the upper steps rise above the lower being marked by 
a line of larger stones. The crevices between the stones are 
filled with small tufts of grass, and at the end of each 
division below the line marked by the big stones are larger 
tufts of grass and weeds. Grass, too, grows along the way 
at the foot- of the walls of the houses, which are some of 
brick and others of stone, and some composed partly of brick 
