104 
THE DEVONIAN ROCKS OF ILFRACOMBE. 
ago, was a famous place for trade. It has an Exchange, built in 
Queen Anne’s reign, and is surmounted by a statue of that Queen 
—now it is used by the Local Board as a depot for drain pipes, 
as no merchants now live in Barnstaple ; and what used to be the 
principal quay is turned into a pleasure walk for the inhabitants. 
The Parish Church is a good-sized building, with a wooden spire, 
which has been twisted and turned about by the sun’s rays. Close 
at hand, in the churchyard, is a very ancient building—said to 
have been built in Saxon times—St. Anne’s Chapel, once used by 
the Huguenots when they were forced to leave France at the 
revocation of the Edict of Nantes, now used as the Grammar 
School, and, I suppose, the smallest Grammar School in the 
kingdom, though it is only fair to say that the present master is a 
good classic and teacher, as well as being a good botanist, a gentle¬ 
man who showed me much kindness. 
Proceeding through the town, the bridge over the Biver Taw. 
consisting of seventeen arches, I think, is reached. The readers of 
Lorna Doone ” will remember how Tom Fargus, a noted highway¬ 
man, leapt over the parapet of this bridge into the river, on 
horseback, when he was beset by soldiers, swam to laud, and so 
escaped. 
About three miles distant from Barnstaple is a remarkable hill 
to which Mr. Hambling took me, so that I might see the quarries 
there. All the geologists who have visited this place have said that 
the rocks to be seen there are carboniferous. But when I was shown 
one of the fossils found there by a young lady, I asked her what she 
called it? and where she found it? Her reply was, “ It is a 
Goniatite, and is from Coddon Hill.” As it resembled a drawing 
which I remembered in Sowerby’s “ Manual of Conchology ” of a 
Clymenia, I ventured to differ from her, and the next time that I 
saw Mr. Hambling I told him what my thoughts were—that the 
fossil was a Clymenia, and that the rock in which it occurs was 
altered Devonian, a view which he was inclined to adopt. 
When I reached this hill, Coddon Hill, and saw the quarries, 
I found that the strata were lying at a high angle, almost 
perpendicular, and dipping in the same direction as the Devonian 
May, 1893. 
