|
Later mention of the property, then known as "Woodbine Cottage"
and owned by a Mrs Hooper comes with the arrival of the near 20 years old
Shelley and his entourage on honeymoon.
Shelley had set out from Nantgwillt for Chepstow in Wales with his 16 years
old child bride Harriet Westbrook, her sister Eliza and their Irish servant Dan
Healy. Unfortunately the cottage they found there was quite unsuitably small.
Shelley was not thinking of his present restricted means as dictating his way
of life; he would be twenty-one in little more than a year and, surely, in
better circumstances. He could not wait until then to start his multiple
household, he also wanted as well under his roof not only Elizabeth Hitchener,
a fellow egalitarian lady friend ten years his senior, but also the liberal
thinker, William Godwin, his second wife, Mary and their miscellany of
children. With themselves and Miss Hitchener this added up to eleven people.
Even if all the Godwins did not come at first, he hoped for some of them; and
there would be others.
They came to Lynmouth on their way to Ilfracombe and "...the beauty
of it made us residents here for the summer months...It combines all the
beauties of our late residence with the addition of a fine bold sea. We have
taken the only Cottage there was, which is most beautifully situated,
commanding a fine view of the sea with mountains at the side and behind
us."
The Shelleys found Mrs. Hooper’s Lodgings not large enough, but with
several bedrooms; Harriet called the smaller bedrooms ‘servants’
rooms’ regarding them inappropriate for important guests like the Godwins,
they concentrated on securing Miss Hitchener.
Elizabeth Hitchener, purportedly the
daughter of a retired smuggler from the Sussex coast, was a schoolmistress at
Hurstpierpoint and in contact with the radical Godwinian circle in London.
Sometime in June 1811 she met and developed a close friendship with Shelley, he
mentored her and they shared many intellectual and political interests, which
are reflected in their intimate correspondence. Eventually in
mid-August Elizabeth joined Shelley, Harriet and Eliza in
Lynmouth, where a communal circle was in the making. Differences of
opinion, jealousies, and other tensions soon forced her return to Hurstpierpoint,
where she was the subject of scandalous gossip and for some time quite poor.
Below high hills Lynmouth rests on the shore of an exquisite bay, blue as
the Mediterranean. Ten years hence Shelley was to spend his last summer in a
startlingly similar location in Italy, so much does the Bay of Lerici resemble
that of Lynmouth. To see in close point of time the two bays scooped out of the
hills is to have the curious sensation of having stayed in one place.
Shelley’s determined choice of Lerici would seem to have been dictated by
this resemblance, by the desire, whether or not fully conscious, to recapture
the sunny earlier days of Lynmouth.
Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote of his new lodgings in a letter to William Godwin
dated 5th July 1812, "We now reside in a small Cottage, but the poverty
& humbleness of the apartments is compensated by their number,..."
In the spring of 1812 Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated,
workers were being urged to seek political power and the government were
anticipating riots. Here was work for Shelley’s pen. Lynmouth provided the
right atmosphere and for Shelley and his writing projects it offered
undisturbed quiet and the joys of the sea. Here Shelley composed early radical poetry, "Queen Mab - A
Philosophical Poem", a poem full of paranoid rhetoric that failed to
challenge, merely taking an oppositional stance.
Shelley wrote a seditious paper, "Declaration of Rights", and was
observed launching copies sealed in bottles wading out into the bay to set them
afloat, and sealed in boxes tied to balloons setting them aloft from the
foreshore. Shelley was being watched, and the Town Clerk of Barnstaple felt it his duty
to report to the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth, that revenue cutters had picked
up two bottles containing the pamphlets. Fortunately Shelley had taken the
precaution of omitting his and the printer’s name from the paper, and
there was still respect for rank and wealth to save him from prosecution.
Shelley sent Dan Healy, his servant, to Barnstaple to distribute and post up
the pamphlets. He was promptly arrested, fined two hundred pounds and sentenced
in lieu of payment to the common gaol for six months. Shelley visited him the
next day, but lacking funds could only alleviate the rigours of his confinement
by contributing fifteen shillings a week.
The arrest of Dan Healy had increased Harriet’s fears for
Shelley’s safety and he did not enjoy being under observation. Borrowing
money from their landlady, Mrs Hooper and two of her neighbours they bribed a
boatman to take them across to Wales and so made their escape. Upon Shelley’s eventual return to London some weeks later he wrote to
his former landlady, "Dear Mrs Hooper, I send you £20, out of the
debt of £30 that I owe you. The remainder I will send as soon as I can.
Your well-wisher, P.B. Shelley." It was however over one hundred years
later that the family of P.B. Shelley repaid the outstanding debt.
This was not however the end of P.B. Shelley’s association with the
property and Lynmouth. Some three years later in 1815 having left Harriet
Westbrook for William Godwin’s daughter Mary, who later became Mary
Shelley and found fame as the author of Frankenstein, he also became involved
with Godwin’s stepdaughter, Claire Clairmont. Certainly Claire was in love
with Shelley to Mary’s irritation and to resolve the matter it was agreed
to send her away from London. Shelley underwrote Claire’s excursion to
Lynmouth and for her to stay at the same cottage, Mrs Hooper’s Lodgings,
where he and Harriet had been so happy in the summer of 1812. Claire described
Lynmouth as a place of..."a few Cottages, with rosy-faced children,
scolding Wives, and drunken Husbands - I wish I had a more amiable &
romantic picture to present to you, such as Shepherds & Shepherdesses,
flocks & madrigals but this is the truth, & the truth is best at any
time..."
Here Claire found her own peace of mind, but there are signs that she looked
back on Lynmouth as a time of loneliness for she was to write
later… "a life of sixteen years is already to much to bear.”
On her return to London Claire Clairmont would soon meet again and become the mistress
for a while of that other great romantic poet, George Gordon, Lord Byron. After
a short romance with Byron - whom she saw first as early as 1812 - she gave
birth to his daughter Allegra after travelling through Europe in 1816 with Mary
and her husband to be Percy Bysshe Shelley.
In 1854 Woodbine Cottage, subsequently to be known over the following ninety
odd years as Woodbine Villa, Woodbine-Shelley’s Cottage, Shelley’s
Cottage-Woodbine and Shelley’s Cottage, was purchased by Welshman Mr.
Andrew Richards, a local property owner.
Confirming the property’s history on the 23rd October 1901 the North
Devon Herald newspaper reported… “Miss Agnes Groves a native of
Lynmouth attains her One hundredeth birthday to-day(Thursday). The old lady who
is living and under the excellent care of Mrs Thomas Oxenham is in splendid
health and retains the full possession of her faculties. At ten years of age
she lived at “Woodbine Villa” with a Mrs Hooper and remembers the
poet Shelley lodging there. This should settle the argument as to which is the
“Shelley’s Cottage” described in guide book”.
Mrs. Mary Blackmore, Mrs Hooper’s daughter was a close neighbour of the
Richards family, and in her old age took up residence in a cottage on Mars or
Mer(s) Hill along from the Rising Sun Inn, which being a Shelley enthusiast,
she named “Shelley’s Cottage”, but this was reported in 1907 by
the North Devon Journal newspaper as being destroyed by fire.
Mrs. Elworthy, Mrs. Blackmore’s daughter, died at the age of ninety in
1917, with the North Devon Herald reporting, “Mrs. Elworthy’s mother
(Mrs Blackmore) formerly lived at Woodbine Villa now known as Shelley’s
Cottage from the poet having resided there. Consequently, the deceased could
relate much about Percy Bysshe Shelley whose entry can be seen in an old
Visitors’ Book in the possession of the family…”
Mr. Richards’ family continued to run the property as a guesthouse
until the late 1930’s by when it had become popular with the many
cyclists. It was let to tenants over the following sixty years, the term hotel
being added in the 1940’s to become Shelley’s Cottage Hotel and in
1952 the front of the west wing was badly damaged in the famous Lynmouth flood
that took the lives of 33 people. The hotel fell into disrepair in the
1990’s eventually being sold at auction to the present owners, Jane Becker
& Richard Briden, in May 1998.
We had been looking for a suitable business to buy in North Devon and on
Exmoor in particular since late 1996, and settled on Lynton & Lynmouth due
to its coastal position. We were interested to purchase a hotel that was under-performing, that we
could invest in and improve upon rather than a business already trading well
with very little scope to increase income. Location was the other primary consideration as passing trade would be all
important in the first couple of years until the hotel had re-established
itself. We viewed various properties, but for one reason or another we could not
find exactly what we were looking for, until Shelley’s Cottage Hotel came
to market.
Here we had a business that had ceased to trade 6 months before, but with an
excellent position within the village and overlooking Lynmouth Bay. We had a
derelict building to develop, a blank canvas, a hotel that we could stamp our
own mark upon right from the very beginning. Some two years on following major restoration work and a complete
refurbishment Shelley’s opened it's doors
again 0n the fifth of August 2000.
|
