Last month I visited the beautiful coastline of North Cornwall
with one mission in mind. Setting off
from Exmouth, the journey to Daymer Bay, near Rock and Padstow took 1 hour and
45 minutes. Not a long journey to travel
to what always seems to me another country.
Like crossing the Styx, crossing the River Tamar is indeed a journey
into a different realm but of the positive kind. More a country than a county, to visit Cornwall is to visit a land rich in a
unique culture and history. Even the geography,
with its wild moorland, Mediterranean fauna and high-thicketed lanes, prone to
sudden sea-mists lends a sense separateness on the senses. However, despite my assertion above, there
was one aspect of mortality that I had in mind when visiting the secluded St Enodoc's Church, Trebetherick, and that
was to visit the grave of Sir John Betjeman, the former Poet Laureate.
Betjeman conjures up for me, memories of O-Level English
Literature and being introduced to a poet who ought not to make any
connection with me. He was from a privileged
background, wrote about churches, architecture and made middle–age observations
on middle-class life. How on Earth could
this man make any connect with a fifteen-year old boy interested only in
science fiction, fantasy and music? But
he did. His poems made a direct
connection not only with me but with most of the other students in the
class. His poems were witty (Upper
Lambourne) and somehow tinged with sadness and regret (A Child Ill, Norfolk). They also had a subversive quality, (Slough
for example) which would appeal to most youths “Come friendly bombs and fall on
Slough/It isn’t fit for humans now”.
Despite his genteel and toffish exterior, he had a subversive quality and embodied a conservatism with a small c with his unique sensibility towards the aesthetic and spiritual quality of buildings. Betjamen bemoaned the
destruction of a pastoral and historic Britain
by face-less bureaucrats,
small-town aldermen and city-planners whom he argued, had ripped the hearts out of towns and cities, replacing
them with sanitised and homogenised functional architecture which in turn sapped the individuality and spirituality from the inhabitants of such places and thus achieving more destruction to post-war Britain than the Luftwaffe had ever done to challenge the national psyche and sense of identity.
His poems were beautifully constructed and
accessible and that is perhaps one of the reasons they remain so popular among people from all backgrounds and why Betjeman remains still in the public
memory. That first O-Level year I studied Betjeman, Robert Frost,
Edwin Muir and Edward Thomas and while I admired the qualities of all the poets
and respected their craft, only Betjeman and Frost remained affixed to my
memory. They taught me that profundity
need not reside in elaborate words but in simple, straight-forward
language.
St. Enodoc’s Church is small and unassuming; a fitting resting
place for a man who wrote so fondly of Cornwall and Devon but more particularly
of the dividing line between land and sea. Only on revisiting his poetry prior to journeying
to Cornwall did I realis just how much, in terms of binary opposites, images and themes, sea and sand, water and land, the imaginary
and the real recur, throughout his work.
The chapel overlooks the lovely Daymer Bay
and access for me that day was achieved via a golf course. From this approach one can only see the
churches almost stooping steeple rising from the grassland which is once
surreal and intriguing. While warily looking
out for low flying golf balls, I negotiated the course and within five-minutes
was at the church’s entrance with its unusual Lychgate made from the local
stone and slate with the coffin shelf being placed at its centre rather than at one side.
As one walks
through the entrance, John Betjeman’s grave is immediately to the right. It is modest yet ornate, containing flourishes
in the Victorian and Edwardian tradition.
It was a beautifully warm Cornish summer day and the view from the
graveyard over the bay and St. Minver lowlands was stunning. I was not alone. During the thirty-minutes I spent exploring
the churchyard and the church, at least twelve other people arrived. They all visited Betjeman’s grave and had
their photograph taken there. Access to the
church is also by the South West Coastal path and later learned that there is a
Sir John Betjeman walk which I assume many of these people had taken.
A while ago I posted Betjeman’s poem ‘Norfolk’. I feel it fitting to post ‘Cornish Cliffs’.
(c) Stephen Evans
Cornish Cliffs - John Betjeman
Those moments, tasted once and never done,
Of long surf breaking in the mid-day sun.
A far-off blow-hole booming like a gun-
The seagulls plane and circle out of sight
Below this thirsty, thrift-encrusted height,
The veined sea-campion buds burst into white
And gorse turns tawny orange, seen beside
Pale drifts of primroses cascading wide
To where the slate falls sheer into the tide.
More than in gardened Surrey, nature spills
A wealth of heather, kidney-vetch and squills
Over these long-defended Cornish hills.
A gun-emplacement of the latest war
Looks older than the hill fort built before
Saxon or Norman headed for the shore.
And in the shadowless, unclouded glare
Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where
A misty sea-line meets the wash of air.
Nut-smell of gorse and honey-smell of ling
Waft out to sea the freshness of the spring
On sunny shallows, green and whispering.
The wideness which the lark-song gives the sky
Shrinks at the clang of sea-birds sailing by
Whose notes are tuned to days when seas are high.
From today's calm, the lane's enclosing green
Leads inland to a usual Cornish scene-
Slate cottages with sycamore between,
Small fields and tellymasts and wires and poles
With, as the everlasting ocean rolls,
Two chapels built for half a hundred souls.
