Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/189

Rh quently representations of the saint were multiplied. On the river Wulf in Devon at a ford it was held that at night anyone who came to the side of the water and cried out was caught up and carried over by a gigantic spirit, and there are those alive who protest that they have been so transported across the Wulf. Recently the County Council has built a bridge, and so this spectral Christopher's occupation is gone.

Pancras Week has a very fine waggon roof of richly-carved wood. Holsworthy is a good church well restored. Here during the restoration a skeleton was found in the wall, evidently hastily covered up with mortar and stone.

At Poundstock and Launcells are good bench-ends. The most interesting old house in the district, because best preserved, is Tonnacombe in Morwenstow, very small, with hall and minstrel gallery and panelled parlours, but perfect and untouched by the restorer, except in the most conservative manner. Penfound in Poundstock, the seat of the ancient family of Penfound, is in a condition verging on ruin. The family has its representatives in Bude as plain labourers. The last squire died in the poorhouse in 1847.

What is so delightful about these old Cornish houses is the way that, in a wind-swept region, they nestle into leafy combes.

Elford, now the parsonage of Bude, was the seat of the Arundells, but it has been so altered as to have lost most of its character. Marhamchurch has a good Jacobean pulpit, and in the parish is