Page:Devon and Cornwall Queries Vol 9 1917.djvu/217

 Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries. i6i 135. Church Bands — St. Petrock Stow Church Band (IX., p. 124, par. 106; p. 149, par. 121). — A hundred years ago St. Petrock Stow claimed, apparently not without some reason, to possess one of the most capable church bands and choirs in rural North Devon. But, like the history of the Patron Saint himself, the ancient glories of the music performed in the old gallery in St. Petrock's shrine on the hill have to be largely taken on faith. But this much is certain — that while the Rev. John Knight was Rector the music was much above the average. Parson Knight was himself no mean player on the bass viol, and he had as choir leader a Mr. John Darke, who lived at Nethertown Farm, and who was a very fine performer on the same instrument. Winter or summer, rain or shine, Farmer Darke would every Friday drive across the old Deer Park which formed part of the demesne of Heanton — now a farmhouse, but once a residence of the family of which Lord Clinton is the head. This ancient manor house was almost entirely destroyed by fire, and the present man- sion was later erected upon an eminence across the valley to the east, in the neighbouring parish of Huish. There is, by the way, a very interesting brass in the church here to the memory of Henry, fourth son of George RoUe, Esquire, of Stevenstone, his wife and their family of ten sons and ten daughters. Mr. Darke's journey was made with almost clock-work regularity, for on Friday evening the church band and choir assembled for practice ; and to John Darke the standard of the music rendered Sunday by Sunday was quite as important a matter as the ingathering of his corn or the hoeing of his turnips. It is recorded of him that when the band at length went the way of all human contrivances, and a new-fangled harmonium was installed in the church, he sat hidden in the shadows of the Nethertown high pew and wept audibly throughout the service. But John Darke served his generation well, and his son William was a first-rate violinist — indeed, but for an unfortunate weakness, he might have gone far as a musician. The mantle of Elijah, how- ever, fell upon a very capable Elisha in the person of Mr, William Trace. Trace's father was for fifty years the village postmaster, in the days when letters were an expensive