A Winter Walk on Dunkery

Dunkery is the purple headed mountain. Not many people realise that because of course it’s not really a mountain at all – but that’s how the writer of All Things Bright and Beautiful so famously described Exmoor’s highest hill when she was admiring its heather clad slopes more than a century ago. 

Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander, wife of the then Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, was holidaying at Dunster and was so impressed by the area that she wrote the famous hymn after climbing Grabbist above the village and gazing up the Avill Valley.

The upper end of this sublime vale is dominated by the huge mass of Dunkery which, though not really a mountain with a modest altitude of 1760 feet, certainly looks impressive its neighbouring parish which border the sea.  

View from Dunkery approach in the south

And apart from being promoted to mountain it’s perhaps right and proper that Dunkery should have a claim to fame that is directly related to religion – West Somerset folk have always held their big eminence in somewhat sacred regard…

For centuries they believed in a supernatural phenomenon which, it was claimed, appeared up on the summit every Easter – though exactly how the Lamb of God manifested itself I'm not quite sure.

The good people from the nearby villages of Cutcombe and Luccombe would march up to the lofty Beacon and watch for the apparition which appeared in the sky - and I can only presume that what they saw was something akin to the sun-dog, or parhelia, which is a sort of twin-sunset caused by ice crystals forming high in the atmosphere (not quite as uncommon in westerly areas as you may think).

There’s no doubt that you feel a lot closer to God up there - all Westcountry hills boast good views, it’s an essential part of their job, but many people agree that Dunkery comes tops for mighty panoramas. 

From where else could you see the Pembrokeshire Coast, the distant Cambrian Mountains, Brecon Beacons, Black Mountains, Forest of Dean, the Malverns, the southern bastions of the Cotswolds, both Severn bridges, the Mendips, Quantocks, Blackdowns, Dartmoor, Bodmin Moor and even the English Channel sparkling through Sidmouth Gap?

It’s an impressive list and an even more impressive sight – but you need a good day and when I was there earlier this week I could hardly see the big pile of stones that marks Dunkery summit let alone the Severn Sea or anything beyond. 

But it was a good bleak day to recall the two wretched Huguenot ladies who once lived in a hovel hereabouts. Who they were, and where they came from, remains a mystery - but it’s believed they were aristocrats who had fallen on very bad times indeed. 

So bad that they died of starvation in their hovel, being too proud to announce their poverty to the world. Apparently all that was found in their hilltop shelter - apart from their two withered bodies clutching one another – were the remains of the slugs and snails upon which they’d tried to exist.    

Look down over the remote vastness of Codsend Moors – the desolate empty slopes which make up the southern flanks of Dunkery - and you can almost hear the rattle of their bones.

This featureless plain was once the centre of national attention. It was all to do with the gruesome end of Mollie Phillips, an Exford girl who was found dead in a bog on Codsend. In 1930 - some 18 months after her disappearance - a Minehead coroner's jury put her demise down to misadventure, declaring she’d drowned after being swallowed by the mire. 

Local folk were having none of it: Mollie disappeared on September 8th 1929 - a dry September that followed a long dry summer – and those who knew the place reckoned its bogs would not have been dangerous after such a long period of drought. Having walked the area in similar conditions, I agree - there are very few quagmires around after a long hot summer and the likelihood of being swallowed up by one seems most unlikely.

Not that I’d fancy walking over Codsend Moor much in the wet weather we’ve been having this week. It was altogether more clement up here on the Dunkery range some 4,000 years ago when Britain was enjoying something of a Mediterranean climate, and the big hill is dotted with the ancient enclosures and settlements of folk who were able to live so high above sea level in those times.

An archaeologist with the wonderful name of Rainbird Clarke once discovered a ring of stones on the summit of Dunkery which may or may not have been the remains of some early chieftain's hut. 

But it is the ruined cottage in Bagley Combe on the northern slopes of the hill that haunts my mind every bit as much as the fate Mollie Phillips and the unfortunate Huguenots. For in that deep tree-lined valley a hamlet once thrived until the plague wiped out the inhabitants - except for one...

A note in my dusty files reveals the following note about this remote and seldom visited place: “There is a ruined cottage whose derelict garden still contains flowers and some decayed outbuildings. The last inhabitant lived there alone and one day three men arrived there on a drunken frolic from Porlock.

“They told the solitary man that it was known he'd been sheep stealing and that he was shortly to be arrested. He was entirely innocent of the offence, but the threat of the arrest so played upon his mind that he hanged himself. His ghost haunted the place and none would ever live there afterwards...”

That makes three grim stories for one hill, but it is difficult to remain depressed in this fresh-air zone where ocean breezes never cease to play.

Hail storm approaching Dunkery

The massive Dunkery range boasts some of the best walking to be found anywhere in the Westcountry – you’ll not only be treated to the aforementioned views, but you are just about guaranteed to see wild red deer.

One particularly delightful right-of-way frequented by these creatures is beautiful, Dicky's Path which passes Birchanger Spring. In my Exmoor files, passed down to me by my father, there’s a note about this place written by a mysterious correspondent of his called 'Afghan'…

“The water was reputed to be famous for its healing qualities and it was supposed to be warm in the winter and cold in the summer,” says Afghan. “An old man told me that when he was a lad living at Luccombe where he was born, he was paid a penny for each can full of water he brought back to the village for two old ladies."

Two old ladies? Surely it couldn’t have been the Huguenots? They didn’t have any pennies. 

Just another of this purple headed mountain’s many mysteries. To find the answer to them and perhaps every other mystery, you must consult the Lamb of God.