Two Devon Estuaries in the Middle Ages: Fisheries, Ports, Fortifications and Places of Worship

Abstract

This article discusses four aspects of the landscapes of estuaries: their fisheries, ports, defences and hallowed places. Focus is on two Devon estuaries, the Dart and the Exe. In the medieval period, a mariner sailing on these estuaries would have seen shores busy with people of all kinds. In places there were ports which had quays bustling with porters, merchants, buyers and crane operators. There were public defences well-manned, and forbidding private castles apparently empty, though the mariner was being watched by guards inside them. He would have seen large groups of fishers operating from the shore, or just beyond it, in small boats. Some of them constructed rows of stakes out into the estuary, on which nets were suspended, and these the mariner had to avoid for fear of damage to his craft. He might, on occasion, see congregations of people going to worship at the many shoreline churches and chapels of these two estuaries, groups which were greatly enlarged by people from afar on the saints' days of these hallowed places. In every sense these were human landscapes. Estuary shores were not lonely and deserted but bustling with people.