Combpyne Village Reservoir

A Memory of Combpyne.

I am a little bit unsure whether it was 1948 when my late  father, the Revd Peter N Longridge, moved from Sticklpath in Barnstaple down to Combpyne. Or maybe a year or two later. The list of Rectors in the church will confirm. My memories of the village are several, and not in any particular order of importance. There was the church, of course. I recall excavations inside which revealed a very old medieval mural showing a ship on the south wall, and two coffins under the nave when electric cables were laid. And the Yew tree from which I fell at the age of 12, breaking my right leg, whose consequences I now feel at the present age of nearly 68! There was Farmer Webber and his son Frank, and we used to collect fresh milk every other day in a aluminium pail. Clotted cream almost every day. Then the clunk-clunk of the water ram which pumped beautiful tasting fresh water up to the tiny covered reservoir above the village. And shooting rabbits with a .22 rifle before guns were virtually banned. And the sound of vixens yelping in the woods at night. And my shooting through the telephone wires with the gun one day by accident. And the day when I was operating an illegal still in the basement of the vast rectory (27 rooms) and two policemen knocked at the door to inspect dog licences....strange they didn't smell the cider boiling away just along the corridor...Such was my life between the ages of around 8 and 13, and I always treasure those days of growing up in the deep countryside.............The rectory has long since been sold and refurbished, and I knocked on the door about 10 years ago and told the owners who I was, and could I be allowed to look round the house. What a change had been wrought...Unbelievably different, yet familiar. But the village has undergone several changes, noticeably on the housing front, and I got the impression that the village has turned into a slightly chic dormer village compared to its rural rusticity of days gone past. I wonder if the tiny carved wooden figurine of a St Francis still remains in the chancel in the church: it was carved by a travelling tramp and given to my father. And is the Mason's mark still on the west façade of the church?

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