The road goes under the rugged hills, past the little inlet of Wringcliff Bay, overhung with ferny precipices, to a gate leading into the domain of Lee Abbey. All kinds of wheeled traffic may go through by lodge and gate, except motor vehicles--they are forbidden.
Lee Abbey, occupying the site of the old manor-house of the Wichehalse family, is an abbey only in name and venerable only in appearance, having been built in 1850. But although “Abbey” be merely a fanciful name, and although there yet remain people who have seen the building of the entire range of mansion and outworks, the ivied entrance-tower and enclosing walls have so truly mediæval an appearance, that many people are entirely deceived, and, not seeking to inform themselves, dream wonderfully romantic dreams of “the old monks” and their religious life in this secluded spot, and live ever afterwards in happy ignorance of the deception. Lee “Abbey” is, in fact, nothing more than a very charming country residence, designed to fit an exceptionally beautiful site.
High above it is the woody hill with look-out tower overhanging that spot on Duty Point called “Jennifrid’s Leap,” of which we have already heard, and down below is the loveliest little bay--Lee Bay--with Wooda Bay opening out beyond it, and the little tumbled headland of Crock Point and the swelling, scrub-covered hillside of Bonhill Top in between. To style the little promontory Crock Point is entirely correct, for it was the scene of a landslip somewhere about 1796, when, one Sunday morning, the hillside fields, with their standing crops of wheat, suddenly slid down to the sea in utter ruin. This was due partly to the percolation of landsprings acting upon the clay, and the clay-digging that had for some while been in progress, for shipment to Holland. The names, “Crock Point” and “Crock Meads,” probably allude to this old digging for pottery uses.
Lee Bay looks like the choicest site in some delectable Land of Heart’s Desire. Down goes the road, through another gate and past the most entirely picturesque and well-constructed lodge I have ever seen, and so out of this private domain. Here a shady valley welcomes the heated traveller; a valley where everything but the generous trees, and the cool shade they spread, is in miniature. A little stream comes running swiftly down from the hilltops, as though it, too, were eager to enter from sunburnt heights into this place, where mossy tree-trunks radiate a welcome coolness, and hart’s-tongue ferns grow in lichened walls and look refreshing. The little stream presently falls over a ledge of rock and becomes a little waterfall, whose purring voice fills the narrow space; and everything is delightful. And there are not any of those horse-stingers, which generally infest the most desirable spots and, instead of confining themselves strictly to horse-stinging, interfere with inoffensive explorers.