Mohuns-Ottery, once a great seat of the Carews, was burnt down in the beginning of this century, and all that remains of the mansion are three arches. The Grange, Broadhembury, has been more fortunate; it has a magnificent oak-panelled room, with ghost stories attached, and there are those alive who declare that they have seen the ghost. The church possesses, among other points of interest, a curious window with projecting corbels that represent the spirits of the good in happiness within, and the spirits of the bad without in discomfort--not to put too fine a point on it, as Mr. Snagsby would say.
There are several fine fortifications, as already said: Dumpden, accessible only on foot, and Hembury are the most important.
ROGERS (W. H. H.), _Memorials of the West_. Exeter, 1888.
FARQUHARSON (A.), _The History of Honiton_. Exeter, _n.d._, but 1868 (_scarce_).
For the Axe Valley: PULMAN (G. P. R.), _The Book of the Axe_. London, 1875.
The chalk beds on sand--The subsidence of 1839--The great chasm--Present conditions--The White Cliff--Beer quarries--Jack Rattenbury.
There are a good many more curious things to be seen in England than is generally supposed, if we will but go out of the highways to look for them. Certainly one of the most extraordinary and impressive is the great landslip between the mouth of the Axe and Lyme Regis; one which even extended further west beyond the estuary. On this bit of coast, where Devonshire passes into Dorset, the cliff scenery is very fine. The White Cliff is a magnificent headland that possesses the peculiarity of appearing to lean over preparing to slide into the waves, owing to the inclination of the varicoloured strata of which it is composed. To understand the phenomenon which occasioned the subsidence of a whole tract of coast with the alteration of the coastline, something must be said of the cause of the catastrophe. The chalk bed striped with lines of glistening black flints is superposed upon a bed of what is locally termed fox earth, a bed of gravel or sand that intervenes between it and the clay beneath. Now the rain that falls on the chalk downs infiltrates and, reaching the sand and unable to sink through the clay, breaks out in land springs.