Ilfracombe's tiny bay is almost surrounded by rocks, but a pier was built by one of the Bourchiers, Earls of Bath, and his successors--one Sir Bourchier Wrey after another--have improved and enlarged it. Westcote speaks of it as 'a pretty harbour for ships of small burden, but dangerous to come in in some winds, especially for strangers; for whose better security they keep a continual pharos to direct their course.' The lighthouse now stands on the Lantern Rock, at the mouth of the harbour, where once stood a little chapel dedicated to St Nicholas. The dedication explains its position, for St Nicholas was a sea-saint, whose protection used to be specially implored as a defence against shipwreck.
Nowadays Ilfracombe is of no consequence as a port, but six centuries ago it must have been of some importance, for when Edward III was besieging Paris it contributed six ships and eighty-two mariners to a fleet. Although the nucleus of the town is old, and indeed consisted only of one 'scattering street,' its development is very modern, and has happened since it became popular as a watering-place.
The architecture of the church is very varied. The tower is probably Norman, finished by Perpendicular battlements and pinnacles; it is built above the centre of the north aisle, and projects into the church. There are also remains of Transitional work, and in the chancel is a Decorated piscina.
Leading inland from Ilfracombe are 'lovely combes, with their green copses, and ridges of rock, and golden furze, fruit-laden orchards, and slopes of emerald pasture, pitched as steep as house-roofs, where the red long-horns are feeding, with their tails a yard above their heads.' About twenty-two miles to the west, the sea-line is broken by an island, about which there is an indefinable air of romance. Lundy is three and a half miles long, its greatest width is a few yards short of a mile, and it is surrounded by high and dangerous cliffs and rocks--too well known even in the present day by the ships wrecked on them. Perhaps those oftenest heard of are the reefs of the Hen and Chickens, 'fringed with great insular rocks, bristling up amid the sea,' which dashes on them in a never-ceasing cloud of foam on the north, and the fatal Shutter on the south-west. Lundy has been described as a 'lofty table-headed granite rock.... The cliffs and adjacent sea are alive with seabirds, every ledge and jutting rock being alive with them, or they are whirling round in clouds, filling the air with their discordant screams.' Westcote remarked: 'In breeding time, in some places, you shall hardly know where to set your foot but on eggs,' and adds that it affords 'conies plentifully, doves, stares (which Alexander Nectan termeth Ganymede's birds).' Mr Chanter translates 'Ganymede's birds to be gannets, as there were very many of these birds there'; but an older commentator soars higher, and thinks of eagles and ostriches!