Page:Devon and Cornwall Queries Vol 9 1917.djvu/135

Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries. ioi coal-like masses in the shale rock of which Stoke Hill is composed : — "To the Editor of The Daily Western Times. "Dear Sir, — The remarks in your leading article of Tuesday last on the supposed discovery of coal beds in the neighbourhood of this city by the late Mr. Thomas Northmore, fifty years ago, call to mind a still earlier project of the same kind, mentioned in the following singular advertisement which appeared in Andrew Brice's Old Exeter Journal, or the Weekly Advertiser, Exon, Friday, August the i6th, 1754. " Some of your correspondents who possess the immediately pre- ceding numbers of the journal, may perhaps be able to show whether the locality of the older works is identical with the scene of Mr. Northmore's explorations. It will be seen that the advertisement affords curious evidence of the ingenuity of speculators in drawing funds from a credulous public, in the generation which arose after the bursting of the South Sea Bubble. Yours faithfully, Robert Dymond. Exeter, 26th September, 1872." Then follows the same advertisement as that previously quoted from the Western Miscellany. Is anything more known of the Com.pany or of the locality of the mine ? R. Pearse Chore. 92. AsHTON Parish Church of St. John the Baptist. — The visit in August of the Teign Naturalists' Field Club and the Exeter Diocesan Architectural and Archaeological Society has once more drawn attention to a church which especially interested the Royal Archaeological Institute on the occasion of their visit to Devonshire in 1913. A few points to which, as President of the Teign Naturalists, I was privileged to draw attention may perhaps serve to elicit further information from readers of Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries. The subject was well described and illustrated by Mr. Maxwell Adams in 1899 {Trans. D. Assoc, vol. xxxi., pp. 1&5- 198), and has been included in a review of the churches of the Deanery of Kenn by Miss Beatrix F. Cresswell. Sepulchral slab of Purbeck stone in the south wall of Chancel. — This, the most ancient monument in the church, is mentioned by Mr. Maxwell Adams (p. 191) as having been discovered during the incumbency of Dr. Richard Dennet (1881-1897). It was half exposed and a stone shelf fixed in front to serve