Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/365

BUDE 359 excellent centre for a district of supreme attrac- tion. Readers who care to see how it figures in modern fiction should turn to the Seaboard PaiHsh of the late George Macdonald, in which Bude is the Kilkhaven of the story. Even here the novelist had to borrow another church for his setting; the present Bude Church is by no means that of the romance. The town is now reaching from the canal banks to the breezy Summerleaze Downs, and beyond ; and of course the golfer is here in all his glory. But if we go a little more than a mile inland we find all that may be lacking in Bude at Stratton, which may or may not be named after an old "street" that passed this way from Devonshire. That street was almost certainly not Roman, even if the Romans used it. There is a little stream here called the Strat, which does not help us, for the stream may have been called after the town. Stratton shares with Stowe in the glorious memories of Sir Beville Grenville, his wife Grace, and his servant Anthony Payne ; but Bideford has also its claim to long association with the Grenvilles — it was from Bideford that Sir Richard sailed the Revenge. Stowe, in the parish of Kilkhampton, a few miles north of Bude, is now a farm, showing very few traces of the Grenville manor-house, which was one of the finest and most extensive in the West. There were two houses, an earlier and a later, but both are now things of the past. At Stratton, however, there is still the Tree Inn, which seems to have been the business residence of Sir Beville, whither he came to settle matters with his tenants and followers ; and it was here that his servant, Anthony Payne, was born. Payne, who stood