The Lost Village of Undercliff

David Stranack

The sea is restless and demanding. And it seems that it is never satisfied with the pattern of cliffs and beaches that surround Start Bay. It’s constantly trying to re-arrange them.

As we all know, last winter it decided to have a go, quite effectively, at the coast road along Slapton Line. Within the last few decades it’s taken bites at Beesands, Torcross, and Blackpool Sands. Less than a hundred years ago, perhaps miffed by the ignorance of the humans who attempted to dredge away its bed, the sea decided to demolish the village of Hallsands altogether.

Of course the restoration of the coast road was a must. But one can’t help having some sympathy with the view that, if there is an argument between man and the sea about the positioning of the Start Bay coastline, the sea will always win in the end.

The sea has been playing this game for millennia. Hallsands was not the first Start Bay village to be taken.

Long ago another fishing village was thought to have existed at the foot of the cliffs below Strete. People who have lived in the area for generations talk about the last remaining signs of ruined cottages still being visible at the base of the cliffs that back Pilchard Cove at the northern end of Slapton Sands. But these recollections go back a hundred years, so did the village really exist, and if so, when?

If we travel back a little further in time we can begin to find some written references to the village’s existence. Two authors who were brothers, the Lysons, researched and published a vast amount of work describing certain areas of Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century. This included, in 1822, an impressive tome about Devonshire. Their work clearly uncovered some information about the lost village as they talk of -“… a large village where a herring fishery was carried out, but the sea has so encroached on that part that not a vestige now remains”.

The further we go back in time the more promising the leads become. Thomas Brice, a local historian, wrote in 1802 – “In the seventeenth century a considerable village existed on the north-eastern extremity of Slapton Sands, called Undercliffe Lakes, near Dartmouth. It has entirely disappeared; and within the last twenty years several houses and above ten acres of land have been carried away by the sea”.

Undercliff is a name that is reasonably familiar to many local people. Indeed the cliffs that run north from Stretegate, together with the old road that runs up them, are still known colloquially as Underdown. However, the name Undercliffe Lakes stretches the imagination a bit more – although the village would have been located quite close to the upper ley, which hundreds of years ago might have contained more open water than it does today.

One of the interesting features of our village is that, over the years, it has been referred to by a number of different names. But Mr. Brice is the only one to know it as Undercliffe Lakes.

The conclusive proof of the village’s existence comes from the seventeenth and eighteenth century maps of Devon – of which there are surprising number. The earliest reference discovered so far is actually on a maritime chart rather than a map. In the 1690s Captain Greenvile Collins was commissioned to record the details of the British coastline, and his chart of the shores of south Devon, dated 1693, clearly identifies a village called Streetgate ( - the old spelling) just about where Stretegate ( - the new spelling) is today. The village must have been of some substance because maritime charts are renowned for showing very few shore based features, unless they are of significance to seamen.

Streetgate – most frequently being spelt Startgate – then appears regularly on various eighteenth century maps. But by 1787 the name of the fishing village has disappeared, although Street, a name omitted from most earlier maps, is now clearly marked.

Putting together this evidence with Thomas Brice’s comments of 1802, makes it fairly probable that the destruction of the village by the sea took place in the early 1780s. As with Hallsands, the village probably met its fate as a result of a number of storms over a period of years, rather than disappearing completely in one cataclysmic event. What has been proved, however, is that Streetgate survived the Great Storm of 1703 which had previously been believed to be the date of its demise.

So if the end came in the 1780s, when did the village start? This is even harder to establish because the further one goes back into history the less documents there are in existence to provide clues and evidence.

The chances are that fishing folk began to settle at Streetgate in the early part of the fifteenth century, at the same time as a number of other similar villages were known to come into being. Before then, the dangers presented by numerous pirates and sea-going marauders made living permanently by the shore too hazardous. This is why earlier villages, such as Slapton, were built in land and as far as possible were hidden from the sea.

What we do know is that by the mid seventeenth century Streetgate was well established. In those days the village was in the parish of Blackawton. It was another two hundred years before Street became a parish in its own right. Blackawton’s parish and manorial records provide further documentary evidence of the village’s existence. They do, however, also provide us with yet another name for the village. A survey carried out in the 1740s – the original document still exists – provides full details of “…the cottages att Streate Sands”. Seventeen cottages are listed, with two new ones being built at the time of the survey. There were also several cellars, or store houses, but only one garden is specifically mentioned. The count of the inhabitants is a bit imprecise, but there were certainly more than thirty permanent residents at the time. And some of their names – Tucker and Mitchelmore for example – are still familiar in the area today.

If you walk along the beach today from the Stretegate car park it is difficult to imagine the scene that would have existed there three hundred years ago. The row of cottages would have looked out over the fishermen’s boats pulled up on the shingle, and the beach would have been a hive of activity as nets full of herring, mackerel and pilchard were hauled out of the sea.

But there is no doubt that the village existed. Call it what you will – Streetgate, Startgate, Streate Sands, Undercliffe – there was once a thriving community which was taken by the sea. And whatever attempts humans may make to resist its ravages, the sea will continue to have its own restless and relentless way. I wonder whether in a few hundred years time our descendants will be researching the lost villages of Torcross and Beesands.

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