Totnes: Coffee and Castles

Unusually for the summer of 2012, we arrived in the town of Totnes in brilliant sunshine. This always helps create a good first impression of a town in my experience, but I have to say that Totness didn't really need any help!

To be honest we didn't really mean to visit the town as such, we were planning just to visit the castle on our way to Dartmouth. It was such a beautiful day though, we'd got up early. This often happens when you're in a caravan. Somehow when the sun is streaming through the skylight you just don't feel the need to stay in bed. So, we set off early and were in the little car park at the top of the hill just before nine in the morning - in spite of the fact that we actually had to go through the one way system twice because the road to the car park is so narrow, and the turning to get into it so sharp we missed it the first time.

Still, we climbed out of the car and walked the hundred yards or so to the gates of the castle to find them firmly locked. It was at this point we bothered to check the castle's opening times and discovered that we were an hour early - the place doesn't open until ten! Always happy to turn a problem into an opportunity we set off in search of the high street, via a tiny little footpath which ran down the back of some houses and seemed a better option than waling on the narrow and pavement free road.

This proved to be an excellent choice on more than health and safety grounds because as we ambled along we passed the town's guild hall. Built in 1553 on the foundations of an eleventh century priory - and still in use as the headquarters of the town council - this is a cut above your average council office. We weren't sure what was council and what was residential, so we didn't poke around too much but it was a strangely atmospheric and intimate building. We were impressed.

Finally we emerged near the bottom of the high street. We knew we were somewhere special immediately because two shopkeepers were standing in the doorways of their respective emporiums conversing across the street. That sort of thing might happen in old episodes of Doctor Finnley's Casebook, but I have never seen it in real life. We immediately got the sense that there is a powerful community spirit in Totnes. Also, that the high street is quite narrow... The street runs up the hill, but we just walked - taking advice from Billie Holliday and directing our feet to the sunny side of the street, soaking in the all too rare warmth of both the sun and the town.

The first thing that strikes you - actually that's not true, it doesn't strike you, it slowly dawns on you - is the total lack of the sort of identikit chain stores that have made so many high streets indistinguishable from each other. Totnes has somehow avoided the attentions of McDonald's, WH Smith, Starbucks and their ilk and the high street is instead occupied by a range of highly individual business from bookshops to art suppliers, to music shops and cafes. I confess we were charmed immediately - there's just something in the air!

Totness is a fiercely independent and individual place - it even has its own currency, the "Totnes Pound" which is accepted in around seventy or so businesses in the town. The idea - formulated by Transition Town Totnes is to encourage people to shop locally, with local business. It seems to be working. As I said, the high street is  currently untroubled by multinational corporations and bursting with individual one off small businesses. Recent attempts by Whitbread's Costa Coffee chain to gain a foothold at the bottom of the hill are being fiercely resisted - as a quick glance at almost any shop window in the town will illustrate, they almost all seem to be displaying "STOP COSTA" posters.

I'm not usually a fan of such campaigns, taking the view that if locals don't want a particular outlet in their town all they have to do is not shop there and it will simply go away. But Totnes is a little different. The local economy - and the swathe of local coffee shops - depend largely on tourists. Tourists who arrive by train. Which stops at the bottom of the hill meaning that the familiar Costa logo will be one of the first things they see. If they arrive by car, then the chances are they won't park at the top of the hill like we did, but in the town's main car park - also at the bottom of the hill.

The arrival of Costa would change things radically and would certainly affect the viability of the smaller locally owned coffee shops and cafes. It doesn't matter how good the local guys are, people tend to go with what they know - and if you're a small one shop concern there is no way you can compete with the likes of Costa on price. So, here's to the small traders of Totnes - long may they continue to drink independent coffee!

I suppose that if the corporate armies continue their assault the good citizens of the town could do what their forbears might have done and take shelter in the castle at the top of the hill, which is where we headed next*. We arrived at the gate in brilliant sunshine and found the gate still firmly closed. A quick check of the watch showed that we were still a few minutes early so we pottered a little awkwardly around the little garden that sits outside the gate to the castle. The awkwardness came from the fact that the gate is set into the castle's curtain wall right at the end of a little row of terraced cottages and we did feel a little as though we were hanging around on somebody's doorstep.

It was a very pretty place to be hanging around though, and the weather was beautiful so it wasn't really much of a hardship.  The nice man from English Heritage apparently thought otherwise, however. He seemed a little surprised to see us as he approached the gate (exactly on time at ten am, I should say) "Oh, I'm sorry, are you waiting to come in - I don't normally get people this early!" he said, unlocking the gates and letting us through. We followed him up the hill to the little hut which served as gift shop and ticket office where we bought a guidebook, flourished our English Heritage cards which entitled us to free admission, and set off to explore.

You might remember that the last castle I wrote about was the big, brash behemoth at Warwick. Well, just as Totnes high street is the polar opposite of Oxford Street, Totnes Castle is the antithesis of Warwick. Once you're past the little hut you find yourself in a large, vaguely circular area that was once the "bailey" of this classic Motte and Bailey Castle. The castle proper is a surprisingly compact construction at the top of a very steep hill, originally intended to make it hard to attack, and to allow it to dominate the town.

As is usually the way the original castle, built in 1068 by "Juhel of Totnes"**, one of William the Conquerer's cronies, is long gone. According to the guide book it would have been made largely of wood, and given that it was thrown up within two years of the conquest must have been built pretty quickly. No surprise therefore that it didn't last very long. Juhel didn't retain control of his lands much beyond the death of William 1st, and the estates passed through many hands, including one William de Braose, who probably built the first stone keep,  before ending up, basically derelict, in the hands of the de la Zouch family in the early fourteenth century.

They received a Royal Order to refortify the castle, and so constructed the shell keep we see today. After that, nothing happened. Seriously. Apparently there was a little bit of kerfuffle during the English Civil War, but the castle "saw no action". Once again Totnes refuses to conform to expectations. Castles are built to control and defend, and it seems that Totnes Castle was never really called upon to do either. I rather like that.

English Heritage, who have controlled the castle since 1984, have done what they always do with castles. They have tidied things up and made things safe and are now basically preserving it for the future. No rides, not shows, no razzamatazz. In fact, it's one of the most tranquil places I've been for a while. The bailey area is now shaded by massive trees, and the ramparts of the shell keep afford spectacular views of Totnes and the river Dart. By virtue of turning up at opening time we got the place essentially to ourselves (the nice English Heritage man wasn't joking when he told up that he didn't get many people in so early). 

Had it been later in the day we might have availed ourselves of the picnic tables in the bailey area -  it would have been a fantastic place for lunch. But it was still too early for that, so we bade the castle farewell, headed back to the car and struck out for the coast. "Dartmouth will be interesting", we thought, "and we're bound to find somewhere good for lunch there."

I'm happy to say that we were right on both counts...

*I know, that's a terrible link...

**I bet his mother didn't call him that...