Charles Kingsley (12 June 1819 – 23 January 1875)
Holne/Westward Ho!/Clovelly
Charles Kingsley was an English priest of the
Church of England, university professor, historian
and novelist. He was born in Holne, Devon, the
second son of the Reverend Charles Kingsley and
his wife Mary. He spent his childhood in Clovelly,
Devon and Barnack, Northamptonshire and was
educated at Helston Grammar School before
studying at King's College London, and the
University of Cambridge.
Kingsley's novel Westward Ho! led to the founding
of a town by the same name—the only place
name in England which contains an exclamation
mark — and even inspired the construction of a
railway, the Bideford, Westward Ho! and
Appledore Railway. Few authors can have had such a significant effect upon the area
which they eulogised. A hotel in Westward Ho! was named for him and it was also
opened by him. This novel, published in 1858, was Kingsley's response to the Crimean
war, and was intended to re-kindle England's fighting spirit. It is set around Bideford Bay.
Clovelly featured much and Kingsley’s description of it still rings true today:
“Suddenly a hot gleam of sunlight fell upon the white cottages, with their grey steaming
roofs and little scraps of garden courtyard, and lighting up the wings of the gorgeous
butterflies which fluttered from the woodland down to the garden.”
In 1852 the Kingsley family spent some time at Torquay to recover from the ill-effects of
living in the damp Rectory at Eversley in Hampshire. Charles threw himself into
prospecting on the foreshore, the cliffs and in caves for specimens of marine life. He saw
the natural world as the handiwork of God, and was to welcome Darwin's theory of
evolution with an enthusiasm which was rare among clergymen of the time.
The fruit of the Devon sea-coast explorations was a series of articles in the North British
Review, subsequently published as 'Glaucus: or Wonders of the Sea Shore' which he
illustrated himself.
The Heroes (1856) was a re-telling of the Greek myths for his three eldest children. For
his youngest child, Grenville, he wrote The Water Babies in 1862. It is for this strange but
enduring work that Kingsley is best remembered.