I am a native Bidefordian, and have to confess that I only came across the following poem,
‘A Ship Comes Up To Bideford’ by Herbert Ashley Asquith by accident, whilst researching something completely different.
[The poem is interpolated at this point]
Its author was the second son of the Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith (1908-1916), with whom he was often confused, and about whom not an awful lot has been written. Born in 1881, he was nicknamed ‘Beb’ by his family. He was educated at Winchester College with his brothers, then went to Oxford, where he became President of the Oxford Union, and later became a lawyer, as well as a novelist and a poet, being called to the bar in 1907. In 1910, he married Cynthia Charteris, who was herself a writer. He served as Captain with the Royal Artillery in France during the First World War, which seems to have had a considerable effect upon him, as several of his best poems, written about soldiers who had fallen in the war, testify.
He would have had plenty of opportunity to visit Bideford during his life. His father was invited and accepted invitations by Mrs Hamlyn to several house-parties held at Clovelly Court whilst he was Prime Minister. At a later date, his younger brother, Arthur, married the inheratrix to the Clovelly Court estate, (Mrs Hamlyn having died with no direct heirs), and to which he retired at the end of the war, after a distinguished war career, and where he lived until his death in 1939.
His older brother, Raymond, was unfortunately killed during the First World War.
Herbert Ashley died in 1947.
It is a rather fine poem, as are many that you can find by him on the internet. The North Devon folk
group ‘Hearts of Oak’, sadly now defunct, set it to music, where it gained a regular place in their repertoire, and can still be found on YouTube.
Chris Trigger
Chris Trigger's Blog 