'Fyke's Well Dartmoor'

This graphite drawing depicts the small stone shelter named Fice’s Well, over a spring near Princetown, Dartmoor. The artist has misunderstood the lintel stone inscription as ‘FYKE 1168’, instead of ‘I.F. 1568’. A brook runs in front of the well over undulating terrain, scattered with rock and shrubbery and overlooked by a distant peak. The well is the subject of a local legend making it an historic attraction. An inscription in the bottom left corner reads ‘Fyke’s Well Dartmoor’.

This drawing is part of an album containing thirty-six drawings (PAG3476–PAG3511) by Harry Edmund Edgell (1809–1876), dated between 1851 and 1852. During this time, Edgell was living in Torquay, Devon, with his wife Caroline, with whom he had a daughter in June 1852. Edgell entered the Royal Naval College in 1821 and was involved in forcing the passage of the Bocca Tigris in China while serving as Lieutenant on HMS ‘Imogene’ in the 1830s. He became Captain in 1846 and commanded HMS ‘Siren’, in which he assisted in the removal of the sculptured remains of the Tomb of Mausolus (Canning Marbles) from Bodrum Castle, Asia Minor (now Türkiye), to the British Museum. After returning from the Mediterranean in 1847, Edgell did not serve on board a ship again until 1855. This sketchbook primarily contains landscapes and coastal scenes depicting everyday life in and around Devon. Some of the later pages depict places in China and other locations in Asia, suggesting Edgell may have used this album outside of the dates recorded. The final page contains a note in Edgell’s hand, titled ‘India’, recording the details of six ships involved in the Second Anglo-Burmese War, which began in April 1852.