The shout of a child or the peaceful crow of a cock was the loudest sound you heard.

Once a gentleman from London town came down to spend a week at the parsonage.

Towards evening on the very first day he grew restless and complained of the abnormal stillness.

"I like a quiet place well enough," he exclaimed, "but this tingling silence I can't stand!" And stand it he wouldn't and didn't, for on the very next morning he took himself off.

Many years had gone by, but the vicar could not forget the Londoner who had come down to invent a new way of describing the Coombe silence.