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THE SOMERSET COAST
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WORKS BY CHARLES G. HARPER
The Portsmouth Road, and its Tributaries: To-day and in Days of Old.
The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.
The Bath Road: History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway.
The Exeter Road: The Story of the West of England Highway.
The Great North Road: The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols.
The Norwich Road: An East Anglian Highway.
The Holyhead Road: The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols.
The Cambridge, Ely, and King’s Lynn Road: The Great Fenland Highway.
The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford, and Cromer Road: Sport and History on an
East Anglian Turnpike.
The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road: The Ready Way to South
Wales. Two Vols.
The Brighton Road: Speed, Sport, and History on the Classic Highway.
The Hastings Road and the “Happy Springs of Tunbridge.”
Cycle Rides Round London.
A Practical Handbook of Drawing for Modern Methods of Reproduction.
Stage Coach and Mail in Days of Yore. Two Vols.
The Ingoldsby Country: Literary Landmarks of “The Ingoldsby Legends.”
The Hardy Country: Literary Landmarks of the Wessex Novels.
The Dorset Coast.
The South Devon Coast.
The Old Inns of Old England. Two Vols.
Love in the Harbour: a Longshore Comedy.
Rural Nooks Round London (Middlesex and Surrey).
Haunted Houses: Tales of the Supernatural.
The Manchester and Glasgow Road: This way to Gretna Green. Two Vols.
The North Devon Coast.
Half Hours with the Highwaymen. Two Vols.
The Autocar Road Book.
The Tower Of London: Fortress, Palace, and Prison.
The Cornish Coast. North. [_In the Press._
The Cornish Coast. South. [_In the Press._
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[Illustration: CLIFTON BRIDGE]
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THE SOMERSET
COAST
BY
CHARLES G. HARPER
“_Somerset, that pleasant londe which
rennith to the Severn Se._”—FULLER.
[Illustration: Publisher’s Logo]
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD.
1909
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PRINTED AND BOUND BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I INTRODUCTORY 1
II THE RIVER AVON—CLIFTON SUSPENSION BRIDGE 6
III ABBOT’S LEIGH TO CLEVEDON 17
IV CLEVEDON—LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS: 25
COLERIDGE
V CLEVEDON (_continued_)—LITERARY 32
ASSOCIATIONS: TENNYSON
VI YATTON—CONGRESBURY—WICK ST. LAWRENCE 45
VII WORSPRING PRIORY—KEWSTOKE 56
VIII WESTON-SUPER-MARE 67
IX WORLEBURY—WORLE 78
X STEEP HOLM—FLAT HOLM—UPHILL—BREAN DOWN 87
XI BLEADON—BREAN—BRENT KNOLL 98
XII BURNHAM—HIGHBRIDGE—BAWDRIP—“BATH 111
BRICKS”—THE RIVER PARRET
XIII BRIDGWATER—ADMIRAL BLAKE—THE MONMOUTH 126
REBELLION
XIV CANNINGTON—THE QUANTOCKS—NETHER STOWEY, 139
AND THE COLERIDGE CIRCLE
XV STEART—STOGURSEY—THE FOLK-SPEECH OF 158
ZUMMERZET—GLATT-HUNTING AT KILVE—ST.
AUDRIES
XVI WILLITON—ST. DECUMAN’S AND THE 179
WYNDHAMS—WATCHET
XVII CLEEVE ABBEY—OLD CLEEVE—BLUE ANCHOR 189
XVIII DUNSTER 206
XIX MINEHEAD, NEW AND OLD—SELWORTHY—THE 227
HORNER
XX PORLOCK—BOSSINGTON—PORLOCK WEIR 247
XXI CULBONE AND ITS REVELS—WHORTLEBERRIES 260
XXII THE “LORNA DOONE COUNTRY” 270
XXIII OARE—MALMSMEAD—THE BADGWORTHY VALLEY—THE 286
“DOONE VALLEY”—GLENTHORNE
INDEX 299
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Clifton Bridge Frontispiece
Map of The Somerset Coast 1
Avonmouth, from Pill 18
In Portishead Church 21
Coleridge’s Cottage, Clevedon 28
Clevedon 35
Clevedon Court 43
Kingston Seymour 46
Yatton Church 48
The Rectory, Congresbury 51
Woodspring Priory 58
Reliquary in Kewstoke Church (Front) 63
Reliquary in Kewstoke Church (Back) 65
Uphill 92
Bleadon Church 99
Berrow 102
Brent Knoll 107
Brent Knoll 109
Huntspill 117
Birthplace of Admiral Blake 128
Bridgwater: St. Mary’s Church, and Corn 132
Exchange
Westonzoyland 134
Cannington 140
Nether Stowey; Gazebo at Stowey Court 143
The Coleridge Cottage, Nether Stowey 153
Nether Stowey 155
The “Mud Horse” 161
Stolford 163
Stogursey Castle 165
Kilve Church 171
Kilve: The Chantry 173
St. Audries 176
Bench-end, Sampford Brett; supposed to 184
allude to the Legend of Lady Florence
Wyndham
Watchet; Old Town Hall and Lock-up 186
Watchet 187
Entrance to Cleeve Abbey 192
The Refectory, Cleeve Abbey 197
Mysterious Effigy at Old Cleeve 201
Blue Anchor 203
Coneygore Tower, and Road into Minehead 207
Dunster Castle 210
Dunster; Castle and Yarn Market 218
Dunster Church, from the South, showing 221
old Alcove in Churchyard Wall for the
Stocks
Curious Archway, Dunster Church 223
The “Nunnery,” or “High House,” Dunster 225
Minehead 228
Seventeenth-Century Mantel, “Luttrell 230
Arms” Inn
Quirke’s Almshouses 236
Doorway of the Manor Office 238
Minehead Church 238
The Manor Office, Minehead 239
Rood-Loft Turret, Minehead 241
The Clock Jack, Minehead Church 243
Lynch Chapel 244
Packhorse Bridge, Allerford 245
Bossington 250
Porlock Church 252
Inglenook, “Ship” Inn, Porlock 254
“The Ship” Inn, Porlock 254
Porlock Weir 258
The Lodge, Ashley Combe 261
Culbone Church 263
Oare Church 287
Near Robber’s Bridge 288
Interior of Oare Church 290
Malmsmead 293
Badgworthy Valley 295
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[Illustration: THE SOMERSET COAST]
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[Illustration: THE SOMERSET COAST]
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
ON confiding to personal friends, journalistic paragraphists, and other
Doubting Thomases, professional sceptics, chartered cynics and
indifferent persons, the important and interesting literary news that a
proposal was afloat to write a book on the Somerset Coast, the author
was assured with an unanimity as remarkable as it was disconcerting,
that there is no coast of Somerset.
This singular geographical heresy, although totally unsupported by
map-makers, who on all maps and charts show a very well-defined
seaboard, seems to be widely distributed; but it is not shared by (among
others) the inhabitants of Clevedon, of Watchet (where furious seas have
twice within the last few years demolished the harbour), of
Weston-super-Mare, Burnham, Minehead, or Porlock. The people of all
these places think they live on the coast; and it would be really quite
absurdly difficult to persuade them that they do not, or that they do
not live in Somerset.
This singular illusion, that there is no coast of Somerset, is, however,
but one among a number of current fallacies, among which may be included
the belief that:
Essex is a flat county.
London is dirty.
The virtuous are necessarily happy;
The wicked equally of necessity miserable.
All Irishmen are witty.
Scotsmen cannot see a joke.
And so forth. Essex is flat, and London grimy, only comparatively.
Natives of Huntingdonshire (which is an alternative term for flatness)
no doubt think of Essex as a place of hills; and although London may
seem grimy to the eyes of a villager from Devon or Cornwall, it is as a
City of light and purity to the Sheffielder, the inhabitants of
Newcastle, and the people of other such places of gloom.
The coast of Somerset, then, to make a beginning with it, opens with the
great port and city of Bristol, on the navigable estuary of the river
Avon, and ends at Glenthorne, where the North Devon boundary is met. The
distance between these two points is sixty miles. Throughout the entire
length of this coastline, that of South Wales is more or less clearly
visible; the Bristol Channel being but four and a half miles wide at
Avonmouth; seven and a half miles at Brean Down, by Weston-super-Mare,
and fifteen miles at Glenthorne.
The foreshore of a great part of this coast is more or less muddy; the
Severn, which you shall find to be a tea or coffee-coloured river, even
at Shrewsbury a hundred miles or so up along its course, from the
particles of earth held in suspension, depositing much of this, and the
even more muddy rivers Avon and Parret contributing a larger proportion.
The “Severn Sea,” as poetical and imaginative writers style this
estuary, known to matter-of-fact geographers as the “Bristol Channel,”
is therefore apt to be of a grey hue, except under brilliant sunshine.
But it would be most unjust to infer from these remarks, that mud, and
only mud, is the characteristic of these sixty miles. Indeed, the
Somerset Coast is singularly varied, and has many elements of beauty.
Between the noble scene of its opening, where the romantic gorge of the
Avon, set with rugged cliffs and delightful woods, is spanned by the
airy Suspension Bridge of Clifton, and the wood-clad steeps of
Glenthorne, you will find such beautiful places as Portishead and
Weston, whose scenery no crowds of vulgarians can spoil; and Dunster,
Minehead, and Porlock, which need no advertisement from this or any
other pen. I have purposely omitted Clevedon from the list above, for it
does not appeal to me.
Mud you have, naked and unashamed, practically only at Pill and the
outlet of the Avon, and again at Steart and the estuary of the Parret,
where those surcharged waters precipitate their unlovely burden.
Elsewhere, the purifying sea completely scavenges it away or kindly
disguises it. Nay, between Weston and Burnham we have even a long range
of sandhills, as pure as the sand-towans of North Cornwall or as the
driven snow.[1]
Footnote 1:
But this depends largely upon the neighbourhood in which it has been
driving.
And further, if we turn our attention to the scenery and the churches
and castles and ruined abbeys, or to the associations, of this
countryside, we shall find it an engaging succession of districts,
comparing well with some better-known and more generally appreciated
seaboards.
A specious air of eternal midsummer and sunshine belongs to the name of
Somerset. Camden, writing in the first years of the seventeenth century,
was not too grave an historian and antiquary to notice the fact; and we
find him, accordingly, at considerable pains to disabuse any one likely
to be deceived by it. He says, in his great work “Britannia”: “Some
suppose its name was given it for the mildness and, as it were, _summer_
temperature of its air.... But as it may be truly called in summer a
summer country, so it has as good right to be called a winter one in
winter, when it is for the most part wet, fenny and marshy, to the great
inconvenience of travellers. I am more inclined to think it derives from
_Somerton_, anciently the most considerable town in the whole country.”
True, it did; for Somerton was until the eighth century the capital of
the tribe of Britons known as Somersætas. Their kingdom and their
capital were finally swept away by the victorious irresistible advance
of the great Saxon kingdom of Wessex, in A.D. 710. Hence Somerset,
although we occasionally hear of “Somerset_shire_,” is not really a
shire, in the sense of being a more or less arbitrarily shorn-off
division after the fashion of the Midland shires—Leicestershire,
Northamptonshire, and many others—but is historically an individual
entity; the ancient kingdom of the Somersætas, remaining in name, though
not in fact; just as Wiltshire, wrongly so-called, is the ancient
country of the Wilsætas; Devon the land of the Damnonians, and Cornwall
the home of the Cornu-Welsh.
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