BLEADON—BREAN—BRENT KNOLL
TO reach the village of Brean and to come in touch again with the coast
on leaving Weston-super-Mare, Uphill village is passed, with a choice of
roads then presenting itself: a short road with a penny toll to pay, or
a slightly longer one, free. Either one of these brings you down into
the flat lands under the scarred and quarried sides of Bleadon Hill,
some 550 feet high. The handsome Perpendicular tower of Bleadon church
groups beautifully with a fine fifteenth-century village cross.
Thenceforward, across the flats, now rich meadows, through lanes with
much fine hedgerow timber, the way leads to Lympsham, a village rebuilt
by the local squire, who happened to be also the parson, over half a
century ago. Every cottage is in a more or less domestic Gothic style,
as Gothic was then understood, strongly flavoured with ecclesiasticism.
The manor-house itself is Gothic, something after the Strawberry Hill
manner of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century date, and really
deplorable, were it not that the beautiful and well-wooded grounds, and
the magnolias that clothe the walls, soften the effect. The church of
St. Christopher, immediately opposite, and encircled by beautiful elms
and oaks, has a fine tower that noticeably leans to the west.
[Illustration: BLEADON CHURCH.]
From Lympsham the road turns abruptly to the coast at Brean, winding and
turning unweariedly this way and that, over the open marshes; with deep
dykes, half-filled with water and mud, on either side, and willows of
every age, from saplings like walking-sticks to reverend ancients,
hollow and riven with age, lining them.
Thus shall we come at length to Brean, as into the end of all things;
for, truly, the spot is desolate. Not, let it be said, with an ugly
desolation; for, although as you approach the sea, and the good alluvial
earth becomes more and more admixed with sand, the surroundings become
mere waste land, these are wastes with their own charm and beauty to any
but a farmer, to whose eyes nothing can be so beautiful as a ripening
field of good corn when prices are likely to rule high, or a healthy
field of swedes when he has much stock to feed.
Here a road runs parallel with the coast, under the lee of the impending
sand hills, so that if you would catch the merest glimpse of the sea,
you must climb to the summits of them and look down.
Brean church lies considerably below the level of these surrounding
sand-towans, which menace it in a manner not a little alarming in the
view of a stranger. But the sand here, at any rate, has done its worst,
for although in places across the narrow road it stands higher than the
church tower, it is largely held down at last by a sparse growth of
coarse grass, and the very height and massiveness of these sandhills
act, under the circumstances, as a shield against the clouds of other
sand still blowing in during rough weather from the sea.
The church of St. Bridget is a small blue-grey limestone building of the
Perpendicular period, of rough character, scarcely distinguishable from
a little distance as a church, and remarkable only for having its dwarf
tower finished off with a saddlebacked roof. It is, as a matter of fact,
only the remaining portion of the tower, struck by lightning and thrown
down in 1729. An inscription on it, “John Ginckens, churchwarden, Año
Dom. 1729,” no doubt records the repairs effected on that occasion.
“Ginckens” appears to have been the best local attempt possible at
spelling “Jenkins.”
Although it is sand that now more nearly threatens Brean, the peculiar
dangers of the place formerly arose from water. The ancient banks,
supposed by some to be Roman, that kept the low-lying country from being
flooded by the sea were burst in 1607, and a great stretch of land,
roughly twenty miles by five, was submerged for a long time to a depth
of from ten to twelve feet. A pamphlet published at the time says:
“The parish of Breane is swallowed (for the most part) up by the waters.
In it stood but nine houses, and of those seaven were consumed, and with
them XXVI persons lost their lives.”
Local farmers are busily employed in the making of what is known as
“Caerphilly cheese”; sent across Channel to Cardiff and sold there as a
Welsh product to the South Wales mining population.
[Illustration: BERROW.]
Blown sand, “allus a-shiften and a-blowen,” is the most prominent
feature of the way from this point, all the four miles into Burnham. The
ragwort—“the yallers,” as the countryfolk hereabouts know it—distributes
a rich colour by the wayside, and confers upon what would otherwise be a
somewhat dreary waste a specious cheerfulness. But even this hardy
wilding, content with the minimum of nutriment, grows scarce and
disappears as Berrow comes in sight; Berrow, where the sand-hummocks
broaden out and entirely surround the church that stands there in its
walled churchyard with a solitary cottage for neighbour—as though
defensively laagered against attack in an enemy’s country; as indeed it
is; the enemy, these insidious sands. Berrow, there can be no doubt
whatever, was one of the many islets that anciently were scattered about
Sedgemere, and we have but to glance inland between Brean and Berrow for
this aforetime character of the surrounding country to be abundantly
manifest, and for the eye to be immediately fixed with one of the most
outstanding features of old time; the hill of Brent Knoll.
Travellers to or from the West by the Great Western Railway are
generally much impressed, between Yatton and Bridgwater, by the strange
solitary hill of Brent Knoll that rises abruptly from the plain of
Burnham Level, and looks oddly like some long-extinct volcano with its
cone shorn off or fallen in. Fast trains do not stop at the little
wayside station also called “Brent Knoll,” and while passengers are
still gazing curiously at the hill, they are whirled away in midst of
other interesting scenery.
Brent Knoll stands out prominently by virtue of its height of 457 feet,
as well as by its isolated situation in the great alluvial plain through
which lazily meander the muddy streams of Brue and Axe to their outlets
at Uphill and Highbridge. It is one of those many scattered heights that
are so strangely disposed about the neighbourhood of Sedgemoor, and give
so romantic an appearance to these wide-spreading levels. Of these the
most prominent, geographically and historically, is the famed
Glastonbury Tor, which with its volcanic outline, crested with the tall
tower of the ancient Chapel of St. Michael, is prominent for many a
misty mile, like some Hill of Dream. Then there is the Mump at
Boroughbridge, by the crossing of the Parret into the Isle of Athelney;
Borough Hill, near Wedmore; and many smaller, together with those
scarcely perceptible hillocks amid the marshes that are now the sites of
villages, whose very names of Chedzoy, Middlezoy, Westonzoyland, and
Othery, tell us that these, together with the larger hills, were all,
“once upon a time,” islands in a shallow sea that stagnated over the
whole of what is now called “Sedgemoor,” but is properly “Sedgemere.”
Centuries of draining, of cutting those long, broad and deep dykes
called “rhines,” that cross the moor for many miles, in every direction,
and so carry away the waters, have converted what had become, after the
sea had retired, an almost impassable morass into a fertile plain. The
industry of peat-digging in the heart of the moor shows the nature of
the soil in these parts, and modern discoveries of prehistoric
lake-dwellings at Meare, whose very name contains evidence of the mere,
or lake that once existed, indicate the manner of life these ancient
inhabitants lived. King Arthur seems a dim and distant figure to us, but
long before his time there lived a race of people on the islands of this
inland sea; folk who, although they frescoed themselves liberally with
red ochre, were by no means without a more artistic knowledge of
decoration than implied by that crude form of personal adornment. They
certainly made earthenware pottery of graceful forms, decorated with
ornament of excellent design and execution. Their other habits were
primitive. Largely a fish-eating folk, they often lived, as described
earlier in these pages, in wattled huts built on piles or stakes driven
in the waters. These forms of dwellings were readily adapted for
defence, for shelter for their boats, and for fishing.
In those far-distant days Brent Knoll was an island. William of
Malmesbury, whose chronicle of the English kings was written early in
the twelfth century, and abounds in marvels and prodigies, tells us that
it was originally named “Insula Ranarum,” the Isle of Frogs. It had
been, moreover, he says, in times even then far remote, the home of
three most famous wicked giants, who were put to the sword, after a long
and evil existence, by one Ider, in the marvellous times of King Arthur.
Excellent roads completely encircle Brent Knoll, making the circuit
around the base of it in some four miles, and a very pleasant and
picturesque miniature circular trip it is on a bicycle beneath the great
hill, which is thus seen to be as it were, roughly, one hill
superimposed upon another, with a remarkably distinct ledge or broad
shelf running around it, at half its total height; more noticeable from
the north-west, perhaps, than from any other direction. The great bulk
of Brent Knoll forming this base is composed of has rock; the upper part
being of oolite. On the summit is an ancient earthwork, the centre of it
marked by a flagstaff. No hilltop would be complete without its ancient
fortified camp, but the story of that upon Brent Knoll has never been
told, nor is now ever likely to be. Roman coins, found in almost every
old fortified post, have been found here also, and down below, in the
meadows, the name of “Battleborough” remains, with a tradition of Alfred
the Great having here fought with and defeated the Danes, or been
defeated by them; which, in its vagueness, shows how extremely little is
known of old times here. But the name “Brent”—_i.e._ “Burnt”—Knoll is of
itself evidence of warlike times, when the hilltop flared with
beacon-fires.
There are two villages on Brent Knoll; South and East Brent, both
pleasant places; the first with a noble Perpendicular church and stately
tower; the second with a church less noble, provided with a tall spire
that was formerly used as a landmark for ships making Burnham, and was
kept conspicuously whitewashed, that the mark might not be overlooked.
Since the tall lighthouses of Burnham have arisen, the spire of East
Brent is no longer regularly made white.
[Illustration: BRENT KNOLL.]
In the South Brent church a fine series of carved bench-ends includes
satirical representations of the story of Reynard the Fox, here
especially applied to the grasping conduct of the mitred Abbots of
Glastonbury, who sought to seize the temporalities and emoluments of
South Brent, but were defeated at law. Thus we find here a fox, habited
as an abbot, preaching to a flock of geese and other fowls; the fleece
of a sheep hanging from his crozier sufficiently showing that his
wardenship of flocks does not go unrewarded. Three of his monks, shown
as cowled swine, peer up at him. A lower panel on the same bench-end
discloses a pig being roasted on a spit, which is turned at one end by a
monkey and the fire blown with a bellows by another monkey at the
opposite end.
On another bench-end of this series we see that the geese have revolted
against the fox, who is found sitting upright in a penitential attitude,
his hind legs in fetters. A monkey preaches to, or admonishes, the
geese, in his stead. In the lower panel the fox is seen in the stocks, a
monkey mounting guard with a halberd.
[Illustration: BRENT KNOLL.]
An elaborate mural monument to one “John Somersett,” 1663, and his two
wives, occupies great space on the south side of the nave; John Somerset
himself represented in half-length, with a portrait-bust of a wife on
either side. There are, further, effigies of himself and the two Mrs.
Somerset praying, accompanied by a chrisom child; together with an
alarming effigy starting up in a coffin and praying earnestly to an
angel who, armed with a trumpet like a megaphone, wallows amid clouds,
blowing reassuring messages, which issue from the trumpet visibly in
lengths, not unlike the news from modern tape-machines. An elderly
angel, with an oily smile of smug satisfaction, beams greasily below.
The whole curious composition has been recently very highly coloured, in
reproduction of the original scheme.
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