BURNHAM—HIGHBRIDGE—BAWDRIP—“BATH BRICKS”—THE RIVER PARRET
THE upstart capital of these levels is Burnham, but the supremacy is
disputed by Highbridge. Now Burnham and Highbridge, although but a mile
and a half apart, are places very different, socially and
geographically. The first stands amid sands, by the seashore; the other
is situated about the distance of a mile from the sea, on the muddy,
sludgy banks of the river Brue. Burnham is a pleasure resort, of sorts,
to which all the railways of Somerset and Dorset run frequent cheap
excursions. It is the ideal of the average Sunday School manager,
seeking a suitable place for the school’s annual treat; for here you
have sands—a little muddy perhaps, but eminently safe. It would be
possible to get drowned only after superhuman exertions in finding a
sufficient depth of water; unless indeed one wandered off in the
direction of the Brue estuary in one direction or the lonely shores of
Berrow in the other; where it is easily possible to be drowned in the
swiftest and most effectual manner; as demonstrated every summer by a
few rash and unfortunate bathers, who generally prove, strange to say,
to be local folk, presumably well informed of the risks they run—and
foolishly contemptuous of them.
Highbridge is not a pleasure resort. Not even a Sunday School manager
would fall into that error. It was once (but a time long enough ago) a
place inoffensive enough; a hamlet of no particular character, good or
ill, beside the river Brue, and taking its name from the original
humpbacked bridge that here spanned the stream; built in that manner for
the purpose of allowing masted barges and other craft to pass under.
That was Highbridge. Nowadays, the old bridge is replaced by a modern
flat iron affair, and there are railway sidings and docks, and great
sluice-gates to the river Brue. Here, too, are the engine shops and
works of the Somerset and Dorset Railway, with a large and offensive,
and exceptionally blackguardly, colony of railway men, Radicals and
Socialists to a man, and not content with holding their own views, but
insistent upon imposing them upon their neighbours at election-times,
with threats and violence. There are railwaymen _and_ railwaymen, but
the country in general has, as yet, little comprehension of their
essentially disaffected, selfish, and dangerous character, as a body:
the more dangerous in that they have largely in their power the
communications of the land. We shall hear more of them some day not far
distant, and governments will be obliged to give them a sharp lesson in
social discipline.
But enough of Highbridge and its forlorn, abject houses, and its paltry
modern church with red and black tiled spire, apparently designed by
some infantile architect. Let us return to Burnham, and contemplate the
crowded promenade there.
Weston we have seen to be a children’s paradise; but there they are
largely mingled with “grownups.” Here they predominate, and the vast
sand-flats, that at low tide stretch out more or less oozily and muddily
as you advance, some four miles, are converted for a goodly distance
from the promenade wall into a manufactory of sand-castles and mud-pies.
The Burnham donkeys must feel a blessed relief when the season is over,
for they are in great request for rides, even so far as the
straddle-legged lighthouse that stands on iron posts to the north of the
town; yea, and even unto the sandhills—or “tots,” as the local tongue
hath it—of Berrow.
All the eastern ports of the Somerset coast are severely afflicted by
“trippers,” who descend in their thousands upon Clevedon,
Weston-super-Mare, and Burnham, not to mention the neighbouring
villages. Truth to tell, they are effusively welcomed at these places,
at any rate by the refreshment caterers and the proprietors of
swing-boats, donkeys, sailing and rowing-boats, and by the “pierrots”;
but the rest of the community resent the presence of these hordes of
half-day holiday makers, and act the superior person towards them. Yet,
when you hear, at any of these resorts, visitors, obviously present on
sixteen days’ excursion-trip tickets, speaking disparagingly of
“trippers,” you wonder really what constitutes such an one. What is that
time-limit within which a holiday-maker becomes a mere “tripper,” and
when does he become enlarged as one of the elect, who do not trip, but
make holiday?
The definition of a tripper, in these parts, is a person who comes
across the Bristol Channel from Barry, Cardiff, Swansea, or any other of
the South Wales ports, for half a day, and “brings his nosebag with
him”; or, if it be a family party of trippers, a family handbag with
provisions; including a bottle of beer for mother and father, and milk
for the children. Thousands of these family parties came over by cheap
steamboat excursions on most fine days in summer, and may be observed on
the sea-front at Weston and other favoured resorts, where they are apt
to leave an offensive residuum of their feasts behind them, in the shape
of greasy paper and pieces of fat, as often as not upon the public
seats. Those are the trippers.
The unfortunate person who, clad perhaps in a light summer suit (“Gent’s
West-End lounge suit. This style 25_s._”), has unwittingly sat upon a
piece of ham-fat left behind by one of these gay irresponsibles, hates
the tripper thereafter with a baleful intensity. Can we blame him that
he does so? But this is only one of that half-day excursionist’s deadly
sins, of which the fact that he brings merely his presence and his
nosebag—and little money—into the places he favours is one of the
deadliest. Another is the circumstance that he is a Welshman. The
Somerset folk do not like the Welsh, who are alien from them in every
possible way, and it is quite certain that the South Wales colliers and
dockers are not a favourable or pleasing type. Thus triply—financially,
racially and socially—the trippers from across the Severn Sea are not a
success.
It is all very lively at Burnham, and there is a bandstand, and there
are lodging-houses and boarding-houses innumerable, and teashops, and a
“park” about the area of a moderate-sized private garden. No tramways
have yet appeared at Burnham, but it is possible to travel
expeditiously, if involuntarily and not altogether safely, and quite
freely—on the banana-skins that plentifully bestrew the streets. But
this form of locomotion is not altogether popular.
There is much motor-boating in these latter days off Burnham, and by
favour of such a craft, or by sailing-skiff, or the comparatively
tedious method of rowing, you may visit Steart Island, off the mouths of
the Brue and Parret. But there are no attractions on that flat isle,
swimming in surrounding ooze, except at such times as winter, when the
wild-fowl congregate greatly there, in the mistaken notion that they are
safe from the sportsman.
In midst of the long line of houses that closely front upon the sea,
stands the ancient parish church of Burnham; considerably below the
level of the street. The traveller who has come from Brean and Berrow
will at once perceive that this street and this roadway are founded upon
the blown sand that has placed Brean church in a similar hollow.
Here, at Burnham, the church-tower, of three storeys, leans as many
times, this way and that, and has apparently been long in this
condition, having been left so at the restoration of 1887. In the
chancel remains a portion of a huge white marble altar-piece designed by
Inigo Jones for the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, and subsequently erected in
Westminster Abbey by Sir Christopher Wren. At the coronation of George
IV. it was removed and placed here by Dr. King, Canon of Westminster and
vicar of Burnham; and singularly cumbrous and out of place it looks
still, even though parts of it have been removed, to afford much-needed
room.
Leaving Burnham behind, and then Highbridge, we come to Huntspill Level,
with the square, massive tower of Huntspill church prominent against the
skyline, on the right hand. The road, worn into saucer-shaped holes by
excess of motor-traffic, goes straight and flat across the Level, with
pollard willows and stagnant, duck-weedy ditches on either side, and so
through the wayside hamlet of West Huntspill: a naturally slovenly,
out-at-elbows place, not improved by being nowadays thickly coated with
motor-dust.
[Illustration: HUNTSPILL.]
And so to Pawlett (locally “Pollitt”) consisting of an old church and
half-a-dozen houses on a slight knoll, overlooking miles of flat
pasturelands, said to be the very richest in Somerset. Proceeding in the
direction of Bridgwater, the Sedgemoor Drain, chief of the many cuts,
large and small, that prevent the moor from being inundated, is crossed
at the point where it falls into the river Parret. Here is the level
expanse known as Horsey Slime. It is not a pretty name. Dunball
railway-station stands on the left, and the distance in that direction
is closed by the Polden Hills, crowned by a ready-made ruined castle,
built some sixty years ago, yet looking perfectly romantic and baronial,
so long as this distressing fact of its appalling modernity is not
disclosed. Over those strangers and pilgrims from far lands who, landing
at Plymouth, and travelling to Paddington per Great Western Railway for
the first time, catch a momentary glimpse of this fictitious fortalice,
before the engine dashes with a demoniac yelp into the Dunball Tunnel,
there comes a feeling that they have at last entered a region of
romance. They have indeed, but not in respect of _that_ castle, at any
rate. It is painful to be confronted with the necessity for such a
revelation, but the honest topographer sees his duty plain before
him—and does it, no matter the cost!
In the levels beneath the hills crowned by this sham castle lies
Bawdrip, a village of the very smallest and most retiring agricultural
type, with a little Early English cruciform church, remarkable for the
finely sculptured female heads and headdresses of wimple and coif on the
capitals of the four pillars supporting the central tower. Restoration
has left the building particularly neat and tidy and singularly bare of
monuments. Bawdrip church, however, contains a monumental inscription
which includes a mysterious allusion that has never yet been properly
explained; and probably never will be. The small black marble slab
setting forth this inscription in the ornate Latinity of the seventeenth
century might well escape the scrutiny of the keenest antiquary, for it
is built into the wall in a most unusual situation, behind the altar. It
is a comprehensive epitaph to Edward and Eleanor Lovell and their two
daughters, Eleanor and Mary, erected here to their memory by the husband
of the daughter Eleanor, who, singularly enough, omits his own name.
Done into English, it runs as follows:
“Edward Lovell married Eleanor Bradford, by whom he had two daughters,
Eleanor and Mary. Both parents were sprung from Batcombe, in this County
of Somerset, from a noble family, and reflected no less honour on their
ancestry than they received from it. Eleanor, a most devoted mother, as
well as a most faithful wife, exchanged this life for the heavenly,
April 20, 1666. Mary followed her, a most obedient daughter, and a
maiden of notable promise, May 11, 1675. Edward, the father, M.A. and
Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, also Rector of this Church for
fourteen years, a most praiseworthy man, received the reward of his
learning, September 1, 1671. Lastly Eleanor, the daughter, heiress of
the family honour and estate, died June 14, 1681. Her most sorrowing
husband mourned her, taken away by a sudden and untimely fate at the
very time of the marriage celebration, and to the honour and holy memory
of her parents, her sisters, and his most amiable wife, wished this
monument to be put up.”
Tradition associates the sudden death of the bride with the story of
“The Mistletoe Bough,” made popular many years ago by Haynes Bayley’s
woeful song of that name, worked up by him from ancient legends current
in many parts of the country. The legend he versified was that of the
fair young bride of one “Lovel,” apparently the son of a mediæval Baron,
who, playing hide-and-seek in the revels of her wedding-day, hid in an
ancient chest, and was imprisoned there by a spring lock. That it was at
Christmas-time we are assured by Haynes Bayley’s verses, which tell us
that:
The Baron’s retainers were blithe and gay,
Keeping their Christmas holiday.
Unavailing search was made for the missing bride:
And young Lovel cried, O! where dost thou hide?
I’m lonely without thee, my own dear bride.
The spring lock that lay in ambush in the old chest imprisoned her there
securely, and her body was not discovered in the life of Lovel. To quote
again from Haynes Bayley:
At length an old chest that had long lain hid
Was found in the castle—they raised the lid;
A skeleton form lay mouldering there,
In the bridal wreath of that lady fair.
Oh! sad was her fate! In sportive jest
She hid from her lord in that old oak chest.
It closed with a spring, and her bridal bloom
Lay withering there in a living tomb.
But who was the “Baron” and who “Lovel,” and where they resided, or when
they flourished we are not informed. Curiously enough, however, a
Viscount Lovel disappeared in something the same manner. This was that
Francis, Viscount Lovel, who fought _ex parte_ the impostor, Lambert
Simnel, at Stoke, and disappeared after the defeat of the pretender’s
cause on that day. His fate remained a mystery until 1708, when, in the
course of some works in the ruins of what had been his ancestral mansion
at Minster Lovel, in Oxfordshire, a secret underground chamber was
discovered, in which was found the skeleton of a man identified with
him. It was thought that he had taken refuge there, in that locked room,
and was attended to by a retainer who, possibly, betrayed his trust and
left his master to starve; or who, perhaps, was himself slain in some
affray during those troubled times. The repetition of the name of Lovell
is at any rate curious.
Now across the levels rise the distant houses of Bridgwater town, and
the slim spire of its church. The long flat road, of undeviating
directness, points directly towards the place. Hedgerow and other trees
dispose themselves casually, without ordered plan, on either hand, and a
railway crosses the highway, diagonally, on a bridge and embankment. The
scene is absolutely negative and characterless: neither beautiful nor
absolutely ugly: the very realisation, one would say, of the
commonplace. As you proceed, a distant grouping of masts and spars
proclaims the fact of navigable water being near at hand, and then
groups of factory chimneys, smoking vigorously, loom up. These are the
most outstanding marks of Bridgwater’s only prominent manufacture: the
manufacture of “Bath bricks.” Every housewife knows what is meant by
“Bath brick.” With this article of commerce and domestic economy knives
are cleaned, brass fenders and candlesticks and coppers are scoured, and
much other metal-work brought to brightness. But it is not made at Bath.
At only one place in the world—and that Bridgwater—is the so-called
“Bath brick” brought into being: the reason of this monopoly of
manufacture lying in the fact that the material of which it is made is
found only here in the mud of the river Parret. But only in a stretch of
some three miles of that river’s course is found the peculiarly composed
mud of which this aid to domestic cleanliness is compacted. Equally
above and below the town, within those strictly-defined limits, the rise
and fall of the tide amalgamates the river mud, and the seashore sand in
just the right proportions for the scouring properties of “Bath brick.”
At a further distance above the town, the mud that renders the Parret’s
banks so unlovely becomes merely slime; while, as the sea is more nearly
approached, the proportion of sharp sand in it destroys the binding
character of the mud, and would render bricks made of the amalgam there
found very destructive to cutlery and other ware unfortunate enough to
be scoured by it.
Why these “bricks,” made only at Bridgwater, should be given the name of
“Bath,” and not that of the town where they originate, is a mystery at
this lapse of time not likely to be solved. The most plausible
explanation offered is that when these bricks were first made they were
stored and “handled,” as a commercial man might say, at Bath.
The mud from which the bricks are made is collected quite simply, but
ingeniously, in pens carefully constructed along the Parret’s banks.
These “slime-batches,” as they are named, are brick-built enclosures, so
arranged that the mud-charged tide flows into them at every flood, the
mud settling down during the interval of ebb. Thus with every recurring
tide a new deposit is added; the “batches” being filled in the course of
two or three months, according to the time of year. This accumulation,
grown hard in all this time, is dug out, generally in the winter, and
removed to the banks, whence it is taken as required to the pug-mills,
in which it is mixed with water and thus tempered to a putty-like
consistency. Then it is ready for the moulder, that is to say, the
actual brickmaker, who, after the identical fashion followed by the
moulder of ordinary bricks, takes his lumps of material, throws them
into a wooden framework made to the gauge of a brick, scrapes off the
surplus clay from the top and pushes the raw brick aside, as one of a
rapidly growing row. The rapidity with which a moulder does his work is
astonishing to the unaccustomed onlooker. A workman of average
excellence can thus shape four hundred bricks an hour.
The clammy slabs of clay thus formed are then taken by the “bearer-off”
and placed in the “hacks”—that is to say, long stands—with a slight tile
roofing, to dry. The tiled protection is to shield the unbaked bricks
from being partly dissolved by possible rainstorms.
The final operations are the stacking into kilns and the burning,
carried out precisely in the same manner as the burning of bricks to be
used in building.
The river Parret—in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle styled “Pedridan”—is in
other ways a river of considerable importance to North Somerset. Like
the Avon at Bristol, it runs out towards the sea in its last few miles
more like a deep and muddy gutter at low water than in the likeness of a
river; but the Parret mud, as we have already seen, is at least useful,
and a source of wealth to Bridgwater; and shipping of considerable
tonnage, bringing chiefly coals from South Wales, and deals from Norway,
comes up the estuary to Bridgwater’s quays.
The Parret is about thirty miles in length, rising some two miles within
the Dorset border, near South Perrot, which, together with the two
widely sundered small towns, or large villages, of North and South
Petherton, and perhaps the village of Puriton also, takes its name from
the river. In common with several other streams on either side of the
Bristol Channel—with, of course, the river Severn at their head—it is
subject to a tidal wave, known as “the Bore.” This is caused by the very
great ebb and flow of the tide, here so much as thirty-six feet at
springs. The flood tide comes up the deep and narrow estuary from the
outer channel with such swiftness, and is so laterally compressed that a
gradual rise is impossible and the water comes surging up as a great and
formidable wave, like a wall, from five to six feet in height. At such
times when westerly gales or spring tides prevail, the Bore easily rises
to nine feet in height. It is always an impressive spectacle, seen from
the river bank; and viewed from a boat, even when the craft is managed
by a boatman accustomed to this phenomenon, is more than a little
alarming. It sufficiently scared the French prisoners of war, confined
by the riverside in an old factory, known as the “Glass House” and
nowadays a pottery, from any serious attempts at escaping by water.
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