NORTON ST. PHILIP--BATH--CORSHAM--CASTLE COMBE
There are ways from Wells to Bath somewhat shorter than the twenty-four
miles by which we shall now proceed, but they take you up weariful
heights, over the long, swooping contours of the Mendips. There is not,
in fact, any really easy way between Wells and Bath.
We leave the city through the cathedral close, along its north side,
and through the beautiful Chain Gate, a work of the Perpendicular
period, connecting the cathedral with the Vicars’ College. Presently
begins the long rise of Horrington Hill; and so up and again up goes
the road, and past the lonely Old Down Inn, coming at length by
Kilmersdon to Ammerdown and Norton St. Philip, along a true exemplar of
what geography primers style “an elevated plateau, or tableland.” The
delightful village of Norton St. Philip introduces a welcome change
from these keen airs and strenuous heights, for it basks in the mellow
atmosphere of a valley. The sweet-toned bells of Norton still charm
the ear of the traveller, and are the identical “very fine ring of
six bells” that Pepys heard on June 12, 1668, and pronounced “mighty
tuneable,” ringing from the grey church tower that stands so stately in
advance of the village. The George and the Fleur-de-Lis, are both old
inns, the first of them historic as well, for it was the headquarters
of the Duke of Monmouth when the furious skirmish was fought here,
June 26, 1685, between his rustics and the soldiers of King James. His
ploughmen won the day, but Monmouth himself had a narrow escape the
next morning, when he was shot at while dressing at a window of the
George.
This house belonged of old to the Priory of Hinton Charterhouse, whose
ruins in the park of Hinton “Abbey,” a modern residence, may be seen
adjoining the village of Hinton Charterhouse, through which we proceed
on the again hilly way to Bath, which is six miles distant from it,
through Midford and Odd Down.
Many volumes might be written--and, indeed, have been, are being,
and yet will be written--about Bath, which is without doubt a very
beautiful and ancient and likeable city, with a long history behind it,
a vigorous present, and doubtless a lengthy and prosperous future, so
long as its healing thermal springs shall last. The antiquity of Bath
is undoubtedly pre-Roman, but to those mighty colonizers the first
great development of what they styled _Aquæ Solis_, the “Waters of the
Sun,” is due. A rival version of that title is _Aquæ Sulis_, supposed
to incorporate the name of Sul, an unknown “early British deity”; but
the discovery of a sculptured face of the sun-god, now in the museum,
seems to support the first name. Of course, the great traditional
founder of Bath, the true discoverer of the medicinal springs, is,
according to local patriotism, Prince Bladud. A statue of him in the
Grand Pump Room, erected 1669, commits Bath to a belief in the legend
of that leprous Prince wandering, 863 B.C., an exile from his father’s
Court, and becoming healed in these waters. But Bladud is an absolutely
unhistorical personage. The Romans, however, have left very substantial
relics of their presence. Does the general reader, it may be asked,
ever turn aside from his generalities, and particularly consider the
great space of time in which the Romans held Britain as a prosperous
colony? For nearly four centuries they established themselves in this
land, a settled community, with the arts and civilization brought
from their native shores. Nay, they did more than this, for they
Romanized the Britons and intermarried with them. England, the greatest
colonizing power of the modern world, has not done so much. Less than
two hundred years covers the establishment of our Indian Empire, and we
have not mingled with the races of Hindostan.
[Illustration: DUNSTER CASTLE AND YARN MARKET.
The Yarn Market, in the middle of the broad street, no longer witnesses
the marketing of yarn or other goods. It is, like Punster town itself,
a picturesque survival.]
The Roman baths at Bath are the best evidence of the solidity of the
civilization then founded; and we have also to consider that Bath
was then, as it still remains, the premier health-resort in these
islands, and the discoveries of Roman villas at Box and elsewhere along
the Avon Valley show that the district was what we should now style
“residential.” The destruction of all these graces after the Roman
forces left Britain, in A.D. 410, left _Aquæ Solis_ a deserted ruin.
It arose again as the Saxon “Akemanceaster,” and was a considerable
town at the time of the Conquest. The springs find little mention in
the Middle Ages, and only seem to have gradually won back to a right
appreciation from the time of Queen Elizabeth onwards. It was the
Consort of Charles I., Queen Henrietta Maria, who in 1644 began the
fashionable vogue of what was then styled “the Bath”--a vogue continued
and amplified in the visits of Charles II. and his Court, 1663; of the
Queen of James II., 1687; and with the great favour shown the place by
Queen Anne. This fashionable and therapeutic reputation was enormously
enhanced in her time, the Corporation building the Pump Room in 1704,
and appointing Beau Nash “Master of the Ceremonies.” Still, however,
Bath was a city of merely rustic streets and medieval, or at the latest
Tudor, houses; and Bath as we see it to-day only arose when Ralph
Allen and John Wood began to build its stately neo-classic streets and
crescents of fine houses in the middle of the eighteenth century. For
the fine architectural effect thus produced Bath owes a very great deal
to the fine local oolite building-stone.
Prominent, however, above all else is the great abbey church, which
rises in its midst, and challenges with its display of the last phase
of Gothic the Palladian severity of the secular buildings. It is a
complete and direct contradiction of that eighteenth-century Bath; but
how nobly and effectively it stands forth from that sea of houses which
is the picture presented by Bath, lying in its cuplike hollow beneath
the great surrounding hills!
[Illustration: CASTLE COMBE, NORTH WILTSHIRE]
“Go to Bath!” says the old contemptuous and derisive saying.
“Certainly!” one might well reply. “By all means. Delighted.” And
coming to it along the stately curve which the Great Western Railway
makes between those lofty heights, what an inspiring picture the city
presents! Bath is additionally famed for its Pickwickian associations,
and stands sponsor for Bath chaps, Bath buns, and Bath Olivers. It
takes no responsibility in the matter of “Bath bricks,” which intimate
articles of domestic economy are in fact made at Bridgwater, and
obtained their name no one knows when or how.
Of its other thousand and one architectural, literary, artistic and
social glories and associations, I dare hint only guardedly in this
small compass. Of the abbey church, let it suffice to say that its
tower is not square in plan, and that the building in general has a
somewhat singular history. Large though it be, it is but half the size
of a Norman predecessor, begun but allowed to fall into decay. It
was begun anew in 1495 by Bishop Oliver King, who dreamed a strange
dream of angels ascending ladders and a voice exclaiming, “Let an
olive establish the crown, and let a King restore the church.” He had
proceeded as far as the west front when the Reformation ended his
project, and the great building remained derelict for forty years.
The work was resumed in 1572, and brought to a conclusion about 1609.
Thus we have the unusual spectacle of a great abbey church chiefly of
post-Reformation date. The odd reproduction in stone on the west front
of Bishop Oliver King’s dream, representing angels climbing Jacob’s
ladders, is more singular than beautiful.
Box and Corsham, respectively six and nine miles from Bath, to the
east, along the old coach-road to London, are worth an excursion, for
here you may see the quarries whence comes the fine-grained Bath stone.
Box Tunnel, on the Great Western Railway, was considered a stupendous
work in the early days of railways. It is nearly one and three-quarter
miles long, and cost more than half a million sterling. Corsham Regis,
to give that pretty village its full title, lies a little way off
the main road, and is, of course, a place of stone-built houses and
cottages, nearly all with some architectural merit. The old weavers’
cottages are still pointed out, the homes of a Flemish community of
clothworkers in Elizabethan times. One may also obtain glimpses of
Corsham Court, a noble mansion amid gardens rich in enormous yew
hedges. It is the seat of Lord Methuen, and was originally built in
1582 by one Smythe, who grew rich in farming the Customs dues. The
Elizabethan south front remains. But what will more immediately compel
the tourist’s admiration is the Hungerford Almshouse, a quaintly
beautiful composition, the gift of Lady Hungerford in 1672. It is one
of the finest among the post-Reformation almshouses, with curious
mingling of debased Gothic and elaborate Renaissance details over the
projecting porch, among whose florid sculptures will be noticed the
crossed sickles and wheatsheaf badge of the Hungerfords, who have long
since died out of the land.
Corsham is pretty, but one of the prettiest villages in England will
be found some four miles north at Castle Combe, in a profound valley
through which flows the Box Brook. The castle of Castle Combe has
disappeared. It stood somewhere on the lofty wooded heights that
tower above the secluded village. No modern house varies the peaceful
old cottage architecture of the street, which follows the windings of
the brook; and the old church and roofed-in market-cross complete the
picture of a village unaltered since the spacious times of Good Queen
Bess.
INDEX
Arishmill Gap, 19
Athelney, Isle of, 51
Axbridge, 44
Batcombe, 37
Bath, 56–60
Bere Regis, 8–10
Bindon Abbey, 16
Blackmore Vale, 34, 36, 37
Boroughbridge, 51
Bournemouth, 6
Box, 60
Bridport, 32
Brit River, 32
Castle Combe, 61
Cerne Abbas, 34–36
Charminster, 34
Cheddar, 44–46
Chesil Beach, 22, 23, 33
Churchill, 44
Cleeve Abbey, 51
Congresbury, 44
Corfe Castle, 12–14
Corsham, 60
“Cross-in-Hand,” 37
“Deadman’s Bay,” 23, 33
Dogbury, 36
Dorchester, 19, 25–31
Dunster, 51, 52
Durdle Door, 19
Durlston Head, 15
East Stoke, 16
Evershot, 37
Fordington, 26
Frome, River, 10, 12, 16, 17, 18, 25
Greinton, 50
Glastonbury, 48–50
High Stoy, 36
Hinton Charterhouse, 55
Holnest, 38
Ilsington Woods, 25
Kimmeridge, 19
Kingston Russell, 32
Lee Lane, 32
Longbredy, 32
Lower Walterstone, 25
Lulworth Castle, 19
Lulworth Cove, 19
Melbury Osmund, 37
Melbury Park, 37
Middlemarsh, 36, 37
Minterne Magna, 36
Nettlecombe Tout, 37
Norton St. Philip, 54
Osmington, 20
Owermoigne, 20
Parret, River, 51
Piddletown, 25, 28
Poole, 6
Portland, Isle of, 22
Poxwell, 20
Preston, 20
Purbeck, Isle of, 12
Radipole, 22
Sedgemoor, 50
Shaftesbury, 40–42
Sherborne, 38–40
Stinsford, 24
Street, 50
Swanage, 14
Taunton, 51
Ten Hatches, 25, 28
Tilly Whim, 15
Upper Bockhampton, 10, 25
Wareham, 6–8, 16
Warmwell Cross, 16, 20, 24
Washford, 51
Wells, 46–48
West Bay, 23, 32
Westonzoyland, 50
Wey, River, 22
Weymouth, 20, 21–23
Wool, 16, 18
Woolbridge House, 17
Worbarrow Bay, 19
Wyke Regis, 23
Yatton, 43
Yellowham Hill, 25
Yeo River, 39, 43
Yeovil, 39, 40
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of
inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.
Transcriber added the captions to the Frontispiece and the illustration
facing page 59.
Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.