The Somerset Coast

Harper

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I.  INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER II.  THE RIVER AVON—CLIFTON SUSPENSION BRIDGE

CHAPTER III.  ABBOT’S LEIGH TO CLEVEDON

CHAPTER IV.  CLEVEDON—LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS: COLERIDGE

CHAPTER V.  CLEVEDON (continued)—LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS: TENNYSON

CHAPTER VI.  YATTON—CONGRESBURY—WICK ST. LAWRENCE

CHAPTER VII.  WORSPRING PRIORY, KEWSTOKE

CHAPTER VIII.  WESTON-SUPER-MARE

CHAPTER IX.  WORLEBURY—WORLE

CHAPTER X.  STEEP HOLM—FLAT HOLM—UPHILL—BREAN DOWN

CHAPTER XI.  BLEADON—BREAN—BRENT KNOLL

CHAPTER XII.  BURNHAM—HIGHBRIDGE—BAWDRIP—BATH BRICKS—THE RIVER PARRET

CHAPTER XIII.  BRIDGWATER—ADMIRAL BLAKE—THE MONMOUTH REBELLION

CHAPTER XIV.  CANNINGTON—THE QUANTOCKS—NETHER STOWEY, AND THE COLERIDGE CIRCLE

CHAPTER XV.  STEART—STOGURSEY—THE FOLK-SPEECH OF ZUMMERZET—GLATT-HUNTING AT KILVE—ST. AUDRIES

CHAPTER XVI.  WILLITON—ST. DECUMAN’S AND THE WYNDHAMS—WATCHET

CHAPTER XVII.  CLEEVE ABBEY—OLD CLEEVE—BLUE ANCHOR

CHAPTER XVIII.  DUNSTER

CHAPTER XIX.  MINEHEAD, NEW AND OLD—SELWORTHY—THE HORNER

CHAPTER XX.  PORLOCK—BOSSINGTON—PORLOCK WEIR

CHAPTER XXI.  CULBONE AND ITS REVELS—WHORTLEBERRIES

CHAPTER XXII.  THE LORNA DOONE COUNTRY

CHAPTER XXIII.  OARE—MALMSMEAD—THE BADGWORTHY VALLEY—THE DOONE VALLEY—GLENTHORNE

CLIFTON BRIDGE

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]

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 "Somersetshire," 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.

CHAPTER II.

THE RIVER AVON—CLIFTON SUSPENSION BRIDGE

Bristol, whence one comes most conveniently to the coast of Somerset, is among the most fortunate of cities. It has a long and interesting history, both in the warlike and the commercial sorts, and its citizens have ever been public-spirited men, of generous impulses. (It is not really necessary for the discreet historian to go into the story of Bristol’s old-time thriving business of kidnapping and slave-trading, by which her merchants grew wealthy, and so we will say nothing about it, nor enlarge upon the wealth-producing import of Jamaica rum.) It has many noble and interesting buildings, and a lovely and striking countryside is at its very gates, while the river Avon, to which Bristol owes the possibility of its greatness, flows out to sea, amid the most romantic river scenery in England, at Clifton.

This immense gorge of the Avon was created, according to tradition, A.D. 33, on the day of the Crucifixion, in the course of a world-wide earthquake accompanying that event. Then, according to that strictly unreliable story, the hills were rent asunder, and the ancient British camps at St. Vincent’s and at Borough Walls and Stoke Leigh had the newly formed river Avon set between them. Geologists know better than this, but in the early years of the nineteenth century, when Miss Ann Powell sat upon the heights of Clifton and, contemplating the scene, was filled with great thoughts, which she eventually poured forth in the shape of something then thought to be poetry, the tradition was not considered to be so absurd as it now is. In her Clifton, a Poem, published in 1821, we learn some things new to history, especially as to the year A.D. 33. Then, according to Miss Ann Powell, the Romans were encamped here, in victorious arrogance, and the very day of the Crucifixion chanced to be that which the Roman general had fixed for a reception of conquered British chiefs:

Our humbled kings upon his levee wait,

This day appointed as a day of state.

Unfortunately for the poem, the Romans were not in Britain at the time. They had not been here for eighty-seven years, since the last departure of Julius Caesar, in B.C. 54, and were not to land on these shores again until ten years more had passed: in A.D. 43. As a description of an earthquake which did not happen, and an account of disasters which did not befall people who were not here, the poem is a somewhat remarkable production. The authoress herself is so overwrought that she mixes past and present tenses. Let us see how Romans and Britons behaved under the appalling circumstances:

Now darkness fast the distant hills surround;

Beneath their feet, slow trembling, mov’d the ground;

High tempests rose that shook the stately roof,

Nor was the conqu’ror’s heart to this quite proof.

Sure nature is dissolv’d! the Roman cry’d.

Sure nature is dissolv’d! the guests reply’d.

Now awful thunders with majestic sound,

And vivid lightnings separate the ground;

The crash tremendous fill’d each heart with fear;

The sound of gushing waters strikes the ear.

Ah! now destruction’s hurl’d thro’ earth and sky;

Men seeking safety know not where to fly;

They through the ramparts run to make their way;

The guards lay prostrate there with sore dismay.

The Britons mount their horses—fly in haste:

No time in idle compliments they waste.

How delicious that last line! No time in idle compliments they waste. It flings us down from the heights of a world in pieces to the inanities of the How d’ye do’s of afternoon teas.

Clifton Suspension Bridge, opened in 1864, is a bridge with a romantic history. From the early years of the eighteenth century it had been proposed to bridge the Avon at or near this point, by some means, and thus save the descent from Clifton to Rownham Ferry, with the uncomfortable and sometimes perilous crossing of the Avon and the climb up to Abbot’s Leigh.

The ferry at Rownham had been the property of the abbots of the Augustinian monastery of Bristol, from 1148, and was of necessity frequently crossed by those dignified churchmen, who in course of time, as the size and trade of Bristol increased, derived a considerable revenue from their rights here, which, at the Reformation, passed to their successors, the Dean and Chapter of Bristol, who in their turn were succeeded by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.

At this point was also a ford, practicable at low water for horsemen, but, as the tide here rises swiftly and to a height of forty-five feet, it was generally of a hazardous character, as seems to be sufficiently shown by the fact that in 1610 one Richard George was drowned in thus crossing, while on December 27th of the same year the eldest son of one Baron Snigge, Recorder of Bristol, met a like fate. On the Bristol side stands, among other houses on the quay, the Rownham Tavern, and on the Somerset shore stood a somewhat imposing hostelry called the New Inn. The building of the last-named house of entertainment and refreshment remains to this day, but it is now a species of tea-garden and picnic place, with arbours in which on summer days parties may make modestly merry and listen to the murmur of Bristol’s traffic borne, like a subdued roar, across the river. In the rear of the old house, the single-track Bristol and Portishead branch of the Great Western Railway runs at the foot of the cliffs and presently tunnels under them, below the Suspension Bridge.

The first person ever to put into shape the old aspirations of Bristol for a bridge across the gorge of the Avon at this point was Alderman Vick, of Bristol. He died in 1753, leaving by his will a sum of £1,000, to be invested until the capital sum reached a total of £10,000, a sum he imagined would be sufficient to build a stone bridge here. For seventy-seven years this generous bequest accumulated as he had willed, and by 1830 had reached £8,000. It was then felt, as engineering had already made great strides, and as the suspension principle had been tried in various places, successfully and economically, that the bridging of this gulf should no longer be delayed. It had long been evident that £10,000 would not nearly suffice to build a bridge of any kind here, but it was thought that, if an Act of Parliament were obtained for the undertaking of the work and a company formed, the necessary funds could be found to begin the construction forthwith; the company to be recouped by charging tolls. The Parliamentary powers were therefore obtained, the company formed, capital subscribed, and Telford, the foremost engineer of the day, invited to prepare plans and estimates. Telford’s plan provided for a suspension bridge with two iron towers, and he estimated the cost at £52,000. Telford was an engineer first, a practical, matter-of-fact Scotsman, and not by way of being an artist. His fine, but not sufficiently grandiose, scheme was, therefore, rejected, and that of Brunel, who was next invited to prepare plans, accepted, although his estimate was £5,000 higher. Brunel’s success was undoubtedly due to the picturesque design he made, and the stress he laid upon the fact that the romantic scenery of this spot might easily be ruined by a mere utilitarian structure. The bridge as we see it completed to-day is in essentials his design, but the two great towers from which the roadway is suspended are plain to severity, instead of being, as he had contemplated, richly sculptured. The towers, he explained to the committee of selection, were on the model of the gateways to the ruins of Tentyra, in Egypt, and would harmonise well with the rugged cliffs and hanging woods of Clifton and Abbot’s Leigh.

In 1831 the foundations of Brunel’s bridge were laid, amid great local rejoicings. Felicitations on the occasion were exchanged. Sir Eardley Wilmot, first imagining an Elizabethan Bristolian returned to earth, and, coming to Rownham Ferry, finding the place just the same as he had left it three hundred years earlier, then congratulated all and sundry on this reproach being about to vanish, in the proximate completion of the works, and all was joy and satisfaction.

But money grew scarce; the works were more costly than had been anticipated, and the furious riots of 1831 in Bristol rendered capital shy and fresh funds difficult to obtain. In 1833 Brunel was desired to reduce the estimates, and did reduce them by £4,000, at the cost of sacrificing much of the ornamental work. In 1836 another foundation-stone was laid, and a communication opened in mid-air across the river, by means of an iron bar stretched across. Along this the workmen travelled daily, suspended in a wicker basket; a sight that every day drew fascinated crowds. A demand to cross in this manner at once sprang up among people who wanted a new sensation, and the bridge company earned an appreciable sum by charging for these aerial trips. While the novelty was very new, the fare across was five shillings; it then sank by degrees to half a crown, two shillings, and one shilling. The total sum thus netted was £125.

Delays occurred in 1836 owing to the contractors going bankrupt, but the company itself then assumed the work. In 1840 the great towers were finished, but by 1843 the bridge was still but half finished, although £45,000 had been expended. Money was again very scarce and work was at last stopped, and in 1853 the half of the ironwork and the flooring that had been delivered were sold to satisfy creditors.

Work was again resumed in 1860, an opportunity shortly afterwards arising to cheaply purchase the ironwork of Hungerford Suspension Bridge, which, built by Brunel in 1845 across the Thames, from Hungerford Market, at the foot of Villiers Street, Strand, to the Lambeth shore, at a cost of £100,000, was about to be removed to make way for the iron lattice-girder bridge of the South-Eastern Railway, still a feature of that spot.

Meanwhile, the original Act of Parliament for the building of Clifton Bridge had expired, and it was necessary to obtain new powers, to form a new company, and to raise more funds. All these things were accomplished, not without considerable difficulty. The ironwork of Hungerford Bridge was purchased for £5,000, and the new Act was obtained in 1861. This, however, laid an obligation upon the new company to compensate the owners of Rownham Ferry for any loss. It declared that persons having a right of ferry across the river Avon called Rownham Ferry may, in some respect, be injured by the building and using of the Bridge; and it is fit, in case such Ferry should be injured or deteriorated thereby, that a fair compensation should be made. It is understood that this compensation to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, on behalf of the Dean and Chapter of Bristol, the old owners of the ferry, was estimated at £200 per annum.

At length, in spite of a shortness of funds that always accompanied the progress of the enterprise, the bridge was opened in September 1864, and has, in all the time since then, proved to be a great convenience for traffic making for Clevedon and adjacent parts of the coast. It has also been a favourite resort for persons of suicidal tendencies, who have, indeed, often come from great distances for the purpose of putting an end to themselves; being unable to screw up a sufficiency of desperate courage elsewhere. Indeed, instances have been known of apparently sane and contented people, finding themselves on this height, suspended in mid-air, being unable to resist a sudden impulse to fling themselves off, and many