CHAPTER VI YATTON--CHEDDAR CHEESE AND CHEDDAR CLIFFS--WELLS--GLASTONBURY--THE ISLE OF ATHELNEY--DUNSTER
The little town of Yatton, below Bristol, situated on excellent roads and with a convenient station on the Great Western main line, is a very useful point whence to start upon a rambling exploration of Mid and North Somerset, called by Mr. Hardy “Outer Wessex.” Yatton is a junction station, its name-board familiar to travellers, with the alluring legend beneath: “For Cheddar and Wells.” Whether the place-name be really “Ea-ton” or “Yeo-ton,” from the little river Yeo, on which the town is situated, or “Gate-town,” from the road or “gate” under the hills on which it stands, will ever remain a problem to give antiquaries something to think about. The church, one of the finest in this shire of fine churches, has a remarkable outline Through Congresbury and Churchill, whence the Churchill family emerged from obscurity to a dukedom and political fame in later generations, we come, through the little town of Axbridge, to Cheddar. There is no need, it may be presumed, to instruct the reader in the two things for which Cheddar is deservedly famous—its cheese and cliffs. Time was, and that until quite recent years, when the tourist who by some strange chance knew nothing of Cheddar cheese might proceed through the picturesque village without a glimpse of its staple product. So modest was Cheddar that no one would deduce or suspect a cheese in the entire district. But nowadays—these being days of strenuous publicity—shops that do nothing else but sell cheeses are a feature of the place. The results are extremely satisfactory, especially Cheddar Cliffs are strikingly formed by huge precipitous rifts in the limestone escarpments of the Mendip Hills, and lead at right angles out of the main road. The most picturesque portion of the village is situated at the beginning of them, beside the fine winding road that ascends between their grey spires and impending fissures, looming in monstrous shapes, like the fabled turrets and bastions of some giant’s castle. The old geological theory as to how these huge rifted chasms were produced was of an earthquake that had thus torn the everlasting hills asunder. But a recent school of thought has the view that they The Almshouses, Corsham. Built by Lady Hungerford, 1672. One of the finest examples of the post-Reformation Almshouse. In another seven miles we come to the slumberous cathedral city of Wells, in its rich vale beneath the Mendips. The population of Wells is about five thousand, and decreasing, or at the most stationary, and thus there are no unhistorical modern suburbs, and the outskirts are quite innocent of notices offering land “ripe for building.” It is true that there are two railway-stations at Wells, but they are the product of rival railway politics, rather than called into The Market Place, Wells. Wells is the nearest approach in England to the ideal Cathedral city of poets and students, and the Market-place is so little disturbed by markets that the plashing of the perennial springs which gives Wells its name is easily heard from the fountain. From Wells we come in little more than five miles into Glastonbury, standing in the fabled Arthurian “Vale of Avalon” of the poets. I must confess that, many years ago, coming for the first time into Glastonbury, I was disappointed. I had read so deeply of Avalon—the Tennysonian Avalon of apple orchards and mystic Round Table We may with advantage strike across country from Glastonbury to Taunton, across the interesting marshes of Sedgemoor—twenty-two miles. Glastonbury, indeed, took its original title from the Latin Insula Vitrea, a name formed by the Romans from the British “Ynys Vitrin,” and Englished by the Saxons into “Glaestingabyrig.” This was a descriptive name, applied to the still, glassy waters of the shallow inland sea which then covered the whole of Sedgemoor with the exception of a few islands. The town was one of many lake-dwellings in these waters, overlooked by the tall and steep Tor, rising strangely to a height of 500 feet. Now crowned with the fifteenth-century tower of a chapel of St. Michael, this mountainous hill is a weird object in the landscape for many miles. We pass the boot-making village of Street, and then the village of Greinton. Westonzoyland, with its very large and very fine Perpendicular church, two and a half miles on the right, is really an Avalon, or apple island, and delightful in spring. To the north of the village was fought the Battle of Sedgemoor, July 6, 1685, and the church was The flat scenery of the moor, with dykes beside the road filled with reeds and water, is varied by strangely sudden hills here and there. One of these is at Boroughbridge, a hamlet where we cross the River Parret and enter the historic Isle of Athelney. The hill, locally called “The Mump,” is crested by the ruins of a chapel of St. Michael. Here we enter a district associated with the endearing story of Alfred the Great. “He was England’s darling,” says the old Saxon Chronicle, and so he remains. It was in this selfsame Isle of Athelney that he lay hid amid the marshes, A.D., 879, after the Saxon disasters in battle with the Danes. An obelisk on a hillock records the facts. I should like to linger in the pleasant old town of Taunton—“Taunton on the Tone,” as school primers told us to style it—but I am bound for Dunster, on the Severn Sea, and that is another twenty-two miles distant. The road to it, past Combe Florey, Crowcombe, Williton, and Washford, is Somerset at its best, in every circumstance of rustic beauty. At Washford is the ruined Cleeve Abbey, the most interesting remains of I choose Dunster to close this route because it is one of those rare old towns which keep their ancient manorial aspect, and neither increase nor greatly decline. It owes this distinction to the facts of being situated just off the road to anywhere at all, and to being a mile or two away from the sea, which in remote times came up to the outworks of its castle, and made the place a seaport. Dunster is a picture—nay, it is a gallery of pictures, for one meets you at every turn. There is the sleepy town of one broad street, with the castle on its wooded height in the background, and in the foreground the old Yarn Market, a remarkable timber-framed building which seems to be again awaiting the marketing of yarn. It was built, they say, in 1609, and the weather-vane, dated 1647, marks the repairs effected after the siege of the castle in 1646. That the reigning family of Dunster is named Luttrell is evident from the name of the inn, the Luttrell Arms, close by. This was in olden |