Nooks and Corners of Old England Part 6

Through the gaps may be seen the cellars below, containing three huge beer barrels, each of a thousand gallons' capacity. A fine stone fireplace in one will make a plunge below ere very long.

But Somersetshire owns another remarkable fifteenth-century hostelry, the "George" at Glas...o...b..ry, in character entirely different from that at Norton St. Philip. The panelled and traceried Gothic stonework of the front, with its graceful bay-window rising to the roof, is perhaps more beautiful but not so quaint, nor has it that rugged vastness of the other which somehow impresses us with the rough-and-tumble hospitality of the Middle Ages. "Ye old Pilgrimme Inn," as the "George" at Glas...o...b..ry once was called, was built in Edward IV.'s reign, whose arms are displayed over the entrance gateway. Here is, or was, preserved the bedstead said to have been used by Henry VIII. when he paid a visit to the famous abbey.

A mile or so before one gets to Norton, travelling up the main road from Frome, there is one of those exasperating signposts which are occasionally planted about the country. The road divides, and the sign points directly in the middle at a house between. It says "To Bath," and that is all; and people have to ask the way to that fashionable place at the aforesaid house. The inmate wearily came to the door. How many times had he been asked the same question! He was driven to desperation, and was going to invest in some black paint and a brush for his own as well as travellers' comfort. But how much worse when there is no habitation where to make inquiries! You are often led carefully up to a desolate spot, and then abandoned in the most heartless fashion. The road forks, and either there is no signpost, or the place you are nearing is not mentioned at all. Unless your intuitive perception is beyond the ordinary, you must either toss up for it, or sit down and wait peacefully until some one may chance to pa.s.s by.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARTERHOUSE HINTON.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WELLOW MANOR-HOUSE.]

The church and manor-house of the pretty village of Wellow, above Norton to the north-west, are rich in oak carvings. The latter was one of the seats of the Hungerfords, and was built in the reign of Charles I. In the rubbish of the stable-yard, for it is now a farm, a friend of ours picked up a spur of seventeenth-century date, which probably had lain there since the Royalist soldiers were quartered upon their way to meet the Monmouth rebels. Another seat of the Hungerfords was Charterhouse Hinton Manor, to the east of Wellow, a delightful old ivy-clad dwelling, incorporated with the remains of a thirteenth-century priory. Corsham and Heytesbury also belonged to this important family; but their residence for over three centuries was the now ruinous castle of Farleigh, midway between Hinton and Norton to the east. These formidable walls and round towers, embowered in trees and surrounded by orchards, are romantically placed above a ravine whose beauty is somewhat marred by a factory down by the river. The entrance gatehouse is fairly perfect, but the clinging ivy obliterates its architectural details and the carved escutcheon over the doorway. But were it not for this natural protection the gatehouse would probably share the fate of one of the round towers of the northern court, whose ivy being removed some sixty years ago brought it down with a run. The castle chapel is full of interest, with frescoed walls and flooring of black and white marble.

The magnificent monuments of the Hungerfords duly impress one with their importance. The rec.u.mbent effigies of the knights and dames, with the numerous shields of arms and their various quarterings, are quite suggestive of a corner in Westminster Abbey, though not so dark and dismal. Here lie the bodies of Sir Thomas, Sir Walter, and Sir Edward Hungerford, the first of whom fought at Crecy and the last on the Parliamentary side, when his fortress was held for the king, and surrendered in September 1645. His successor and namesake did his best to squander away his fortune of thirty thousand pounds a year. His numerous mansions were sold, including the castle, and his town house pulled down and converted into the market at Charing Cross, where his bewigged bust was set up in 1682. His son Edward, who predeceased him before he came to man's estate (or what was left of his father's), married the Lady Althea Compton, who was well endowed. In the letters preserved at Belvoir we learn that the union was without her sire's consent. "She went out with Mis Grey," writes Lady Chaworth in one of her letters to Lord Roos, "as to a play, but went to Sir Edward Hungerford's, where a minister, a ring, and the confidents were wayting for them, and so young Hungerford maried her; after she writ to the Bishop of London to acquaint and excuse her to her father, upon which he sent a thundering command for her to come home that night which she did obey." A week later she made her escape. But the runaway couple were soon to be parted. Eight months pa.s.sed, and she was dead; and the youthful widower survived only three years. Old Sir Edward lived sufficiently long to repent his extravagant habits, for he is said to have died in poverty at five score and fifteen!

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD HOUSE NEAR CROs...o...b...]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BECKINGTON CASTLE.]

Beckington, about four miles to the south of Farleigh, has another castle, but more a castle in name than anything else. It is a fine many-gabled house, by all appearances not older than the reign of James I. or perhaps Elizabeth. It is close against the road, and practically in the village, where are other lofty houses similar in character. There is an erroneous tradition that James II. slept here the night before the battle of Sedgemoor, regardless of the fact that his sacred Majesty was snug in London. The house was long neglected and deserted, and owing to stories of ghostly visitors and subterranean pa.s.sages could not find a purchaser at 100! But this was many years ago, as will be seen from an advertis.e.m.e.nt quoted in an old number of _Notes and Queries_. Things are different now, for ghosts and subterranean pa.s.sages have a marketable value.

Somersetshire abounds in superst.i.tions as well as in old-world villages.

From the southern part of the county come tales of people being bewitched, and it is a good thing for many an aged crone that their supposed offences are thought lightly of nowadays.

Some five years ago a notorious "wise man" of Somerset, known as Dr.

Stacey, fell down stairs and broke his neck. The doctor's clients doubtless had expected a more dignified ending to his career, for, judging from his powers of keeping evil or misfortune at arm's-length, it was a regular thing for people who had been "overlooked" to seek a consultation so as to get the upper hand of the evil influence. His patients were usually received at midnight, when incantations were held and mysterious powders burned. In most instances this was done where there had been continual losses in stock, or on farms where the cattle had fallen sick.

A remarkable instance of credulity only the other day came from the East End of London, which, happening in the twentieth century, is too astonishing not to be recorded here. A young Jewess sought the aid of a Russian "wise woman" to bring the husband back who had deserted her. The process was a little complicated. Eighteen pennyworth of candles stuck all round with pins were burned. Pins also had to be sewn into the lady's garments, and some "clippings" from a black cat had to be burned in the fire. The cost of these mysterious charms altogether amounted to nearly six pounds, which was expensive considering the truant husband did not return. During some recent alterations to an old house near Kilrush, Ireland, beneath the flooring was discovered a doll dressed to personify a woman against whom a former occupant owed a deadly grudge. It was stabbed through the breast with a dagger-shaped hairpin, which presumably it was hoped would bring about a more speedy death than the slower process of melting a diminutive waxen effigy.

Cases of ague in Somerset are said to succ.u.mb if a spider is captured and starved to death! Consumptives also are said to be cured by carrying them through a flock of sheep in the morning when the animals are first let out of the fold. It is said to bode good luck if, when drinking, a fly should drop into one's cup or gla.s.s. When this happens, we have somewhere heard, that a person's nationality may be discovered; but beer must be the liquid. A Spaniard leaves his drink and is mute. A Frenchman leaves it also untouched, but uses strong language. An Englishman pours the beer away and orders another gla.s.s. A German extracts the fly with his finger and finishes his beer. A Russian drinks the beer, fly and all. And a Chinaman fishes out the fly, swallows it, and throws away the beer.

But enough of these peculiarities.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CROs...o...b.. CHURCH.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CROs...o...b...]

In the wooded vale between Shepton Mallet and Wells is a pretty straggling village of whitewashed houses with Tudor mullioned windows and, some of them, Tudor fireplaces within. This is Cros...o...b.., which, like Crowcombe in western Somerset, has its village cross, but a mutilated one, and a church rich in Jacobean woodwork. The canopied pulpit, dated 1616, and the chancel screen, reaching almost to the roof, bearing the Royal arms, are perhaps the finest examples of the period to be found anywhere. An inn, once a priory, near the cross has panelled ceilings and other features of the fifteenth century. Some old cloth mills, with their emerald green mill-ponds, are one of the peculiarities of Cros...o...b... Shepton Mallet is depressing, perhaps because c.r.a.pe is manufactured there. A lonely old hostelry to the south of the town known as "Cannard's Grave," not a cheery sign under the most favourable circ.u.mstances, but with padlocked doors and windows boarded up as we saw it, had a forbidding look, and seemed to warrant the mysterious stories that are told about it. The cross in the market-place was erected in 1500, but it has been too sc.r.a.ped and restored to cla.s.sify it with those at Cheddar or Malmesbury. The church contains a fine oak roof and some ancient tombs, mainly to the Strodes, an important Somersetshire family with Republican tendencies, one of whom harboured the Duke of Monmouth in his house the night after his defeat at Sedgemoor. The remains of this house, "Downside," stand about a mile from Shepton Mallet, but it has been altered and restored from time to time, so that now it has lost much of its ancient appearance. The pistols which the duke left here remained in the possession of descendants until about eight years ago, when they were lost. Monmouth's host, Edward Strode, also owned what is now called "Monmouth House," from the fact that the duke slept there on June 23rd and 30th, 1685, upon his march from Bridgwater towards Bristol and back again. Monmouth's room may yet be seen, and not many years ago possessed its original furniture.[18]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LYTES CARY MANOR-HOUSE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LYTES CARY MANOR-HOUSE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIREPLACE, LYTES CARY.]

At Cannard's Grave we strike into the old Foss way, and if we follow it through West Lydford towards Ilchester we shall find on the left-hand side, a quarter of a mile or so from the road, Lytes Cary, one of the most compact little manor-houses in western England. But the fine old rooms are bare and almost ruinous. The arms of the Lytes occur in some shields of arms in the "decorated" chapel (which is now a cider cellar), and upon a projecting bay-window near a fine embattled and pierced parapet. The hall is entered from the entrance porch (over which is a graceful oriel), and has its timber roof and rich cornice intact. On the first floor is a s.p.a.cious panelled room with Tudor bay-window (dated 1533) and open fireplace, which if carefully restored would make a delightful dwelling room; and it seems a thousand pities that this and other apartments dating from the fourteenth century should be in their present neglected state. The front of the manor-house reminds one of Great Chaldfield in Wiltshire, but on a smaller scale and exteriorly less elaborate in architectural detail.

The eastern corner of the western division of Somerset is especially rich in picturesque old villages and mansions--that is to say, the country enclosed within or just beyond the four towns Langport, Somerton, Chard, and Yeovil. Within this area, or a mile or so beyond, we have the grand seats of Montacute, Brympton D'Eversy, Hinton St George, and Barrington Court; the smaller but equally interesting manor-houses of Sandford Orcas, South Petherton, and Tintinhull, and the quaint old villages and churches of Trent, Martock, Curry Rivel, etc.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANCIENT SCREEN. CURRY RIVEL CHURCH.]

The ancient county town of Somerton having been left severely alone by the railway, remains in a very dormant state, and, of course, is picturesque in proportion, as will be seen by its octagonal canopied market-cross and the group of buildings adjacent Langport lies low, and is uninviting, with marshy pools around, with to the north-west Bridgwater way the villages of Chedzoy, Middlezoy, and Weston Zoyland, full of memories of the fight at Sedgemoor. The church of Curry Rivel, to the west of Langport, has many ancient carvings, and retains its beautiful oak screen and bench-ends of the fifteenth century. Within its ancient ornamented ironwork railing is a curious Jacobean tomb, representing the rec.u.mbent effigies of two troopers, Marmaduke and Robert Jennings. It seems selfish that they should thus lie in state while their wives are kneeling below by two little cribs containing their children tucked up in orderly rows like mummified bambinoes. On the summit of a circular arch above, five painted cherubs are reclining at their ease, and chained to one of the iron railings is a little coffer which gives a touch of mystery to the whole. What does this little sealed coffer contain?--for it must have been in its present position since the monument was erected. Are the warriors' hearts therein, or the bones of the five bambinoes? There is another Jacobean tomb, just like a c.u.mbrous cabinet of the period. It is hideous enough for anything, and obscures one of three interesting fourteenth-century mural monuments.

In the old farmhouse of Burrow, near Curry Rivel, some swords and jack-boots of the time of Charles II. were preserved. They are now in the museum at Taunton, where we regret to say the buckle worn by the Duke of Monmouth, and Lord Feversham's dish are now no longer[19] with the other interesting relics of the fight at Sedgemoor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BARRINGTON COURT.]

At Barrington Court and White Lackington manor-house, both near Ilminster, Monmouth was entertained in princely state during his progress through the western counties to win popularity. The latter is a plain gabled house (a portion only of the original) which has suffered by the insertion of sash windows. It seems to bear out its name, for it is very white and staring. But Barrington is one of the most perfect Elizabethan houses in Somersetshire, that is to say exteriorly, for the inside has long since been stripped and modernised. The myriad of pinnacles upon its gable ends, and its general appearance, recall the stately Suss.e.x mansion Wakehurst: the situation, however, is vastly different, for it stands bare of trees on a wide extensive flat. The Spekes of White Lackington and the Strodes of Barrington, it goes without saying, were notorious Whigs; and though the duke's hosts favoured his cause, they both managed to save their necks when the terrible Jeffreys came down upon his memorable Progress. But the name of Speke was enough for the judge, and the youngest son of White Lackington, whose sins did not extend beyond shaking hands with his father's ill.u.s.trious guest, was swung up on a tree at Ilminster. In the lovely fields around the manor-house it is difficult to imagine a throng of twenty thousand who accompanied the popular duke. The giant Spanish chestnut tree beneath which Monmouth dined in public, and which had braved the tempests of many centuries, fell, alas! a victim to the storm of March, 2, 1897, and with the destruction of "Monmouth's tree" a link with 1680 has departed never to return. Barrington, we understand, has recently been taken under the protecting wing of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, for which all those interested in domestic architecture as well as buildings of historic a.s.sociation must feel grateful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HINTON ST. GEORGE.]

The little town of South Petherton, midway between Ilminster and Ilchester, is full of old nooks and corners, from its ancient cruciform church to the old hostelry in the High Street. From a very early date it was a place of great importance; but since the days of the Saxon monarch who resided there, the Daubeneys have stamped their ident.i.ty upon King Ina's palace, of which there are picturesque Tudor remains incorporated in a modern dwelling, which to our mind has robbed it of the poetry it possessed when in a ruinous condition. The villages of Martock above and Hinton St George below are also full of interest; and both possess their ancient market-crosses, but now curtailed and converted into sundials with stone-step ma.s.sive bases. But the glory of Martock is its grand old church (where Fairfax and Cromwell offered up a prayer for the capture of Bridgwater in 1645), whose carved black oak roof is one of the finest in the west of England.[20] The ancient seat of the Pouletts is an extensive but by no means beautiful house. It has a squat appearance, being only two storeys high, with battlemented towers at the angles and Georgian and Victorian Gothic sash-windows; but on the southern side, a pierced parapet and cla.s.sic windows give it a less barrack-like appearance. Sir Amias Poulett (or Paulet, as it was formerly spelled), the grandson of the builder of the house, who won his spurs at the battle of Newark-on-Trent, is princ.i.p.ally famous from the fact that he put Wolsey in the stocks when that great person held the living of Lymington, and upon one occasion took more than was good for him. But the cardinal afterwards had his revenge, and put fine upon Sir Amias to build the gate of the Middle Temple, which formerly bore the prelate's arms elaborately carved, as a peace-offering from Sir Amias.

Lymington in Hampshire is often a.s.sociated with the stocks' episode, but Lymington near Ilchester, and some ten miles from Hinton, was the place.

Sir Amias had the custody of Mary Queen of Scots during the latter part of her long imprisonment, and to him the "Good Queen" (?) more than hinted that it would be a kindness to hasten her victim's end by private a.s.sa.s.sination. Paulet, however, had a conscience, so Elizabeth had to take upon herself the responsibility of Mary's execution.

The historic stocks of Lymington are now no more, but beneath a big elm tree on the village green at Tintinhull, close by, they still are flourishing. Tintinhull, like Trent and other neighbouring villages, is full of picturesque old houses, st.u.r.dy stone Jacobean and Tudor cottages, with garden borderings of slabs of stone set up edgeways, and slabs of stone running along the footway in a delightfully primitive fashion. Tintinhull Court is a stately old pile dating from the reign of Henry VIII. Its oldest side faces the garden, but the main front is a good type of the seventeenth century. We will not repeat here the particulars of Charles II.'s concealment at the old seat of the Wyndhams after the battle of Worcester;[21] but on the spot, and though the greater part of the house has been rebuilt, one may realise the incidents in that romantic episode, for the village of Trent to-day is much the same as the village of 1651.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SANDFORD ORCAS MANOR-HOUSE.]

The manor-house of Sandford Orcas, to the north-east of Trent (which by the way now belongs to Dorset), is quite a gem of early-Elizabethan architecture, with crests upon the gable ends, and the Tudor and Knoyle arms and graceful panels upon the warm-coloured walls of Ham Hill stone.

Though a small house, it has its great hall with carved oak screen; and most of the rooms are panelled, and have their original fireplaces. The wide arched Tudor gateway spanning the road bears the arms of the Knoyles, a monument to whom may be seen in the south aisle of the church close by, the tower of which rises picturesquely above the gabled roof of the manor-house. The village, the little there is of it, is buried in orchards, between which the mill-stream winds, the haunt of a colony of quacking ducks whose noisy gossip makes up for the paucity of inhabitants.

Some eight miles away, on the other side of Yeovil, there is a manor-house, which for picturesqueness must take the palm of even Sandford Orcas. This is Brympton D'Eversy, a remarkable mixture of the domestic architecture of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. One would think that the various styles would not harmonise, but they do in a remarkable degree. Add to these the styles of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which are conspicuous in portions of the adjacent church, and there is indeed a field from which to study.

The northern front of the mansion, with its embattled Gothic bays and rows of latticed windows, is flanked by the quaint little turreted church, and together they form a most striking group not only in outline, but attractive in colour, for grey-green lichens and the peculiar rusty tint of stone blend in perfect sympathy. Picture this house and church in crude white stone, unmellowed and toned by time, and half its charm would be gone. Does not this open up a question worth consideration? A modern house is built with conscientious exact.i.tude in imitation of some beautiful existing example of Gothic or Renaissance architecture. Every detail is perfect, but the result is harsh and new.

One must wait almost a lifetime before it makes a picture really pleasing to the eye. Therefore why not take some measures to tone down the staring stone or obtrusive red-brick before the masonry is constructed? True, there are a few exceptions where additions have been made to ancient houses, which cannot be detected; but in the case of an entirely new house, does it often occur to the builder how much more pleasing would be the result if the exterior of his house were more in harmony with the old oak fittings and ancient furniture with which it is his ambition to fill it? Would that all such houses were built of Ham Hill stone, for it has the peculiarity of imparting age much more rapidly than any other.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MONTACUTE HOUSE.]

It is this that gives so venerable an appearance to Montacute House; for, compared with many mansions coeval with it, the ancestral seat of the Phelips family looks quite double the age. The imposing height of Montacute as compared, for instance, with Hinton St. George, gives it stateliness and grandeur, while the other has none. Like Hardwick, the front of the house is one ma.s.s of windows; but it has not that formal spare appearance, for here there are rounded gables to break the outline. In niches between the windows and over the central gable stand the stone representations of such varied celebrities as Charlemagne, King Arthur, Pompey, Caesar, Alexander the Great, Moses, Joshua, G.o.dfrey de Bouillon, and Judas Maccabeus. They look down upon a trim old garden walled in by a bal.u.s.traded and pinnacled enclosure, with Moorish-like pavilions or music-rooms at the corners. As a specimen of elaborate Elizabethan architecture within and without, Montacute is unique. In Nash's _Mansions_ there is a drawing of the western front, which is still more elaborate in detail, and is earlier in date than the rest of the house; and this may be accounted for as it was added when Clifton Maybank (another house of the Phelips') was dismantled many years ago.

But of this old house there are yet some interesting remains.[22] Inside there is a similarity also to Hardwick with its wide stone staircase and its ornamental Elizabethan doorways and fireplaces. The hospitality in the good old days was in keeping with the lordly appearance of the mansion. Over the entrance may still be read the cheery greeting:

"Through this wide opening gate, None come too early, none return too late."

But in these degenerate days the odds are that advantage would be taken of such hospitality; and one marvels at the open-handed generosity such as existed at old Bramall Hall in Cheshire, where the common road led right through the squire's great hall,[23] where there was always kept a plentiful supply of strong ale to cheer the traveller on his way. There can have been but few tramps in those days, or they must have been far more modest than they are to-day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MONTACUTE PRIORY.]

Montacute Priory, near the village, has a fine Perpendicular tower and other picturesque remains. To see it at its best, one should visit the village late in autumn, when the Virginia creeper, which covers the ancient walls, has turned to brilliant red. Other buildings under similar conditions may look as lovely, but we can recollect nothing to equal this old farmstead in its clinging robes of gold and scarlet.

There are many interesting old inns in this part of Somersetshire, notably in the town of Yeovil, where the "George" and "Angel" are _vis-a-vis_, and can compare notes as to whose recollections go back the farthest. The wide open fireplaces and mullioned windows of the former are of the time of Elizabeth or earlier, but the stone Gothic arched doorway and traceried windows of the latter can go a century better. But important as they both have been in their day, neither has had the luck or energy to keep pace with the times sufficiently to hold younger generations of inns subservient. The old "Green Dragon" at Combe St.

Nicholas, near Ilminster, possessed a remarkable carved oak settle in its bar-parlour. It was elaborately carved, the back being lined with the graceful linen-fold panels. At the arm or corner were two figures, one suspended over the other, the upper one representing a bishop in the act of preaching. They were known as "the parson and clerk"; but when we saw the settle the "parson" was missing, having mysteriously disappeared some time before. The "clerk" was so worn out, having occupied his post so for centuries, that his features were scarcely recognisable; but who can wonder when he had been preached to for close upon four hundred years! To be "overlooked" in remote parts of Somersetshire means certain misfortune. Many a poor unoffending old woman, suspected of "overlooking" people, has been knocked on the head that her blood might be "drawn" to counteract the spell. Probably the parson's att.i.tude aroused suspicion, and he was quietly put away; but as his head had not been broken neither had the spell, and the last we heard of the "Green Dragon" was that it had been burnt down.

The old landlady we remember had a firm belief that the death of one of her sons was foretold by a death's-head moth flying in at the window and settling on his forehead when he was asleep in his cradle. The child, a beautiful boy, then in perfect health, was doomed, and her eldest son immediately set forth with his gun to shoot the first bird he chanced to see, to break the spell. However, that night the child died; and upon the wall in a gla.s.s case was the stuffed bird as well as the moth, a melancholy memento of the tragedy of thirty years ago.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] See _King Monmouth_.

[19] Ill.u.s.trations of these relics are in _King Monmouth_.

[20] The open roof of the manor-house, now a cooper's shop, is also worth inspection.