Somerset
These images have been taken from a 1940's book called "The King's England - Somerset" Written by Arthur Mee and published by Hodder & Stoughton"

The following text is extracted directly from the pages, as it would not do justice to the auther, to amend a single word. I hope you enjoy his romantic style.

The County of Romantic Splendour
IT is impossible to imagine the pilgrim who can be disappointed in Somerset, the Crescent County of the West. Surely its million acres have everything that is wanted by the traveller in search of delight.

It is romantic and historic. It has vast landscapes and impressive heights. It has deep solitudes far away from men and busy ways along which life has thronged for centuries. It has spectacles to stir the wildest imagination. It has been the scene of one of the noblest and one of the ignoblest struggles for the English throne. It has one of the most remarkable monuinents of the Roman Empire set in one of the most beautiful of English cities. It has the sacred soil of Glastonbury and the matchless glory of Wells(pic), the very heart of our English Romance and a unique medieval city. It has the home of Croinwell's Admiral Blake who taught the world that none but an Englishman should chastise an Englishman. It has the finest towers in England a dazzling splendour of architecture in its churches. It has some of the most attractive little towns in England and hundreds of delightful villages.

It dips its shores into the Bristol channel down which the Cabots sailed to find the Empire's oldest colony, and from one of its heights it can look over Devon to the channel down which the great ships of the world go out from London and Southampton. It has 60 rivers running through it, four groups of great and little hills, and Exmoor and Sedgemoor-Sedgemoor with its melancholy tale of a broken dream, Exmoor with the incomparable glory of nature on the heights and in the hollows. It has Athelney, the scene of Alfred's wanderings as a fugitive, and the lovely Vale of Avalon to which tradition brought Joseph of Arimathea and where it laid King Arthur. It has the remnants of lake villages older than history, with the mounds on which the ancient Britons set their huts, and great houses in which life has gone on like an unbroken thread from century to century. It has ruined walls that echo with the feet of monks and pilgrims, and one of the noblest cathedral-buildings of our own century, not unworthy to compare with the wonderful structure of Buckfast Abbey in the green valley across its border.

Truly a week of English summer in the hills and plains of Somerset is as rare a piece of enchantment as any man could wish; we may ride in our 20th century cars through country that has not been spoiled in a thousand years.

Nowhere does Somerset lose its country air, yet nowhere does it give an impression of stagnation. It sustains a great diversity of interest, typical of English life in modern times. It is chiefly agricultural, but has valuable forms of industrial life in small towns which have a touch of historic dignity. It has actually colliery at Radstock, iron ore in the Brendon Hills, and lead in the Mendips. Its coast has a succession of modest pleasure towns facing the Severn from Clevedon to Porlock, the most popular of these being Somerset's second town, Weston-super Mare. All Somerset is indeed a holiday ground, with almost every attraction that appeals to the casual or the thoughtful mind. Who can fail to find something entertaining in this crescent-shaped county sweeping from Bath and Bristol round Bridgwater Bay, past the stern Mendips, the border heights of Dorset and Wiltshire, the Blackdown edge of Devon, the romantic plain of Glastonbury, melancholy Sedgemoor, the Quantocks and the Brendon Hills, on to Dunkery Beacon and the sources of the Exe?

Nearly all the waters of Somerset flow westward or north-westward to the Bristol Channel, the exceptions being those of the south, where the Axe is a boundary stream going to the English Channel. There also go the waters of the lofty western part of Exinoor, through Devon by the Exe and the Barle, with small streams from the Brendons. The main waters of the county have their rise, however, in the western heights of Dorset and the Downs of Wiltshire, and reach Bridgwater Bay along the flat central part of Somerset south of the Mendip Plateau by the River Parret and the River Brue. The Bristol Avon in the north runs as a boundary stream between Somerset and Gloucester; it is one of the most picturesque of Somerset's rivers, and receives from the little River Frome the waters of the ancient forest land of Selwood, and by other channels drains the north-eastern part of the Mendips. But it is in the basins of the Parret and the Brue that Somerset is seen in its most typical guise. Into the Parret pours the Yeo, the Isle from the Blackdown Hills, the Tone from the Vale of Taunton(pic) and the Brendon Hills, and many small streams from the Quantocks. Once a Fenland for fugitives, this area is now richly-yielding agricultural land.

The hill-groups of Somerset give it the appearance to the traveller of hilliness everywhere, ringing it round in the east and the south from Wiltshire, Dorset, and Devon. Then, about 20 miles from Bath, runs almost from east to west the Mendip Plateau, reaching a height of over a thousand feet. The range is about 20 miles from west to east, and half a dozen miles wide, and, though its general summit is a little commonplace, we ride along it to one of the wonders of the world, for as we reach its edge and descend south we come to Cheddar(pic). These hills are made of carboniferous limestone and honeycombed with caves.

Beyond the headwaters of the River Tone, and between them the Somerset course of the Exe, lie the Brendon Hills, the eastern part of Exmoor, and cut off from the moor only by the road from Exton to Dunster. The central part of these hills northward, between Watchet and Minehead, is very charming, with Dunster as its old-world climax and the captivating ruins of Cleeve Abbey not far away. More eastward, beyond the valley in which the railway runs from Taunton(pic) to Watchet, is the little self-contained range of the Quantocks, the most complete and compact eight-miles of hill-scenery, varying from 800 to 1260 feet, with every charm of wooded glens that the heart can desire, and the glamour of great memories round its base, for here came Coleridge and Wordsworth, living as friendly neighbours for a year or two while Wordsworth's sister Dorothy taught them both to use their eyes.

The little Polden Hills, often neglected but truly delightful, carry the most frequented roads round Sedgemoor, once a marshy tract in the centre of the county and now a well-drained grazing ground. Here flows the River Parret carrying off the water from the drainage channels of the farmers, for pumps are needed to prevent floods in Sedgemoor and to keep the Zoys (Chedzoy, Middlezoy, and Weston Zoyland) from becoming once again mere islets in a sea of waste. Here it was, of course, that Charles the Second's son, the Duke of Monmouth, fought; to gain the crown and hid himself in a ditch, but the site of the battle (the last great battle on English soil) is so transformed that only the three church towers of the Zoys enable us to trace the story of his tragic fight.

Sedgemoor has changed, and Exmoor itself has lost its forest trees, but Exmoor remains the great natural possession of Somerset. It covers about 30 square miles with not more than three or four hundred people, and is chiefly surfaced with coarse moor grass, having marshes in the valleys of its rivers. There are more ponies than people. The chief inhabitants are these ponies and the wild red deer, with a small breed of sheep noted for their horns, their white faces, and a most sturdy constitution. Almost every type of mammal known in England exists on Exmoor, the pigmy shrew an ounce in weight contrasting with the lordly stag, while in the air fly the buzzard, the blackcock, and the raven. Salmon and, trout make the Exe and the Barle a paradise for Exmoor anglers. The highest point is Dunkery Beacon (1707 feet) but it is the romantic glens, as well as the uplands and the wild remoteness of the scenery every-what, that enthrall the traveller. It is from these lonely moors that the Exe flows into Devon to give its name to Exeter. Happily the guiding hand of the National Trust owns about ten thousand acres of this wondrous place, and we may console ourselves that its beauty will not be destroyed.

It was perhaps Lorna Doone that first lured pilgrims from afar to Exmoor. It is indeed the choicest part of one of England's choicest counties, but it was Richard Blackniore's story that gave the multitudes the impulse to see it. Qare is the home of the hero John Ridd, the pivot place of the story, and the valley of the robbers Doones is the Exmoor boundary between Somerset and Devon. Devon indeed, though sharing only a little of Exmoor with Somerset has some of its most charming streams, and on the same side lie the lovely regions of Lynton and Lynmouth; but the loftiest and most characteristic parts of the moor are, of course, in Somerset.

Three magic names leap to any mind that thinks of Somerset: Bath, Wells(pic), and Glastonbury. They stand to us for the most remarkable piece of Roman England still surviving, for the most captivating medieval town still left to us with its unique cathedral, and for a romantic ruin about which are enshrined two of the tenderest legends of our English story. In imagination and in fact these three places are without a rival in the land.

Bath is like no other place in England. Before it came down in the world it must have been a spectacle of dazzling splendour. It has been the delight of generations of famous folk, and it comes into the writings of Fielding, Smollett, Jane Austen, Thackery, Dickens, Macaulay, and nnumbered smaller folk,

It has been the centre of fashion and a magnet to scores of famous people who have done a great life's work and longed for quiet and beauty in the evening of their days.

And it has had a continuous story since Roman times. We know of nothing in the history of England more incredible than that in the 18th century, when the genius of the Woods and the generosity of Ralph Allen and the dandyism of Beau Nash wher making Bath the City Beautiful, laying it out anew to attract the travelling world, nobody realised that a few feet below these streets was something of the Roman Empire unique on this side of the Alps. Well may we wonder what those two noble architects, Wood the father and Wood the son, with Ralph Allen's great fortune at their service, would have made of this wondrous site had they known the great truth about that. They knew nothing of the marvellous things that lay below them, and even in 1755, when the past revealed itself, nobody cared and nothing was done, and it was not for another hundred years that men began to think about it, and not until within the memory of living men that Roman Bath was brought to light. Even today no man can imagine what still lies hidden under the streets of Bath.

We are drawn to Glastonbury by the sight of Glastonbury Tor, which is seen for miles around, and, though new Glastonbury depresses us, all that is old is beautiful to see. We may Iike to think there is something in the story that the man who laid Jesus in the Holy Sepulchre wandered to England and plantt the Thorn which has come down to us. We may like to think that he was laid in the beautiful stone coffin now in the church. We may like to think that here they laid the body of King Arthur who bade farewell to his troubled life and sailed away with three queens. Here, the story tells us, they brought him, a king returning from his wars. We feel at Tintagel that the spirit of King Arthur is there, and it is so within these abbey walls of Glastonbury. They are beautiful to look upon, roofless and with windows open to the sky, but soaring so that our thoughts rise with them and we feel that truly there is something greater than we know.

As for Wells(pic), its magic is indoors and out. Who would not like to spend a week in its cathedral? Who would not walk about for hours in its old narrow ways, up and down its Vicar's close, round the bishop's moated walls? Who has not stood spellbound at the marvellous craftsmanship on the capitals of those great cathedral columns? Who has not climbed slowly, hardly believing his eyes, up into the chapter house by the stairway like no other we have seen? Who can forget the view of this west front across the great lawn? If we would see medieval England let us go to Wells(pic).

Somerset has about 400 ancient fonts; two notable 15th century ones are those at Crowcombe and Minehead. It has more medieval stone pulpits than any other county in the land-20 out of about 60 in all England; everyone should see the pulpit at Shepton Mallet. It has also grand medieval wooden pulpits, one at Trull with five statues; and with the pulpits go the pews, for Somerset is famous for bench-ends. We should look for them at Trull, Crowcombe, Cheddar(pic), Bishops Hull, Bishops Lydeard, and Brent Knoll on its lonely hill, and if we want some modern benches to compare with them we may come to Pen Selwood and see the work of the village craftsmen there, done in our own time. As for roodscreens, though Somerset cannot equal Norfolk or Devon she has more than 70 from medieval England, and they are lovely to look upon; we see them at Dunster, minehead, Withycombe, and Queen Camel.

If we want lovely villages with lovely names (scores of them named after Norman lords), or peeps of our countryside with something unforgettable in them, Somerset will not disappoint us. Combe Florey, home of Sydney Smith, is as delightful as its name. Culbone clings like a nest to a wooded cliff by the sea, and has one of the smallest complete churches in England. St Catherine, with the little church between the great house and the barn, is an incomparable gem in one of the valleys round Bath, and we can call at Langridge on the way and see what the Normans did there. Selworthy is delightful with thatched cottages smiling on the green, and Pen Selwood looks across miles of country to Glastonbury Tor, and has a grand Norman doorway leading us into a veritable treasure house. Holcombe has a solitary church where Captain Scott came to bury his father and where they laid his mother after he had made his name immortal. Mells, home of little Jack Horner, is a scene of enchantment, and in its noble church one of our heroes sits on a horse in bronze. At Nunney we can hardly believe ourselves in (early) 20th century England as we cross the sparkling moat to a medieval castle and then walk over a little bridge to a medieval church; and at Orchardleigh is one of the rarest gems in Somerset's diadem, the only island church we have come upon in all our ten thousand. Nether Stowey, beloved of poets, has a church that would draw us there if Coleridge and Wordsworth had never been. At Monksilver Drake wooed Elizabeth Sydenham. Wyke Chatnpflower is a perfect piece of England if we come to it on a summer's day. Stanton Drew has its own little Stone henge, Weston Zoyland has its grand church in the heart of Sedgemoor, Farleigh Hungerford has a noble ruin with a famous story, Burrington is the inspiration of the Rock of Ages, the hymn that has sung its way around the world. Compton Dando has a Roman god as a corner-stone holding up its church.

Possession of the Romantic West. Frome runs up and down and in and out with steep and narrow streets, and has a church, standing where St Aldhelm built his church 1000 years ago. Taunton(pic), with fine churches and schools and its historic castle, is one of the busiest of Somerset's towns, and Bridgwater, chief port of the county, draws us all to its splendid church and the home of Robert Blake. Wellington, from which the Iron Duke took his title, has flourished for 1000 years, and Ilminster is like a cathedral town rising above its impressive church.

Of great bouses, Somerset has the incomparable Montacute, set in its wonderful garden; the splendid Tudor Sutton Court behind its battlemented walls near Stowey; Brympton House with its long Tudor front and its grey gold walls; and Barrington Court with its glorious gardens in the care of the National Trust, as Montacute is.

It is in the fight for the security of the throne that Somerset comes chiefly into history. It was here that a boy named Ina was taken from a farm to win supremacy over all England south of London. It was a Somerset man, founder of Glastonbury who crowned King Edgar at Bath as a formal declaration of the unity of the kingdom round the throne. It was here that Alfred rallled his forces against the Danes and finally made peace with them. It was here that Cromwell's admiral, the greatest English seaman after Nelson, was born. It was here that the last great English battle was fought. All these are steps in the long building up of the throne which after a thousand years is secure amid the deliriums of the world; and these are magic and tragic names-Ina, Alfred, Dunstan, Blake, and Monmouth.

Ina, our Somerset king, appears to have been chosen much as they choose the Dalai Lama today; he was looking after his father's oxen when he was taken from the farm at Somerton and made king, becoming supreme in the South a hundred years before Alfred. His was a remarkable reign, for he issued a series of laws (drawn up by his bishops and aldermen with the witan and a great assembly of people) which are among the earliest expressions of humanity in English legislation. They show great change brought about by Christianity in the treatment of the conquered. Ina was a benefactor of Glastonbury, and the first king to give rights to Welshmen.

It was Dunstan, the Saxon noble's son born at Glastonbury, who saw the nation finally united round the throne. As a boy he spent some years at the court of Athelstan, first King of All England, and grew up to be a great power in the land, founding Glastonbury, of which he was first Abbot, and becoming Archbishop of Canterbury. His wise spirit and his great tolerance brought about a long period of prosperity and peace, and it was the crowning of Edgar at Bath in 973, by Archbishop Dunstan of Canterbury and Archbishop Oswald of York, which was accepted as the declaration of the Unity of the Kingdom.

Somerset gave birth to our greatest sailor after Nelson, and it was in Somerset that our greatest poet since Milton spent some of his decisive years. Here Wordsworth was walking over the hills by the Devon border in the days when he made up his mind to give his life to poetry. Here he was walking to Lynton with Coleridge ("Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge we roved") when Coleridge related to him the idea of the Ancient Mariner. Here Southey came to see them both, and De Qyincey, and Hazlitt, and Charles Lamb. It was Somerset, too, that gave the greatest poet since Wordsworth the imagination for his masterpiece, for Tennyson's In Memoriam sprang from the passing of Arthur Hallam, whose home was in the lovely 14th century manor house at Clevedon. It is strange, this being so, that Tennyson himself did not come to Somerset till long after Hallam had been laid in his grave.

But the tale of Somerset would go on for ever, and we must leave this book to tell the story of its fame. Yet we must rember that Bishop Ken lies in Frome; that Sir Bevil Grenville fell in the hour of victory on the hills above Bath; that William Dampier, one of the first explorers to see Australia, was a Somerset man born at East Coker, and Adiniral Phillip, founder of New South Wales, lies at Bathampton. At Dowlish Wake lies John Speke, discoverer of the source of the Nile; he was born at Ilminster. The famous fighting Hoods, of NeIson's band of brothers, were Somerset men from Butleigh and Cricket St Thomas; and John Pym, one of our greatest champions of freedom, whose arrest Charles Stuart demanded in the House of Commons, when he asked Is Mr Pym here? was born at Cannington. Henry Fielding the novelist came from Sharpham Park near Walton, John Locke the philosopher from Wrington, Sir Edward Parry the Arctic explorer from Bath, Sir Henry Irving from Keinton Mandeville, and that mystery man John Bull, who may have written the music of our national anthem, came from Wellow. Farther back than these, from the heart of the 13th century, comes the shadowy figure of one of the most marvellous men of medieval days, Roger Bacon who saw the light in the old town of Ilchester, where he must. have wondered at the stumpy tower which is farther round than it is high. He was the wisest man of his day, a wonder man whose dream reached forward almost to our time.

We see that Somerset has a great place in history and on our rolI of fame. It has wonderful towns and enchanting villages, and architectural splendour to satisfy us all. It has these, with all its natural glory, and we do not wonder that it has been said that we can catch sight of it as far away as Windsor; who would not wish to say that he had seen it from afar if there had never come to him the thrill of being in its very midst?