Places to Visit

Somerset’s Romantic Poets

Posted February 29th, 2012
by Richard Savage

This part of Somerset is an ideal area for exploring the footsteps of some of the most famous romantic poets in English literature. In the last posting we mentioned something about William Wordsworth, and the countryside between Nether Stowey and Lynton was an area enjoyed by Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Not far from Lower Lakes we can explore localities where Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Robert Southey, Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Blake lived or roamed. Some of these places have still retained the atmosphere where they were inspired to write their poems

The Unitarian Chapel in Bridgwater attended by Coleridge

 In Bridgwater itself is the original Unitarian Chapel which Coleridge attended, while in Mary Street, Taunton, is another Unitarian Chapel to which Coleridge would walk to and fro along the Quantocks to preach on Sundays. At Nether Stowey is the cottage at 35 Lime Streetwhere Coleridge lived from 1797-1799 with his wife Sara and son Hartley. This is now a National Trust Museum, displaying some of his personal memoirs, and it was here from 1797-1798  that Coleridge wrote the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Frost at Midnight, This Lime Tree Bower my Prison, and Kubla Khan. Across the road from the cottage the “Ancient Mariner Inn” is named after one of Coleridge’s most famous works. In 1798 Coleridge was visited by William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, and they were so enthralled by his company that they immediately rented Alfoxden Hall near Holford, 3 miles west of Nether Stowey.

Coleridge's Cottage with the Inn of the Ancient Mariner opposite

Continue westwards on the A39 we pass the “Castle of Comfort”, dating from the 16th century or even earlier. During the 17th century it was a coaching inn, after which it became a coffee house and then a cider house when copper mining took place in the area. Miners collected their wages from the Counting House just to the east and came down to the Castle of Comfort for refreshment. On one occasion at least in 1798, William and Dorothy Wordsworth along with Coleridge refreshed themselves at the Castle of Comfort on a walk to Lynton, referred to by Dorothy in her journal.

Alfoxden Park House is reached by turning left in Kilve along Pardlestone Road. The building dates back to 1710, and the Wordsworths stayed here from July 1797 to June 1798. Here Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote their “Lyrical Ballads” and Dorothy began her journals in which she recorded walks, visits, conversations, and the world of nature through the winter of 1797. These beautiful word pictures were an important source of stimulation for her brother and also Coleridge. They were completed when the couple moved to the Lake District. and posthumously published as The Alfoxden Journal, 1798 and The Grasmere Journals, 1800-1803. During this period the main poems Worsworth produced were Ruth, The Thorn and The Whirlwind from Behind the Hill.

Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner was planned and partly composed during a walking tour with the Wordsworths. Setting out from Alfoxden, they agreed that a poem should be published to cover the cost of their journey. They felt that the Monthly Magazine would pay £5 for a ballad based on the supernatural, a popular theme at the time. The main theme came from a dream about a ghost ship which  Coleridge’s friend, John Cruikshank, had. Wordsworth added the idea of the crime of shooting the albatross from reading Captain Shelvocke’s “A Voyage round the World by way of the Great South Sea” (1726), and another seafaring volume by William Bettagh, about the life of a sailor, Simon Hatley, who is said to have shot down “a black albatross” while on board a ship called the Speedwell.  Hatley sailed to the Pacific on two of the most dangerous voyages of the early 18th century and by an amazing coincidence was at one time on the same ship not only with Alexander Selkirk, the marooned sailor whose story inspired Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, but also with William Dampier, an adventurer and writer whose work inspired Jonathan Swift to write Gulliver’s Travels.

The first night of the walk was spent at Watchet and the first few lines of the poem were reputedly written at the “Bell Inn”. Watchet harbour undoubtedly provided inspiration for the harbour from which the mariner set sail, then turning westwards along the Bristol Channel and then south into the wide Atlantic Ocean.

The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.

The sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.

And then when he returned at the end of the voyage, with the sites reappearing in the reverse order:

Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed
The lighthouse top I see?
Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine own country?

We drifted o’er the harbour-bar,
And I with sobs did pray -
O let me be awake, my God!
Or let me sleep alway.

In the harbour is a sculpture of the Ancient Mariner with the albatross hung around his neck.

Continuing along the A39 to Porlock, “The Ship Inn”, one of the oldest inns on Exmoor, is where some of the Ancient Mariner was composed, and which also has a fireside nook known as Southey’s Corner. In 1799, Robert and Edith Southey set off from Bristolfor a tour of the Exmoorcoast, arranging to return via Nether Stowey to stay with Samuel Coleridge. Edith became ill at Minehead, suffering from “extreme debility, pain in back and bowels, lack of appetite” and other complaints. Southey stayed with her for a fortnight, exploring the surrounding area. On 8th August, Edith being better but not fit for walking, Southey set off alone. He was driven to Porlock by Coleridge’s Nether Stowey friend and neighbour, John Cruickshank, in “a sort of sledge is used by the country people resting upon two poles like cart shafts.” Later he wrote to his brother: “Tom, you have talked of Somersetshire and its beauties but you have never seen the finest part. The neighbourhood of Stowey, Minehead and Porlock exceed anything I have seen in England before. . . .”

That evening he stayed here at the Ship Inn: “the bedroom reminded me of Spain, two long old dark tables with benches and an old chest composed its furniture: but there was an oval looking-glass, a decent pot de chambre and no fleas.” The next day was chilly and wet and he stayed by the inn fire in a nook now known as Southey’s Corner and composed his sonnet ‘To Porlock’ which includes the lines:

Here by the summer rain confined;
But often shall hereafter call to mind
How here, a patient prisoner `twas my lot
To wear the lonely, lingering close of day,
Making my sonnet by the ale house fire,
Whilst Idleness and Solitude inspire
Dull rhymes to pass the duller hours away.

A week later the ‘Morning Post’ sent him a guinea for his efforts.

Coleridge introduced the Wordsworths to the woodland path from Porlock Weir to Culbone where he had been the previous month and composed Kubla Khan. Culbone is said to have been inspiration for the hermit’s woodland home in The Ancient Mariner.

This Hermit good lives in that wood
Which slopes down to the sea.
How loudly his sweet voice he rears!
He loves to talk with marineers
That come from a far country.

He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve -
He hath a cushion plump:
It is the moss that wholly hides
The rotted old oak-stump.

The  walk to Culbone and back takes a good hour, but is worth the effort. Here we pass some of the remains of Ashley Combe, the mansion built in 1799 and improved in 1835 by Lord William King (later created the First Earl of Lovelace).  Ashley Combe was designed as a romantic country home for his wife Ada Byron (daughter of Lord Byron, yet another romantic poet) with exotic terraced gardens in the Italian style. It subsequently fell into disrepute and ruin, and was pulled down. There are still tunnels, passageways and archways to be seen beside the Culbone path. Ada Lovelace was also a close friend of Charles Babbage, inventor of the first computer or “analytical machine” andAdais credited with being the first computer software programmer. In 1979 the US Department of Defence named a secret software programme “ADA” in her honour.

The Wordsworths and Coleridge continued their coastal walk to Broomstreet Farm and Yenworthy, and by dusk reached Lynmouth. The next morning they walked up to the Valleyof Rocks, which they proposed to use for the setting of a prose tale The Wanderings of Cain, a story of murder and remorse. It was decided that Wordsworth should write the first canto of the story and Coleridge the second which he finished ‘at full finger-speed‘ only to find Wordsworth with a nearly blank sheet of paper and a look of ‘humorous despondency’ on his face. The story was never finished and later attempts at writing things together also failed, due to clashes of personality.

Coleridge and the Wordsworths were greatly enamoured with the Lynton area and even thought of moving there. Coleridge wrote to a friend: “We will go on a roam to Linton and Linmouth, which if thou camest in May will be in all their pride of woods and waterfalls, not to speak of the august cliffs, and the green ocean, and the Vast Valley of Stones all of which live disdainful of the seasons or accept new honours only from the winter’s snow.”

The impression made by the scenery around Lynton and the Valley of Rocks is reflected in his poem Reflections on Leaving a Place of Retirement, although not specifically named.

                                           But the time, when first
From that low Dell, steep up the stony Mount
I climb’d with perilous toil and reach’d the top,
Oh ! what a goodly scene ! Here the bleak mount,
The bare bleak mountain speckled thin with sheep ;
Grey clouds, that shadowing spot the sunny fields ;
And river, now with bushy rocks o’er-brow’d,
Now winding bright and full, with naked banks ;
And seats, and lawns, the Abbey and the wood,
And cots, and hamlets, and faint city-spire ;
The Channel there, the Islands and white sails,
Dim coasts, and cloud-like hills, and shoreless Ocean–
It seem’d like Omnipresence ! God, methought,
Had build him there a Temple : the whole World
Seem’d imag’d in its vast circumference :
No wish profan’d my overwhelméd heart.
Blest hour ! It was a luxury,–to be !

It is not clear whether they returned to the Valley of  Rocks as Wordsworth had intended and it is certain only that they passed through Dulverton. They returned after a week, during which time they dropped the idea of publishing the poem in a magazine and proposed to publish jointly a book of their poems, which came out a year later as Lyrical Ballads, the work which is said to have inspired the English Romantic movement. Besides The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, it included one of Wordsworth’s most famous poems, Tintern Abbey. The second edition, published in 1800, had a preface in which Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of romantic poetry, one based on the “real language of men“. Here, he also gives his famous definition of poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility.”

In Lynmouth is  ”Shelley’s Hotel”, where Percy Bysshe Shelley honeymooned during the Summer of 1812, having eloped with the 16-year-old daughter of a former London inn keeper, named Harriet Westbrook. Two years later Shelley abandoned her for the love of his life Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the authoress whose most well-known novel “Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus” may have been inspired by attending the lectures given by Andrew Crosse in 1814 in which he explained his attempts to create living organisms by means of atmospheric electricity in his laboratory at Fyne Court, Broomfield.

Not far from Lower Lakes in the opposite direction, on the Mendips around Glastonburyand Charterhouse, we can trace some of the things which stimulated William Blake to write “Jerusalem”. He also was acquainted with Mary Shelley and something of an eccentric non-conformist visionary mystic, although rejected as a madman by 18^th century society.  When Blake died in 1827, William Wordsworth said, “There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.”

Blake hated the effects of the Industrial Revolution inEnglandand looked forward to the establishment of a New Jerusalem “in England’s green and pleasant land.” He was inspired by the legend that Jesus as a boy accompanied his uncle Joseph of Arimathea to our island and visited Glastonbury. The term “dark Satanic Mills”, which entered the English language from this poem, is interpreted as referring to the early Industrial Revolution and its destruction of nature and human relationships. Around Charterhouse we can see the remains of the lead furnaces where the ore was refined and many small boys died in Victorian times from the effects of having to clean out the furnaces.

Further afield beside the A39 between Ashcott and Street is the “Pipers Inn.”  In 1841, two years before he succeeded Southey as Poet Laureate, Wordsworth returned to Somerset on a nostalgic trip to visit his youthful haunts. He and his wife Mary stayed at a friend’s house in Bath, and attended the wedding of their daughter, Dora, to Mr. Edward Quillinan at St James’s Church. One day the wedding party drove out to Ashcott to have breakfast at Pipers Inn and afterwards they all went to Alfoxden to reminisce over their past. The Pipers Inn certainly dates from 1723 and  stands on the site where there has been an inn for over 400 years, and one called “The Castle” was built here, possibly in the late 17th century. About 200 years ago an imposing house was added to the side of the existing building to form the present day frontage with contrasting architectural styles.

It is not only romantic poets who get carried away by their emotions. I will stop here!

The Bridgwater Bath Brick

Posted February 1st, 2012
by Richard Savage

Apart from the manufacture of bricks and tiles, the production of scouring bricks was an important part of the industry.  During the 19^th century the Bath Brick was a popular cleaner throughout Britain, Europe andAmerica for polishing, scouring and cleaning metalwork and cutlery. They were once issued regularly to soldiers in the British army, and hence travelled all over the world, wherever the sun never set over the British Empire.

These blocks were made from the fine alumina and silica particles that were washed down the River Parrett and deposited in specially constructed slime batches built along the river one mile north and one mile south of the Town Bridge, where the slime was known to be of the right consistency, and at Dunball. These consisted of a bed of brick rubble projecting from the river bank with low sides to encourage settlement. When the deposit that had “pitched” in the “batches” was 4 feet thick it would be dug out and deposited on the river bank to allow rain water to wash the salt out. Already by 1896 some 25 batches existed to trap the slime, and bricks were being manufactured under the names of Axford and Sealey. There were ten manufacturers in the 1920s with John Board & Co Ltd being the major producer.

The slime mixture would be taken to a simple horse-worked mixer, shaped in a “pugging mill” and extruded or “obstricked” into 6 inch balls, which would then be pressed into bricks in a mould using a “striker” and turned out onto boards to dry. High temperature firing in kilns would follow a few days later, but only at 500-600 degrees Celsius, the process taking 4-6 days, hence the softer colour compared with normal Bridgwater bricks which would be fired at 930 degrees Celsius for about a week. Finally they would be trimmed with an emery wheel and wrapped in strong paper.

Broken or rejected bricks were ground into a bulk powder.

It was called the “Bath Brick” because of its similarity in colour to Bath Stone. A patent granted in 1827 referred to “a certain composition or substance….. when perfected would resemble in colour the stone called or known by the name of Bath Stone.”

E.H. Burrington wrote a poem “Apostrophe to the Parrett” which included the lines:

 “But thou lowest ever beautifully thick,
Leaving the filthy slime to make Bath brick!”

Bath Bricks were advertised as “the most effective and economical polishing material. It is superior to metal polish and does not contain acid or alcohol injurious to metals.” Sadly, after 1918, alternative cleaning materials that were cheaper gradually put an end to the manufacture of Bath Bricks. Now, when you use Vim or Ajax, remember their predecessor – the Bath Brick!

Assortment of Bath Bricks manufactured in Bridgwater (by kind permission of the Somerset Brick and Tile Museum)

Bridgwater Brick and Tile Industry

Posted February 1st, 2012
by Richard Savage

Situated at East Quay, on the east bank of the River Parrett between Chandos Bridge and the more northerly bridge where Western Way crosses the river, is the museum dedicated to the Somerset Brick and Tile Industry.  It is housed in the buildings adjoining the kiln that once belonged to the brick yard of Barham Brothers, which closed down in 1964.

Inside are displayed the tools, methods and processes involved in making a variety of bricks, tiles, and terracotta plaques, with old photographs of the industry.

The brick industry was already under way in the late 17^th century. In the 1720s the schemes of the Duke of  Chandos boosted the industry, with the construction of the glass cone and the redevelopment of the castle area with the elegant terraces of  Chandos Street and Castle Street intended to attract prosperous tradesmen.  Unfortunately the Duke’s schemes did not realize and prosper as he hoped, although the housing development, in line with Bath, was in vogue with the professions and society, as well as merchants.

The brick industry escalated in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, employing about 1300 men in the 1840s. By 1850 there were many brickworks north and south of the town, and these prospered until the end of the century. You can see the flooded clay pits around Chilton Trinity to the north and between Huntworth and the River in the south. Barham Brothers started manufacturing bricks in 1857. In the 1890s there was a total of 16 brick and tile companies, and 24 million bricks per annum were exported during those ten years. Increased industry led to a dramatic growth in the population of  Bridgwater from around 3000 in 1801 to nearly 15,000 in 1901, accompanied by the construction of large Victorian working class suburbs of increasingly high quality. The most modern tile manufacturer to open with advanced technology was that of John Browne & Co on Square Road in Chilton Trinity, later to become the Somerset Trading Company. It was extended in 1933, employed a hundred men, and there was continuous employment until the outbreak of the Second World War.

It was John Board who commissioned the building of  Castle House in Queen Street, originally named Portland Castle after the Portland cement used in its construction. Although mostly made of brick, John Board also experimented with the use of concrete, reinforcing it with iron rods.

In 1939 the tile market was divided between 93% clay, 3% concrete and 4% other. There was not the hoped for boom in the tile industry at the end of the war. Cheaper materials were used to repair all the bomb damage, and by 1953 89% of tiles purchased were of concrete, 4% clay and 7% other. Although Bridgwater clay is of exceptional quality, the presence of sodium chloride and calcium sulphate washed in with the clay caused holes and discoloration, and a tumultuous storm on the 16^th January 1959 with a deluge of rain followed by severe frost damaged over 5 million tiles.

Firing bricks in the kiln

The brickyards declined in the 1960s and the last one closed in 1964, due to exhaustion of the best clay and availability of cheaper alternatives.

Nevertheless many older buildings around the eastern side of Exmoor are roofed with Bridgwater tiles, and many houses and other buildings around Bridgwater are made from Bridgwater bricks.

A speciality of Bridgwater was the Bath brick, the precursor of modern scouring pads (see separate article).  Reject bricks of this material, i.e. slightly flawed or deformed, are found in houses and buildings in various parts of the town, particularly Rhode Lane to the south of Bridgwater.

You can learn more about the industry by visiting the Somerset Brick and Tile Museum on East Quay. It is currently open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Blake Museum, Bridgwater

Posted January 29th, 2012
by Richard Savage

This morning I had the pleasure of spending a couple of hours in the Blake Museum, a “must” for anyone who is interested in the historical heritage of this part of Somerset. What made it a particular pleasure was to talk to some of the enthusiastic band of volunteers who give their time and energy to make the museum interesting and attractive to the general public, and to promote interest in our rich local history.

The Bridgwater Museum at the top of Blake Museum, birthplace of Robert Blake

It is a fact: Bridgwater is full of historical interest, and the museum has exhibits from the Stone Age right through to recent times, so much to see in a very small area. Situated at the top of Blake Streetand believed to be the Blake’s family home and birthplace of Robert Blake himself, since 1926 it has housed a fascinating collection of archaeological and historical artifacts and displays. It is now in the process of refurbishment, so opening times were reduced during the winter months.

Those wishing to visit (and I heartily recommend a visit), please consult the website www.bridgwatermuseum.org.uk . Those who already know something about the local history will see much to illustrate and embellish their existing knowledge. For those who aren’t so familiar, I do recommend reading up a bit beforehand so that you can put the pieces of jigsaw puzzle together in your mind, and see the relevance of the different exhibits.

Let me take you on a virtual tour so that you can be prepared for what you will see. The first surprise you will get after entering the historic building is that admission is free. The aim is that nothing should hinder anyone from getting to see for themselves that history and a museum of past remains and relics is far from dead and boring. We must learn from history, and do our outmost to repent from the attitude which the philosopher Georg Hegel immortalized in his saying: “What experience and history teach is this – that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.” In other words, no one learns from history. That is certainly true from past events, as seen by the mistakes of leaders like Napoleon and Hitler, although perhaps we can be glad that they made such mistakes, otherwise the course of history might have been quite different!

Turn left after you enter the ground floor and you find a room devoted to the life and exploits of Robert Blake, with artifacts illustrating what it would have been like to be a seaman in those days under Cromwell. Of especial interest is a copy of the Geneva Bible, printed inLondonin 1608 by Robert Barker, printer to James I. This is also known as the “Breeches Bible” from the rendering of Genesis 3: 7 – “The sewed fig trees together and made themselves breeches.” This is the version of the Bible which Blake probably used as a boy.

To the right of the entrance is a meeting room where temporary exhibitions are displayed, and beyond that the Bridgwater Room with a collection of fossils and local geology, remains relating to the medieval Friary and St. John’s Hospital, and material on the history of the Borough. A large 17^th century wooden chest once housed the Borough archives. There is also an interesting display on the history of the Bridgwater Borough Police Force, dating back to 1835 when the law was enforced by two constables appointed by the Borough Watch Committee under the Mayor. Later in the 19^th century this was increased to a dozen constables, carrying canes. The police station and town gaol were on the south side of Fore Street until 1845 when they moved to the High Street as part of the Town Hall complex. Then in 1911 they moved to Northgate, close to where the present Police Station was opened in 1966. In 1940 the Borough Force amalgamated with the Somerset County Force, which in 1967 merged with the Bath City Police. Finally in 1974 it merged with the Bristol City Police and part of the Gloucestershire Constabulary to become the Avon and Somerset Constabulary.

Ascending the stairs to the upper floor, at the rear of the house is a gallery with an exhibition to the artist John Chubb, born in 1746, the son of a Bridgwater wine and timber merchant, who became mayor of Bridgwater from 1788-1789, and helped to show us what life was like in 18^th century Bridgwater through his fine drawings and paintings of scenery and local people. In 1785 he helped to draw up the petition requesting parliament to abolish the slave trade.

At the far end of this gallery is a room devoted to the archaeology of the ancient peoples of the area from the Stone Age through to Medieval times.

Returning to the front of the house are three rooms, the Battle Room, the Maritime Room, and the Bygones Room. The Battle Room depicts the history of the Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685 and its aftermath, the “Bloody Assize” when many Bridgwater people were condemned to death or deported to the West Indies. Some of the artifacts have now been moved to another exhibition in Westonzoyland Church, close to the battlefield itself. The Maritime Room displays artifacts, pictures and models illustrating the days when Bridgwater was a flourishing port with wharves and shipyards. The Bygones Room has a collection of artifacts covering the social history of Bridgwater, including horse brasses, and pottery, and exhibits relating to the brick and tile industry, although of these are now exhibited in the Brick and Tile Museum in East Quay. Of particular interest is the nameplate of the Confederate warship Alabama and an original Bath Brick, both of which deserve a story page of their own.

Returning to the ground floor there is a book shop which sells books and souvenirs. I hope that your tour of the museum will give you a taste of the rich historical heritage of Bridgwater, and the purchase of a souvenir or book, or even a donation to the museum would be a worthy thank-you for the hard work the volunteers are doing to make the history of the area interesting for you, and indicate what other places would be worth a visit.