Part 8

But two of the finest old houses in the county are certainly South Wraxall and Great Chaldfield, situated within a couple of miles from one another to the west of Melksham. The former has recently been converted from a farmhouse again into a mansion, and the latter is now undergoing careful restoration. Though the exterior of Great Chaldfield is unimpaired, and as perfect a specimen of an early fifteenth-century house as one could wish to see, sad havoc has been played inside. The great hall many years ago was so divided up that it was difficult to guess at its original proportions. The finest Gothic windows with groined roofs, ornamental bosses, and fireplaces, and carved oak beams, have long since been blocked up and their places filled with mean ones of the Georgian period or later. To fully comprehend the wholesale obliteration of the original work, one has only to see the thousand bits of sculptured masonry laid out upon the lawn of the back garden. To place the pieces of the puzzle correctly together must be a task to try the knowledge and patience of the most expert in such matters, but piece by piece each is going into its proper place. The huge stone heads with scooped-out eyes, through which the ancient lord of the manor could watch what was going on below in the hall without being observed, once again will be reinstated. There are three of them, and the hollowed eyes have sharp edges, as if they were cut out only yesterday. Then there is an ungainly grinning figure of the fifteenth century, locally known as "Blue Beard," who within living memory has sat on the lawn in front of the mansion; but his proper place is up aloft on top of one of the gable ends, and there, of course, he will go, and, like Sister Ann, be able to survey the road to Broughton Gifford to see whether anybody is coming. Among the rooms now under course of repair is "Blue Beard's chamber," and naturally enough the neighbouring children of the past generation (we do not speak of the present, for doubtless up-to-date education has made them far too knowing to treat such things seriously--the more's the pity) used to hold the house in holy dread. But there certainly is a creepy look about it, especially towards dusk, when the light of the western sky shines through the shell of a beautiful oriel window, and makes the monsters on the gable ends stand out while the front courtyard is wrapt in shade. The reed-grown moat gives the house a neglected and sombre look. The group of buildings, with curious little church with its crocketed bell turret on one side and a great barn on the other, is altogether remarkable. How it got the name of "Blue Beard's Castle" we could not learn. Recently a "priest's hole" has been discovered up against the ceiling in a corner of his chamber; but whether he concealed himself here or some of his wives we cannot say.

At the back of the manor there used to be a tumble-down old mill, which unfortunately is now no more. The little church contains a good stone screen (which has been removed from its original position), and some stained glass in the windows. The pulpit, a canopied two-decker, and the capacious high-backed pews (half a dozen at the most) have the appearance of a pocket place of worship. But Great Chaldfield is a parish by itself without a village; the congregation also is a pocket one.

As before stated, South Wraxall manor-house is restored to all its ancient dignity; but somehow or other, though much care and money have been bestowed upon it, it seems to have lost half of its poetry, for the walls and gardens are now so trim and orderly, that it is almost difficult to recognise it as the same when the gardens were weed-grown and the walls toned with lichen and moss. Moreover, the road has been diverted, so that now the fine old gatehouse stands not against the highway, but well within the boundary walls. Inside are some remarkably fine old rooms with linen panelling. The drawing-room has a superb stone sculptured mantelpiece, upon which are represented Prudentia, Arithmetica, Geometrica, and Justicia, and Pan occupies the middle pedestal supporting the frieze, while four larger figures support the mantel. The ceiling is coved, and ornamented with enormous pendants, and the cornice above the great bay mullioned-window is enriched with a curious design. A remarkable feature of the room is a three-sided projection of the wall, the upper part of which is panelled, having scooped-out niches for five seats, one in the middle and two on either side. The banqueting-room also is a typical room of Queen Elizabeth's time, and the "Guest chamber" is one of the many rooms in England which claim the honour of inhaling the first fumes from a tobacco-pipe in England. But Raleigh's pipe here is said to have been of solid silver; moreover, tradition does not state that it was so rudely extinguished as elsewhere, with a bucket of water: so, at any rate, here the story is more dignified. To settle definitely where Sir Walter smoked his first pipe would be as difficult a problem as to decide which was the mansion where the bride hid herself in the oak chest, or which was King John's favourite hunting lodge.

EASTERN AND SOUTHERN SOMERSET

Somersetshire abounds in old-world villages, more particularly the eastern division, or rather the eastern side--to the east, say, of a line drawn from Bristol to Crewkerne. This line would intersect such famous historic places as Wells and Glastonbury, but in our limited space we must confine our attention more particularly to more remote spots. One of these, for example, is the village of Norton St. Philip, midway between Bath and Frome, which possesses one of the oldest and most picturesque inns in England. This wonderful timber building of projecting storeys dates mainly from the fifteenth century, although it has been a licensed house since 1397, and upon its solid basement of stone the "George" looks good for many centuries to come. It was formerly known as the "Old House," not that the other buildings at Norton St. Philip are by any means new. It is merely, comparatively speaking, a matter of a couple of hundred years or so.

Many are the local stories and traditions of "Philips Norton Fight," for here it was that the Duke of Monmouth's followers had the first real experience of warfare; and the encounter with the Royalist soldiers was a sharp one while it lasted. Monmouth's intention of attacking Bristol had been abandoned, and during a halt at Norton on June 27, 1685, his little army was overtaken by the king's forces under the young Duke of Grafton, Monmouth's half-brother. The lane where fighting was briskest used to be remembered as "Monmouth Street," possibly the same steep and narrow lane now called Bloody Lane, which winds round to the back of the Manor Farm (some remains of which go back quite a century before Monmouth's time), through the courtyard of which the duke marched his regiment to attack the enemy in flank. The other end of the lane was barricaded, so Grafton was caught in a trap, and had difficulty in fighting his way through.

Both armies sought protection of the high hedges, which, take it all round, got the worst of it; but Grafton lost considerably more men than Monmouth, although a cannonade of six hours on both sides only had one victim. An old resident living fifty years ago, whose great-grandfather fought for "King Monmouth," used to relate how the duke's field pieces were planted by the "Old House," his grace's headquarters; and the tradition yet lingers in the inn that Colonel Holmes, on Monmouth's side, finished the amputation of his own arm, which was shattered with a shot, with a carving knife. Some of the ancient farmhouses between Bath and Frome preserve some story or another in connection with "Norton Fight," and George Roberts relates in his excellent Life of Monmouth that early in the nineteenth century the song was still sung:

"The Duke of Monmouth is at Norton Town All a fighting for the Crown Ho-boys-ho."

There are some curious old rooms in the "George"; and it is astonishing the amount of space that is occupied by the attics, the timbers of which are enormous. Up in these dimly lighted wastes, report says that a cloth fair was held three times a year; and one may see the shaft or well up which the cloth was hauled from a side entrance in the street. The fair survives in a very modified form on one of the dates, May 1st. Upon the first floor, approached by a spiral stone staircase, is "Monmouth's room," the windows of which look up the road to Trowbridge. The open Tudor fireplace, the oaken beams and uneven floor, carries the mind back to the illustrious visitor who already was well aware that he was playing a losing game, and knew what he might expect from the unforgiving James. At the back of the old inn is the galleried yard, a very primitive one, now almost ruinous, with rooms, leading from the open corridors, tumbling to pieces, and floors unsafe to walk upon. 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 Glastonbury, 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 Glastonbury 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 pass by.

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 recumbent 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 passed, 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!

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 passages could not find a purchaser at £100! But this was many years ago, as will be seen from an advertisement quoted in an old number of _Notes and Queries_. Things are different now, for ghosts and subterranean passages have a marketable value.

Somersetshire abounds in superstitions 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 succumb 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 glass. 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 glass. 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.

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 Croscombe, 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 Croscombe. Shepton Mallet is depressing, perhaps because crape 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 circumstances, 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 scraped and restored to classify 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]

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 spacious 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.

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 recumbent 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 cumbrous 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.