The Somerset Coast

ON confiding to personal friends, journalistic paragraphists, and other Doubting Thomases, professional sceptics, chartered cynics and indifferent persons, the important and int...

BRISTOL, whence one comes most conveniently to the coast of Somerset, is among the most fortunate of cities. It has a long and interesting history, both in the warlike and the c...

IT is a hilly road that leads from Clifton Bridge to Abbot’s Leigh, through the noble Leigh Woods. Nightingale Valley lies down on the right; a beautiful seclusion, well-named f...

CLEVEDON is now entered by the modern suburban developments of Walton Park. Suburbs and light railways, and all the things they mean, do not come into the minds of those who hav...

BUT Clevedon has more prominent literary associations than that just considered, and has a place unforgettable in poetry by reason of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” that lengthy poem...

THE main road from Clevedon to Kingston Seymour trends sharply inland, passing the little village of Kenn. Seaward the flat and featureless lands spread to an oozy shore; Kenn i...

THE Augustinian Priory of Worspring, or Wospring, now called “Woodspring,” stands in a very secluded situation in this little-visited nook of the coast, projecting abruptly into...

WESTON-SUPER-MARE has frequently been styled the “Western Brighton.” It matters little or nothing to those who invent these impossible parallels that the places thus compared wi...

ALL the ebullient modernity of Weston is looked down upon by the immemorially old, from that overhanging vantage-point, Worle Hill, where the ancient camp and fortress of Worleb...

IF one might dare so greatly as to make one prominent comparison to the disadvantage of Brighton and the advantage of Weston, it would be this: that the seascape off Brighton be...

TO reach the village of Brean and to come in touch again with the coast on leaving Weston-super-Mare, Uphill village is passed, with a choice of roads then presenting itself: a...

THE upstart capital of these levels is Burnham, but the supremacy is disputed by Highbridge. Now Burnham and Highbridge, although but a mile and a half apart, are places very di...

THE ancient town of Bridgwater can now produce few evidences of its antiquity. The siege of 1645, various conflagrations, and the very considerable modern prosperity of the plac...

WE leave Bridgwater by St. Mary’s church and the street called curiously, “Penel Orlieu,” whose name derives from a combination of Pynel Street and Orlewe Street, two thoroughfa...

TO touch the coast on the left-hand of the Parret estuary is to adventure into a little-visited land. But although the way is long—the distance is six miles to Steart Point—the...

LEAVING St. Audries, one also leaves the Quantocks behind, coming downhill into Williton, a place now by way of being a little town, with a railway station, a cattle market, a U...

TWO miles inland from Watchet lies the Cistercian Abbey of St. Mary de Cleeve, or Clive; that is to say, St. Mary of the Cliff—the most notable ruin in these districts of Somers...

THE approach to Dunster from Blue Anchor, and through the village of Carhampton, is a progress of pleasure. Turner has left a picture of Dunster from Blue Anchor, but it is not...

Scarce two miles distant from Dunster is Minehead, the hamlet of Alcombe lying between the two. Minehead, a group of three so-called “towns,” Quay Town, Lower Town, and Upper To...

A SUDDEN drop into the vale of Porlock tilts the traveller neck and crop into the village street. You realise, when come to the village, that it stands in a flat, low-lying spac...

THE way parallel with the shore to Culbone lies at the back of the “Ship” inn at Porlock Weir, steeply up the wooded hillside that looks along down to the sea. The recluse situa...

WE have here come into the very centre of what has in these later years become known as the “Lorna Doone Country”; the neighbourhood of Oare and the so-called “Doone Valley.” Oa...

AND now, after having fully considered the evidence for and against the much-debated existence of these old reprobates and masterless men, let us advance into their country, and...