Motor Tours in the West Country 18

Motor Tours in the West Country 18

We may avoid it, of course, by going back to Simonsbath and taking the

road through Exford and Whiddon Cross to Dunster--a road that is fairly

good, if dull. But most of us will think the loss of all the beauty of

the moors and woods is too heavy a price to pay for ease of travelling.

The lower part of Countisbury Hill, it is true, is quite as rough and

nearly as precipitous as the hill to Lynton, but as we rise the surface

becomes quite good, and the gradient is nowhere so steep as at the

bottom. And from the top of the cliff we look away across the heather to

the high uplands of Exmoor, and see below us on the right the green cleft

in the hills that is the Doone Valley.

 

[Illustration: RIVER LYN.]

 

 

 

 

THROUGH SOMERSET AGAIN

 

 

SUMMARY OF SECOND RUN THROUGH SOMERSET

 

DISTANCES.

 

Porlock

Taunton 30 miles

Ilminster 12¼ ”

Yeovil 13¾ ”

--------

Total 56 miles

 

ROADS.

 

No steep hills.

 

Surface on the whole very good.

 

 

VII

 

THROUGH SOMERSET AGAIN

 

Porlock is a word of dread significance to those who are interested in

the roads of England. A precipitous hill nearly three miles long, with a

surface of sand and stones and several sharp corners--such is the vision

that this name invokes. There is, however, not the least necessity to

lower ourselves into Porlock on these alarming gradients. Near the top of

the hill there is a private road that turns off to the left, and may be

used for the sum of one shilling. It is narrow, and has a poor surface

and two “hairpin” turns, but it is nowhere steep, and the woods through

which it runs are entrancing. The car slips gently down among the birches

and rowan-trees, and soon we see the bay below us with its dark grey

beach, and Porlock under the hill.

 

[Illustration: PORLOCK.]

 

The two roads join, and run into the village together, at the corner

where the “Ship” Inn and the cottages round it, with their thatched roofs

and porches and gay creepers, make a pretty picture with the green hill

for background. Indeed, all Porlock is made of pretty pictures: an inland

village could hardly be more decorative. There was a time when it was not

an inland village, but a favourite landing-place for visitors of various

nations but of one marauding aim. It does not to-day appear a promising

field for a robber of any ambition, but time was, I believe, when it was

quite a stirring place, with a royal palace and much prosperity. When the

Danes landed here in the night they were routed to their ships with empty

hands: but when, a hundred and fifty years later, no less a man than

Harold Godwinson sailed in from his exile in Ireland, he was not content

with plundering and burning Porlock itself, but made it a centre for

expeditions. He built himself a fort here, whence he could comfortably

raid the country that was afterwards his own kingdom. The French invasion

of the seventeenth century turned out to be a false alarm, but none

the less the inhabitants arose as one man, armed themselves valiantly

with scythes and pikes, and hurried away to Exeter to join William of

Orange--which seems an original way of repelling invasion.

 

There is an interesting church here. The alabaster figures of a knight

and his lady in elaborate headdresses represent Lord Harington of

Aldingham and his wife, afterwards Lady Bonville; whose finely carved

garments and faces have been thickly covered with deep-cut initials by

those who love antiquities as the Conqueror loved the tall deer.

 

Those whose love of antiquities is of another kind will find it worth

their while to run to the “Anchor” Inn at Porlock Weir, where every room

is rich in ancient furniture and vessels of copper and brass. The road

that leads to it is excellent, and so is the one that takes us on to

Dunster, though the redness of its surface adds a new terror to dust. We

pass through Allerford with a fine view of the hills and a glimpse of

the old pack-horse bridge; but when we reach the by-way to Selworthy we

shall do well to turn aside. For this pretty lane, which is roofed with

foliage as completely as a pergola, leads not only to an interesting

church and a tithe-barn, but to a group of almshouses that is unequalled

in its simple way: half a dozen thatched and gabled cottages ranged, not

in a stiff row, but round a sloping green, with wild woods to shelter

them, and walnut-trees to shade them, and hollyhocks and fuchsias to make

them gay. Between them and the woods a tiny stream trickles through the

moss, and over it a rough tree-stem has been flung to serve as bridge.

 

After a few more miles on the fine red road, with Dunkerry Hill

conspicuous on the right, we see, first Minehead lying by the sea and

spreading up the hill, and then the watch-tower of Dunster. A minute

later we drive into the Middle Ages.

 

This street of Dunster makes one half in love with the feudalism that

could produce so perfect a picture. On one side are the porch and archway

of the “Luttrell Arms”; on the other the octagonal yarn-market, gabled

and tiled and mossy, with a little mullioned window in each gable;

between them lies the straight, wide street; and in the background,

dominating and protective, the castle towers are lifted high upon

their wooded hill. Through all the centuries between the Conquest and

to-day this castle has had no masters but the Mohuns and the Luttrells,

and there is nothing in Dunster that is not connected, directly or

indirectly, with one of these two ancient names. These buildings to right

and left of us, for instance--this inn with the mediæval porch and the

beautiful north wing, and this market-house that used to be the scene of

“a very celebrate market at Dunstorre ons a wekes”--were both built by

George Luttrell of the sixteenth century and repaired by George Luttrell

of the seventeenth. And if we walk down the wide street and turn to the

left we shall find the church of the Mohuns’ priory, the Benedictine

priory that the first Mohun of Dunster founded, “pricked by the fear of

God.”

 

[Illustration: DUNSTER.]

 

It is a very notable church. “The late priory of blake monkes,” says

Leland, “stoode yn the rootes of the north-west side of the castelle,

and was a celle to Bathe. The hole chirch of the late priory servith

now for the paroche chirch. Afore tymes the monkes had the est parte

closid up to their use.” Of late years the church has been restored

to the form it had aforetimes, with the seats of the prior and monks,

and the monastic choir. The very beautiful rood-screen with the canopy

of fan-tracery, which was set up in the fifteenth century, forms the

entrance to the parish choir: the choir of the monks is reached through

the curious arch that is wider below than above--an arrangement made by

the brothers themselves to allow room for their processions. Round about

the high altar of the priory are monuments of the Luttrells. Thomas

Luttrell, whose great Elizabethan memorial is in the south-east chapel,

was the father of the man who rebuilt the castle and did so much for

Dunster--George Luttrell, who kneels here in effigy; and the slab that

now lies under the window of the south aisle once covered the grave of

the Lady Elizabeth who, as a widow, bought the manor of Dunster from

the widow of Sir John de Mohun. On the north side of the altar is the

alabaster figure, though probably not the tomb, of her son Sir Hugh,

first Luttrell of Dunster, Great Seneschal of Normandy, Steward of the

Household to Queen Joan, a warrior who won much renown in fighting the

French and the great Glyndwr and the little Perkin Warbeck. Most of the

Mohuns were buried at their abbey of Bruton, but here in the monks’

choir, under a canopy, is the figure of Dame Hawise, wife of the second

Sir Reynold de Mohun.

 

Near the church are some remains of the monastic buildings: the

refectory, the prior’s apparently impregnable barn, a couple of archways,

and, in the vicarage garden, a lovely thirteenth-century dovecot with a

tiled roof and hanging creepers.

 

Although the “glory of this toun rose by the Moions,” and though the

memory of them is everywhere, it is so many centuries since they went

away to Cornwall--to Hall near Fowey, and later to Boconnoc--that there

are few actual relics of them left. Of the three castles that they built

successively upon the hill there remains little more than a gateway

of the third, the gateway with the massive door and the mighty knocker

of iron. It is just within the main entrance, and strangely enough

was built by the husband of Dame Hawise, whose tomb is the only Mohun

monument in the church. The castellated gatehouse itself is the work of

the first Luttrell of Dunster. His descendants still live in the great

red dwelling-house with the martlets of the Luttrells over the door,

but by their kindness we are allowed, with a guide, to climb the steep

path under the yew-hedge that is sixty feet high; and to see the strange

half-tropical plants of the gardens, the cork-tree and the lemon-tree

upon the wall; and then to climb still higher to the bowling-green and

look out upon the park and the Severn Sea.

 

This was not always a bowling-green. It was here that the keep stood

till great Robert Blake, as formidable on shore as at sea, brought all

his batteries against it, and the Parliament finally dismantled it. The

whole castle, indeed, would have been ruined if it had not been wanted

as a prison for poor Mr. Prynne. Some years earlier, while there was a

royalist garrison in the castle, young Prince Charles was sent hither for

safety; and here, as elsewhere, tradition has assigned a certain Red Room

to him, for no other reason than that it contained a hiding-hole.[18]

 

There is a real delight, after all our experiences on the rough

precipitous hills of Devon, in swinging away from Dunster on a good

and level road--the road that is on the whole the best in Somerset. So

pleasant is it that some, no doubt, will stoutly refuse to pause or turn

aside for many a mile. For others, however, the lure of ancient stones

is very strong; and these will leave the highway more than once between

Dunster and Taunton. In Washford, for instance, there is a turn to the

right that leads in a moment to the Abbey of Cleeve. Here in a rough

field stands the gatehouse with the genial motto, _Patens porta esto,

ulli claudaris honesto_, and the statue of the abbey’s patron-saint, and