Wells and District, September 2020

Monday 7 September 2020. Agh... the dark days of Covid. The lockdown had been lifted and we wanted to get out of the house for a few days and motored down to spend a weekend at an ex-colleague's B&B in Dulcote just outside Wells in Somerset.

We had spent a similar long weekend there in 2015 and were looking forward to a nice relaxing time, not rushing about, but staying fairly close with Weston-Super-Mare being the farthest we would wander away from our base. Here is a sketch of the White House. It was good to be back here and we knew that Mary and her family would look after us well.

Bob the dog was a new (to us) member of Mary's household and soon got used to me and even Maggie the timid cat came onto my knee. "It's like having Dr Doolittle here!" Mary said in surprise as Bob replaced Maggie and started stroking my face with his paw.

We headed out to Cheddar, where we found a little cafe to have lunch in and I filled in the foliage around the side of the sketch. The waitress thought it "very pretty!".

The caves were all closed, as were many of the small shops. Fran had a wander as I started another sketch of a row of tiny cottages. It started to rain as I was doing this, gently at first but after Fran had come back to me it came down in earnest and we upped sticks and found refuge under the awning of a pub beer garden where a Guinness helped me complete the sketch!

On our way down to Dulcote we had passed the Rock of Ages a huge cleft rock face set into the hills near Burrington and Blagdon. I had seen signs for it many times whilst driving to and from Blagdon when visiting the software house EMIS who produced our college software in the early days, but had never cut down the road to see it.

An inscription from the 1950s tells how the Reverend A.M. Toplady sheltered here from a storm and was inspired to write the famous hymn, Rock of Ages in the mid 1700s.

Tuesday 8 September 2020. The morning started a bit weird as I had found a tyre going down last night and booked the car in to have it looked at in Wells. What would have been a 15 to 20 minute job at our usual garage turned out to be a 2 hour job in Wells as the place was extremely busy. No matter, we looked round the shops and Fran found a sewing shop that Mary had been raving about.

Then once we had the car back we went into Weston-Super-Mare and had lunch there. It took a while to find a place as all cafes were having to ensure social distancing due to the Covid 19 epidemic and smaller cafes were just not open. Needless to say the ones that were open were very full. Once fed we had a walk along the pier - they still charge for this and were insisting that people wore face masks in the fresh open air along it...(?) Ah well. Then a walk along the Promenade and then a hop in the car to Burnham on Sea before heading back to Wells, filling the car with petrol and buying a sandwich in Morrisons.

On our way home we stopped in a forestry car park on the road from the Rock of Ages as I had seen this field that looked like a barrow field. It was misty and a bit cool and I left Fran sitting in the car to find the field looking more like a naturally lumpy field. However it did have a short row of stones marking the border with the road and forming a gateway for the path leading into the field.

I was really in two minds. It had too many humps and lumps to be both a barrowfield or a natural occuring feature.

This one looked promising, but sadly isn't included in maps of Somerset tumuli that I looked at once back at home.

Wednesday 9 September 2020. We went back into Wells for some lunch and then a sit in the Bishop's Garden, where I drew the gatehouse whilst Fran went back around the shops and a market. A woman braved the transfer of any plague-like germs to have a look at what I was doing and said she'd come back later as she wanted to see how I'd cope with the archway. In the event I coped alright with the archway, though the two sides to the gatehouse should really be the same width as each other...

Then it was back to Mary's to spend our final afternoon relaxing in the garden.

Bob comes to sit with me for a bit but then goes off to lie down near the kitchen door when I stop paying him constant attention!

Holidays and Day Trips in the UK Index

A Weekend in Somerset, 23-25 May 2015

A few articles set around a weekend visit to Somerset during which we met up with old friends not seen for some time and visit Glastonbury, Cheddar and Wells.

Click each picture for the associated article. A link at the end of each article will bring you back to this index.

Return to Holidays in the UK Index Page

Dulcote Village

Sunday 24 May 2015 (continued). We trudged (sorry - I meant "skipped") up the hill from Cheddar back to the car and set off back down the hill past the show caves and souvenir shops to head back towards our holiday B&B. Though a B&B, because I had known Mary for a long time (it doesn't do to dwell on how long I always think...) we were invited to dine with them for our evening meal.

I wanted also to explore the tiny village a bit more. This is the White House - see the earlier entry for the reason it's not white! Opposite the White House is a property called The Old Mill. There were a couple of paper mills in the village in the past, making paper out of rags. Old clothes etc would be pounded until they turned to pulp and this was then spread and dried to form the paper. A laborious business.

In a previous entry I mentioned the monks of Glastonbury not having cameras to record their finding of what they said was King Arthur's tomb, but we find it hard now to understand just how hard to come by - and therefore expensive - our everyday items like paper, pencils, pens and ink would be to someone in medieval times. The Romans used tablets spread with wax and used a stylus to write. They were definitely not for long-term storage. Usually the wax would be wiped smooth and the tablet re-used. For longer storage clay would be written on and then baked.

Paper was almost non-existent in Europe until the 1400s, though paper was first made by the Chinese in about 100 BC. It took a thousand years to spread across the Islamic Middle East and came to Spain in the 1100s, reaching Germany by 1400. The first paper mill in England was in Hertfordshire in 1490, though the first commercially successful one was owned by John Spilman in Dartford, Kent as late as 1588. Before then sheepskin was widely used for writing on, being scraped with knives to remove old writing so that it could be used again. Paper made with wood pulp instead of textiles was only properly developed in the mid 1800s.

More information on the mills and much more can be got from the excellent website about the village at www.dulcote.com.

In the centre of the small village is a triangular village green. Apparently a toll house once stood here, but after some time following its removal, the villagers created this fountain from the overflow from the local springs. This is a natural flow, there is no mechanical device to pump water up into the air. The fountain was dedicated in 1861 to the village's benefactor Mrs M.C. Tudway of nearby Wells and, due to the high mineral content of the water being deposited, grows a little in height every year!

School-cum-chapel built by the afore-mentioned Mrs Tudway in 1860. Again according to the village website, it ceased to fulfil this function in the late 1980s and is now privately owned.

In addition to the fountain we found this delightful grotto in absolutely beautiful condition. It is set into the wall at the side of the small village green and is obviously lovingly tended and maintained. We were assured that the water is drinkable and behind hanging greenery we saw three falls of water into the clear basin which drains away on the left. The last time I came across an old well in this part of the world, it had green brackish standing water and a sizeable community of tadpoles who definitely banished any thoughts of wanting to have a taste!

We had another wonderful meal with Mary and Rod and a houseful of children which made for a jolly mealtime. After we had eaten, Mary's daughter asked me (after screwing up her courage!) to draw her, having seen my sketch of the house from the garden. It was lovely to be asked, though I am not used to drawing people at all and had never drawn a live model. But she curled up in a chair and I sketched her over about half an hour. At one point the sketch looked like her Mum at a young age and it ended with a sketch that, if it wasn't exactly her, it was a close family member! Thank you so much for asking L - give me another try sometime, ok?

Links

The White House B&B: www.thewhitehousedulcote.co.uk
Dulcote Village: www.dulcote.com
History of Papermaking (Wikipedia): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papermaking
History of Papermaking in the UK: baph.org.uk/ukpaperhistory.html

Somerset Weekend Index

The White House, Dulcote

On Saturday we motored down to Somerset for the weekend, heading for the tiny hamlet of Dulcote, just outside Wells.

We were booked into The White House B&B, which is owned and run by an old friend, Mary Harris, who many of my old friends and colleagues from the Further Education sector will remember as Mary Barker who managed NILTA, the National Information and Learning Technologies Association.

Mary with Fran and I in the gorgeous garden at the rear of The White House. Now you may be thinking "but the house in the first photograph is plainly not white..." And you would be right. Even around the back there's a distinctly pinkish aspect to the stucco on the wings.

According to the information on the excellent village website (www.dulcote.com) the house was for several centuries an inn and then later a public house, presumably offering both drink and accommodation as an inn, but refreshments only as a public house. The earliest record of this type of use comes from the year 1696 when John West was inn-keeper. I wonder if he exasperated the local anglers by rejecting a lot of their fish...? Anyway, during its time as an inn it was known as The White Horse.

In 1913 the leaseholders, Richard and Sarah Pointing, bought the inn by auction. At the time it had a "parlour, tap-room, cellar, kitchen, larder, W.C, 4 bedrooms. The outbuildings are stone -- stables for 7, pigsty, trap-house, garden, meal-house and store". Mary showed us the room they thought might have been the main tap room - with a huge fireplace with oven set to the side and signs of the existence of fixed apparatus for swinging pots over the fire in the brickwork. It has a lovely atmosphere - as a place should where generations of village folk have come to enjoy food and drink and genial company.

Folklore takes over a little now, but it is thought that after Richard Pointing died, Sarah (listed as proprietor of the White Horse Public House in 1914 but as a private resident by 1919) thought to change the name to something less obviously an inn. She did this in the most expedient way. Rather than have a whole new sign made, she had the letter R of "horse" changed to a U and the building became The White House!

Today the B&B has three suites available for guests. We stayed in The Loft, a suite of three rooms at first floor level. It is detached from the house and other accommodation and is quiet and private and provides a lot of space and we enjoyed it thoroughly.

Entrance to the garden area from the car park. The garden is divided into areas by low level shrubbery, which allow you to view over them and this gives the impression of lots of space. In fact the garden is big - I'm not sure my plant-killing prowess would allow me to look after such a garden!

When we arrived, Mary made a welcoming cup of coffee and we caught up something like a decade(?) sitting in the summer house with the doors wide open in warm sunshine and straight away we felt at home and starting to relax.

It was so nice that after we had finished our coffee and Mary had left us to unpack and explore on our own, I returned to the summer house and drew a half-hour sketch of the house and garden from the viewpoint at the rear of the garden.

The village has more to show us, but we'll save that for another entry and over this weekend break we'll also have a look at Glastonbury Abbey, King Arthur and Queen Guinevere's grave, the Chalice Well and Wells Cathedral and city.

Links

The White House B&B: www.thewhitehousedulcote.co.uk
Dulcote: www.dulcote.com

Somerset Weekend Index