Wells, Somerset and its Cathedral

Monday 25 May 2015. Our last day, Spring Bank Holiday Monday and we say goodbye to Mary, Rod and their family at The White House B&B and head into Wells for a look round before setting off on the long journey back up the motorway to Blackpool.

It is England's smallest city. The Crown Hotel is a 15th century coaching inn. There are several equally imposing and ancient inns in the vicinity. The previous day we had sat in one of them in a cellar that had once been prison cells!

A few of the shops in the cathedral area have the old windows from way back and it reminds me of the shops in Sidmouth that we saw last year.

Two impressive medieval arches lead from the market place. This one leads to Wells Cathedral and is known as the Penniless Porch as it is where beggars traditionally asked for money. They still do, there was one there today...

The other leads to the Bishop's Palace. Built by Bishop Thomas Beckynton in the middle of the 15th century - we'll learn more about him later - it is known as The Bishop's Eye as, from it, the bishop or his agents could keep watch on who entered the city.

The Bishop's Eye leads to a green sward before the moated Bishop's Palace. Complete with drawbridge and portcullis, he was having no pagans coming from Glastonbury, ringing bells and smoking hashish and giving flowers to just anyone!

Under this window a bell hangs. A bishop's daughter trained the swans on the moat to ring the bell and would reward this behaviour with a treat thrown from the window. The swans have throughout recent history lost the knack due to tourists feeding them bits of bread - which is very bad for them anyway - and during the 1980s they learned it again. I presume now they have lost it again as there were signs advertising bags of duck food for sale nearby... I would love someone to tell me they do still ring the bell for a treat!

We would perhaps have had a look at the Bishop's Palace, but we wanted to see the cathedral and we did have a long journey to make later that day! The Bishop's Eye seen from inside.

And so into the cathedral. You have to pay for a license to take photographs inside - this applies whether you have a top range camera or just your phone. It was well worth paying a few pounds to be able to take these memory stretchers!

The tower at the crossing was damaged by an earthquake in the 13th century and 100 years later was found to be sinking into Wells' rather boggy ground. To stop it falling, it was supported by the addition of unusual "scissor" arches on three sides. You either love or hate these but there's no doubt that they do the job they were designed to do!

There is some glorious stonework in the cathedral too. I have a copy of Arthur Mee's excellent King's England book for Somerset and to my chagrin realised I had left it at home when we were halfway to Somerset, so inevitably I missed some of the highlights. Still... that's a good reason to come back sometime! The photo shows a pair of 15th century chantries that face each other in the nave.

The fabulous astronomical clock dates from the late 14th century. We arrived in front of it just five minutes before 11 o'clock and sat expectantly waiting for the hour to strike. Then just a couple of seconds before it did, someone sitting next to me struck up a conversation...

Above and to the right of the clock sits this little figure, known as John Blandifer. He strikes the hour on the bell hanging before him, but rings each quarter hour by kicking his heels back against two smaller bells. This same action causes two knights in armour to strike bells with their battle axes on the outside wall of the cathedral. At the same time four knights charge at each other on horseback above the clock face, the victim flopping back in the saddle! The Victorians replaced the clock mechanism - but sent the original to the Science Museum in London where it is still working!

The tomb of Bishop John Still. He was bishop here when Shakespeare was writing and should be remembered himself for his own penmanship. But few remember his name as they read to their children his nursery rhyme Little Jack Horner...

A rather ornate memorial to Bishop Richard Kidder who died in a great storm in 1703 when the chimney of his house fell onto the good bishop and his wife in bed.

I found this quite sad - though a look around any old cemetery or graveyard will convince you how lucky we are these days in our healthcare... Nathaniell Selleck and his wife Ann were unfortunate enough to lose their their daughter Margaret in 1676 but then two years later had another daughter, naming her Teophila - a Greek name meaning "Loved by God". He loved her so much that He took her also at the tender age of three. On Teophila's tombstone the stonemason misspelt her father's name and had to add the second and final "L" in the little space available.

The first use of an organ in the cathedral was recorded as being in 1310. A subsequent one of 1620 was destroyed by the Roundheads in 1643 and its replacement of 1662 was itself replaced by this one of 1909-10 which incorporates some of the older instrument.

I took so many photos of the interior I can't hope to show them all here. This is the choir. Music plays a large part in the cathedral's life and a lunchtime recital was due to be given that day by a ladies' group.

One of the effigies from the tomb of Thomas Beckynton who was the Private Secretary to King Henry VI, surely one of our most unhappy monarchs. Reigning in the time of the Wars of The Roses he was usurped by the Yorkshire King Edward IV and found life so intolerable he spent months at a time not showing any sign of being aware of any thing, event, or person around him, leaving his unpopular French queen, Queen Margaret of Anjou to defend his throne. Thomas was made Lord Privy Seal from 1433-34 and became Bishop of Wells and Bath in October 1433.

His tomb has two effegies. The one we saw first has him in his bishop's robes whilst, below, he lies as he was to become after death.

He had the tomb built 13 years before his death and so walked the aisles of Wells, being reminded of what he would become. In Victorian times his tomb was opened and he was found to have been buried with no regalia but for his Bishop's Ring, which was removed and placed in a museum.

We are coming to the end of our visit. Leaving the church, we pass again into the cloisters. These are a bit of an anachronism - Wells was never a monastery, but perhaps the cloisters had a function as a processional route.

I left the cloisters and had a quick look around the square court they surrounded. The oldest thing to see here is the oblong stone jutting into the flower bed. It was first used by the Romans.

The west front of the cathedral is stunning. Would that every cathedral in the country had kept as many statues in their niches.

Yet Wells has not escaped totally unscathed. Of almost 500 there are well over 300 statues still here, some whole, some worn and some, including the topmost figure of Jesus above his twelve apostles, damaged by the bullets of Monmouth's rebels in 1685.

We passed back through Penniless Porch into the Market Square. This is the drinking fountain with three sides. Only one side of the three still flows of this fountain, built around 1799 to replace an earlier one that had been pulled down due to its condition in 1756. The earlier one dated from 1451 and was erected at the behest of our old friend and cadaver, Thomas Beckynton.

We made our way back to the car and with a smile for a brilliant weekend spent with good friends and great surroundings, turned northwards towards the M5 and Lancashire.

Somerset Weekend Index

Glastonbury Abbey

Sunday 24 May 2015. Mary and Rod at the White House B&B had warned us that the road through the village of Dulcote was due to be closed from 9:30am due to a running event, so we opted for a fairly early (and mouth-wateringly huge and lush!) breakfast in order to be able to get the car out and away. We drove a short distance to Glastonbury and went into the famous abbey.

We found some sort of event taking place. After paying and starting out in the small museum there was a woman dressed in the costume of a medieval peasant standing looking at us but not saying anything. "Are you real?" I asked pleasantly, not wanting ghosties phasing through me just after eating Mary's massive breakfast - it would put me right off... Anyway... she was real!

The two eastern piers of the abbey's crossing. The western piers have both fallen and only a single stone foundation exists of them. The majority of the abbey buildings have been lost, but there are some quite spectacular things to see here.

The main Abbey church seen from the chancel. The chained area marks where the High Altar once stood. Seen between the piers is the Lady Chapel, of which more later. Beside the Lady Chapel, in 1191 the monks of the abbey claimed to have unearthed the body of a huge man with his wife in a coffin made from a single hollowed out oak tree trunk. They announced that it was King Arthur and Guinevere his queen. This has to be set against the fact that the abbey had burned down in 1184 and they were desperate to have the money for rebuilding that hordes of pilgrims would bring.

The sign reads: "Site of King Arthur's tomb. In the year 1191 the bodies of King Arthur and his Queen were said to have been found on the south side of the Lady Chapel. On 19th April 1278 their remains were removed in the presence of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor to a black marble tomb on this site. This tomb survived until the dissolution of the abbey in 1539."

To the east of the abbey, the grounds contain areas of protected wild flowers and an arboretum. Even such a committed non-gardener as myself, whose most exuberant uttering on looking at the most luxurious flower specimen would be "that's nice..." could enjoy the walk through trees, past shrubs and signs warning of badger setts and mole holes. Despite some rather dullish weather, we walked around the entire perimeter.

The abbey pond. Fish were spawning and causing swirls and splashes in the water as they broke the surface in their mating.

A number of people were breaking camp in this area, having spent the night under canvas, or at least under some sort of thin material with a long chemical name, whatever it is they make tents with these days. They were happily calling to each other in German or Dutch or some other language that was beyond me, saying things like "If you go for a dip in the pond, dear, don't come back with your shorts full of pond weed like yesterday..."

We are returning back down towards the visible bits of the abbey again. This is the view from the south side of the abbey showing the Bishop's Kitchen towards the left.

This is by far the best preserved building of the abbey and is one of the best preserved of all medieval kitchens in Europe. It was built as part of the abbot's house, during the tenure of Abbot John de Breyton (1334-42).

Inside are little tableaux set out to show how the kitchen might have appeared during medieval times. I suspect a great many people might have been running about and working here! This was a preparation area, not a dining area. In another corner were little waxwork roasting porkers, complete with wounds from arrows, skewered above a "fire" which does glow and emits little gasps of "smoke" and also a bacon smell!

A glance up a chimney though reveals a mass of spiders' webs who wouldn't have hung about so much when fires really did blaze below! In yet another corner a deep oven is set into the wall. Bread would have been a staple of the monks' diet, though no doubt in the Bishop's House a rather more splendid fare was available.

We exited the Bishop's Kitchen on the opposite side to which we entered and a fragment of masonry allowed me to climb to a railed area for an elevated viewpoint.

Unfortunately the Bishop's House has not fared so well as the kitchen. But we do know from archeological evidence that there was a sumptuous guest house attached to it that was built for the royal visit of King Henry VII - a king who had claimed his throne in battle against Richard III and who spent the rest of his life watching for and imagining acts of vengeance and treachery on every side. It would have been much safer to have made a fuss of him with a huge welcome!

Here we are looking north towards the Lady Chapel across what was a cemetery - the cemetery where the grave of King Arthur and Guinevere was found, buried at a great depth between two pyramid structures. The female skeleton still had long blonde hair attached to the skull but it disintegrated on being touched. A lead cross lay over them according to the records with an inscription that brooked no doubt: "Hic jacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurus in insula Avalonia" - "Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon".

1194 is 641 years after the claimed date for the Battle of Camlann in which Arthur was reportedly slain. The find is almost directly comparable to the 21st century finding of the burial of King Richard III, in that very similar amounts of time passed between burial and discovery. Yet the monks at Glastonbury had no sophisticated tests to verify the identity of the remains, nor cameras to record it. Their search is sometimes reported as being at the behest of King Henry II following his interpretation of a tradition told to him by a Welsh bard and sometimes as having been ordered by the Abbot Henry de Sully.

The bones of whoever it was they claimed to have dug up were lost forever when Henry VIII threw his hissy fit at the Pope and Catholicism and destroyed all evidence that might have remained. The tomb and its contents have never been heard of since the Dissolution. The Abbot at the time, Richard Whyting tried to stop the desecration and for his efforts was taken on 15 November 1539 to the nearby Tor and there was hung, drawn and quartered.

On the interior walls of the Lady Chapel, built very soon after the finding of the Arthurian remains, there are still traces of paint from a very sumptuous decoration that adorned the entire interior with colour and design. There are also traces of ancient graffiti...

The Glastonbury Thorn. Or rather, one of the thorn trees, said to have originated from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, the uncle of Jesus Christ who donated his own tomb to hold the body of Christ after the Crucifixion. It is said he stopped to rest on Wearyall Hill above Glastonbury and when he awoke next morning his staff, which he had pushed into the ground, had taken root and burst into blossom. This is one of several trees in Glastonbury grown from cuttings taken from the tree on Wearyall Hill.

We left the abbey and looked for somewhere to sit down for a coffee. There are lots of places available but I do have a liking for the more traditional tea rooms and we found one called "The Abbey Tea Rooms". We went in, sat down, ordered and got a coffee and sat watching the Heavens open...

Links

Glastonbury Abbey: www.glastonburyabbey.com
Glastonbury Abbey Shop: www.glastonburyabbeyshop.com
The Abbey Tea Rooms: abbeytearooms.co.uk
King Arthur (Wikipedia): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur
King Arthur (BBC History): www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/anglo_saxons/arthur_01.shtml
King And King To Be (Kindle book by this blog's author): www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008BL7HUG
Other articles referring to King Arthur: on this blog

Somerset Weekend Index

John Burke's Heysham

The title of the entry was the title of a web page that I had at one time. My web pages were originally with Freeserve and survived through the takeover by Wanadoo. They finally disappeared when I moved from Orange, who took over Wanadoo to my present ISP. The page was immensely popular and so the text is reproduced here almost word for word. The photographs are, however, new and were taken especially for this reproduction of the web page.

Heysham is a tiny village on the edge of Morecambe Bay, North West England. A nuclear power station and ferry port are two modern points of interest but the village has so many old and interesting things to look at that, for a village of this size, it really is almost unfair! This is the parish church of St Peter, first consecrated in the year 976 and therefore over 1000 years old. Most of what can be seen here is younger than that, the belfry added in the 1600s, the South doorway which replaces the original Saxon doorway - still visible in the West wall. It is also obvious that the church has been expanded a few times with the nave extended and side chapels added.

There are several interesting items in the churchyard of which this sundial of 1696 is one of the youngest. However, whilst the sundial may be relatively young the material of its base is older as this was originally a Saxon cross shaft of over 1000 years ago. It must have contained carved images and the marks of the 17th Century hammers wielded by the Puritans can be clearly seen, low down on the shaft. They took to extreme the theme of not allowing worship of graven images.

Given the above it is perhaps surprising then that this Saxon cross shaft - which may be a different part of the same - was allowed to remain. The deep scrollwork and carving was done probably when the church was new. On the reverse side is a depiction of the raising of Lazarus and the three figures in the windows of the building above a swathed body in the doorway visible here are thought to depict the three Mary's visiting the tomb of Jesus.

Many visitors pass by this stone container, thinking it merely a horse trough or similar. It is however a stone coffin, thought to be that of the Norman cleric responsible for restoring a church that was old even by the time of the Conquest.

In the Southern side chapel inside the church is yet another treasure. This is a Viking "hogback" tomb cover from the 10th Century. With bears clasping each end of the stone, the carvings represent scenes from Norse sagas. It is easy to pick out this deer hunt. This is no ordinary tomb cover. This was for a chieftain or king. It is the finest example ever found in Britain.

St Peter's church was built to replace the chapel seen here which stands just above it on the hillside. By the time the Vikings raided Heysham in the 900s this chapel was already around 300 years old. They left it without a roof and the villagers, presumably too numerous anyway for this tiny chapel, decided to build the new church. The chapel was dedicated to St Patrick, who was rumoured to have been shipwrecked here in the 5th Century, on his way to Scotland after fleeing from his Roman captors in Ireland.

Close by the chapel is a row of six graves, dug with primitive tools out of the solid rock of the headland on the very edge of the cliff. Thought to date from the first half of the 11th Century, they would have been reserved for local notables. Sockets for cross shafts can be seen at the head of some of the graves.

Two more graves are uncovered at the other end of the chapel. One is obviously that of a child. The graves originally had covers over them and two are seen above in the foreground of the photo of St Patrick's chapel.

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