Exmoor - Porlock Weir

On our way to our holiday accommodation in Porlock Weir, we stopped in Porlock itself for groceries etc. This was another small Somerset village where the pace of life appears much slower than what we are used to in Suffolk - which is itself reasonably chilled out!

The house was brilliant! The travel firm's description really summed it up: Garden View is a comfortable, spacious ground-floor apartment, within the west wing of a beautiful Edwardian hunting lodge, Porlock Vale House. There is an enclosed and private garden directly outside the property with stunning views across the fields to the sea.

From the rear view below, taken from the beach, our accommodation was on the ground floor of Porlock Vale House, on the right-hand side - all in all, a lovely spot.

Garden View from the beach looking over the horse paddock.

The beach from which I took the above photo. This one above looks toward the Weir end of Porlock Weir.

The bottom of the garden, looking toward the beach over the paddocks.

Porlock Weir itself is a harbour settlement approximately 1.5 miles (2.4 km) west of the inland village of Porlock, Somerset. Like most ports in West Somerset, the harbour is tidal and is home to a small flotilla of yachts and is visited by many more in spring and summer. 

The port has existed for more than a thousand years. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that in 1052 Harold Godwinson came from Ireland with nine ships and plundered the area and before that in 866 AD it was raided by Danes. In the 18th and 19th centuries coal from South Wales was the main cargo.

Tide in ....

Tide out.

Just loved this row of cottages on the harbour side. I believe they are called Gibraltar Cottages and are mainly 17th century.

View along the beach further, toward Gore Point

The Ship Inn at Porlock Weir. We had a great lunch here on Sunday

The Ship Inn, known colloquially as The Top Ship, dates back to at least the 15th Century, making it possibly one of the oldest inns in the country. It is believed that even before that date some sort of hostelry existed on the site. It is an establishment that boasts a long and varied history from ties to smuggling, visits from a Poet Laureate and as an invaluable part in the long and arduous journey by horse-drawn coach to and from Lynmouth.

When the pub became The Ship Inn, geographically Porlock was quite different to it is now, the marshes north of the village were underwater as the Bristol Channel came up to where the village school now stands. This meant The Ship Inn was situated very close to the shoreline- an ideal spot for smuggling, or Free Trade as it was known! It is rumoured that at least one secret tunnel exists, linking the Inn to a nearby cottage: useful for bringing in stock or getting rid of contraband when the excise men came knocking! During the reign of King Charles II the smuggling in Somerset became so notorious that His Majesty’s Surveyor-General of Customs, William Culliforde, visited the county. In 1682 The Ship was a venue for a clandestine meeting between smugglers and a corrupt revenue officer. The story leaked out and the revenue officer stood trial.

Another old, thatched property in the street.

The remains of two lime kilns are visible as brick arched recesses incorporated into a house known as 'The Kiln'. They were first noted on the 1903 Ordnance Survey map and are therefore fairly recent in date.

So, this was our base area for some exploration of Exmoor - or part of it at least.

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Exmoor - Nether Stowey & The Great Wood

We had not explored the beautiful area of Exmoor before, so this was a much-anticipated holiday. Having broken our journey with an overnight stop, we journeyed on toward our destination on Saturday morning with time to stop and explore other places - the first being Nether Stowey, briefly the home of Samual Coleridge, poet, and author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Nether Stowey is known as the Gateway to the Quantock Hills.

The plaque on the wall of Coleridge's cottage. We didn't go in but took the picture!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was (born on 21 October 1772 and died 25 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He also shared volumes and collaborated with Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and Charles Lloyd.

He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (I did this one at school!) and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential.

Throughout his adult life, Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder, which had not been defined during his lifetime. He was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction.

It`s amazing that a man held in such high esteem, in his lifetime and still today, should have produced what he did under such difficult conditions which lasted all his life.

Nether Stowey is a pretty Somerset village with a stream flowing through the street.

Then we journeyed on through what is known as the Great Wood. Some of the following images were taken a few days later when we returned briefly to the area.

The beautiful shapes of the trees and the light and shade along the pathways - magical!

Other eye-catching sights are the huge ants' nests in the area.

- and then of course, what visit would be complete without a view of the Exmoor ponies? We had started to walk away from the car when I remembered something, and I returned to find the ponies licking the car for some reason! They had just appeared from amongst the trees as they were not in sight as we arrived.

Dead Woman's Ditch is an earthwork which has been scheduled as an ancient monument. It is a linear earthwork consisting of a bank with a ditch along the west side running for approximately 950 metres (3,120 ft). The earthwork is presumed to be of prehistoric origin and is of unknown purpose.
The 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) long earthwork has been cut through by later tracks and a road. It is badly eroded in places.
Dead Woman's Ditch is sometimes associated with the murder of Jane Walford by her husband John in 1789 but the name predates the murder, appearing on an earlier map.

So far so good - now to drive to our holiday let in Porlock Weir.

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John Clench of Holbrook

For some time, I had wanted to visit Holbrook church to see the huge monument to the infamous John Clench.

So, who was John Clench? - He was born in 1535, the son of John Clench of Wethersfield, Essex and Joan, daughter of John Amias of the same county,

He was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1556, called to the bar in 1563. He became recorder of Ipswich in 1575. In 1580 he was created serjeant-at-law, his patrons at the ceremony being the Earl of Oxford, Lord Wentworth, and Sir William Cordell. A year later, he was appointed one of the barons of the exchequer, and in 1584 he was translated to the Queen's bench.

He established his family in south-east Suffolk, in the neighborhood of Ipswich, where for many years he was the Town Recorder.

It was said that Elizabeth I referred to him as 'her good judge', but it is thought that he was never knighted for some reason. By 1602, being "so decrepit that he could not well travel outside his country", he was discharged from attendance at court.

He lived mainly on his estate in Holbrook and was involved in the affairs of the area in various capacities. He died in 1607 and is buried in Holbrook Church.

So, why do I call him `infamous`? Well, he was one of the two Judges who sentenced Margaret Clitheroe to a horrendous death because of her religious inclinations. She was nothing more than a Roman Catholic - like millions were, and still are today.

Holbrook Church near Shotley

From Wikipedia:

Margaret Clitherow was born in 1556, one of five children of Thomas and Jane Middleton. Her father was a respected businessman, a wax-chandler and Sheriff of York in 1564, who died when Margaret was fourteen. In 1571, she married John Clitherow, a wealthy butcher and a chamberlain of the city, and bore him three children; the family lived at today's 10–11 The Shambles.

She converted to Roman Catholicism in 1574. Although her husband, John Clitherow, belonged to the Established Church, he was supportive as his brother William was a Roman Catholic priest. He paid her fines for not attending church services. She was first imprisoned in 1577 for failing to attend church, and two more incarcerations at York Castle followed. Her third child, William, was born in prison.

Margaret risked her life by harbouring and maintaining priests, which was made a capital offence by the Jesuits, etc. Act 1584. She provided two chambers, one adjoining her house and, with her house under surveillance, she rented a house some distance away, where she kept priests hidden and Mass was celebrated through the thick of the persecution. Her home became one of the most important hiding places for fugitive priests in the north of England. Local tradition holds that she also housed her clerical guests in The Black Swan at Peasholme Green, where the Queen's agents were lodged.

She sent her older son, Henry, to the English College, relocated in Reims, to train for the priesthood. The authorities summoned her husband to explain why his oldest son had gone abroad, and in March 1586 the Clitherow house was searched. A frightened boy revealed the location of the priest hole.

Margaret was arrested and called before the York assizes for the crime of harbouring Catholic priests. She refused to plead, thereby preventing a trial that would entail her three children being made to testify and being subjected to torture. She was sentenced to death. Clench did try to change her mind, and enter a plea, and for this he must take some credit I suppose!

Although pregnant with her fourth child, she was executed on Lady Day, 1586, (which also happened to be Good Friday that year) in the Toll Booth at Ouse Bridge, by being crushed to death by her own door, the standard inducement to force a plea.

The two sergeants who should have carried out the execution hired four desperate beggars to do it instead. She was stripped and had a handkerchief tied across her face then laid across a sharp rock the size of a man's fist, the door from her own house was put on top of her and loaded with an immense weight of rocks and stones so that the sharp rock would break her back. Her death occurred within fifteen minutes, but her body was left for six hours before the weight was removed.

The uninspiring interior of Holbrook Church with the massive memorial to John Clench and his wife

On his memorial this inscription

"A memorial of the most worshipful and (in his time) the most Auncient Judge, John Clenche, who died on the 19th day of August in the year of Salvation 1607.

See, carved in marble lies the reverend judge:

Earth turns to earth, and flesh is cased in dust,

But, borne aloft to halls of highest heaven

The soul lives ever in God's citadel."

What he and his fellow judge did seems very barbaric from our view some 420 years later, and indeed it was. I guess we must look at progress made in our justice system during the intervening years and the tolerance we have developed also and continue striving to progress. Religious intolerance during the period mentioned, carried on for some time being a large factor in the Civil War of 1640`s.

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Church flower decorations on Coronation week

St Andrew`s Church in Layham, was decorated beautifully during the week leading up to the coronation. Here are some images of most of the displays, except the ones in the windows, which were a bit difficult, facing into the sun.

The display in the font. This font is a fine example of the 13th century Purbeck Marble genre, seated on a 19th Century base and columns.

A close up of the end of pew displays.

One of the two displays in the porch.

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Coronation Celebrations - Layham & around

The Coronation of King Charles was celebrated all over the country with a variety of events - Layham being no different. However, my interest was to keep a photographic record, but this proved more difficult than I anticipated! I don't know what I was expecting from people, but streams of bunting and flags were the majority response. There were some local exceptions, such as in Holton St Mary and the portrait in Hadleigh, both below.

Layham held an afternoon tea which was organized by four brave ladies from the Village Hall Commitee, which was very well attended and very much enjoyed by everybody. Other places had street parties I believe.

This is the portrait of our new monarch which appeared on a wall in Angel Street, in Hadleigh

The crown on the telephone box in Holton St Mary, a nearby village.

Layham Village Hall, complete with bunting.

Interior of our village hall with just the ceiling bunting

Tables laid out ready

Tablecloths and cutlery ready

Then the hall fills with people awaiting their afternoon tea!

Next door to the hall, the Church of St Andrews was also adorned for the occasion

Two images to finish - my helper - Emily, my granddaughter and the other one a surprise visit by our newly elected councilor. Overall, a wonderful day, which was very much enjoyed by all.

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To the woods to see the Bluebells - and more.

This is a beautiful time of year for all sorts of vegetation. One of my favourites being bluebells. There are several places I know off where they are seen in abundance, but the one I like to visit and closest to home, is in Layham Grove. All these images were taken there in a 90-minute visit recently. 

This is the scene that greets you as you approach the footpath through the wood.

Whichever way you turn, you are greeted by this majestic carpet of blue.

A couple of closeups of single flowers

I loved the gnarled tree trunk

In amongst all those flowers are lurking insects of course. This one being a Shield Bug

 

Then we had a Meadow Brown butterfly

---- and onto a Honeybee

Then a lovely display of Greater Stitchwort – also known as the ‘Star-of-Bethlehem’

Then the perennial favorite - the Primrose

And finally, the Wood Anemone

Overall, a beautiful morning of utter peace, with the beauty of nature in all its splendor surrounding us.

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