From hence towards Trubridge is Steeple-Aston, upon the bottom of the downs of Salisbury plain: it is a most excellent church and tower of stone, and had a famous spire of lead upon it, but twice thrown down by thunder and tempest, which absolutely discouraged the inhabitants from setting it up again.
Return we to the Roman Bath road, which we left at Hedington; whence it goes much as the common road to Bath, and all along upon the south division of Chipenham hundred: I could discern its bank now and then upon the road, though much worn away and defaced in defect of necessary repairs: it passes the Avon at Lacock, where has been a great religious house, so by a chapel south of Haselbury: then it descends a hill for two miles together, till it meets, over-against Bathford, the Foss-way, which comes in a strait line hither through Cirencester, from Benonis or High-cross in Warwickshire, where I left it last year: then our road goes round the crook of the river by Walcot to the Bath. This turn it is that swells the distance between Bath and Verlucio to XX. Roman miles, as we before corrected it. The Wansdike runs still not far off this road, but a little north of it through Spy park; so by Ditchbridge, which has its name from it; then to the Shire stones, at the division between Gloucestershire, Wilts, and Somerset. As to the nature of the soil, when we have left the chalky downs at Hedington, it is intirely sand to the river Avon, whence the name of Sandy lanes: from thence to the Bath it is rocky. There is a vast descent from the Downs quite to Bath, and every great ridge is very steep westward.
The Bath is a place so celebrated, and so well known, that I need say but little upon it; nor can much be expected from the small time I rested here:TAB. LXX. LXXI. its history and antiquities have been copiously handled by several gentlemen of our own faculty. It is indeed a spot of ground which we Britons may esteem as a particular boon of Nature: it lies in a great valley surrounded with an amphitheatrical view of hills; and its situation on the west side of the island does not a little contribute to its pleasures; for such is ever less subject to violent and enormous alterations of the air by winds and tempest, heat and cold: but the Romans were prudently induced to make a station here, by the admirable hot springs, so wonderful in themselves, and so justly regarded. The walls round the city are for the most part intire, and perhaps the old Roman work, except the upper part, which seems repaired with the ruins of Roman buildings; for the lewis holes are still left in many of the stones, and, to the shame of the repairers, many Roman inscriptions: some sawn across, to fit the size of the place, are still to be seen, some with the letters towards the city, others on the outside: most of those mentioned in Mr. Camden and other authors are still left; but the legend more obscure. The level of the city is risen to the top of the first walls, through the negligence of the magistracy, in this and all other great towns, who suffer idle servants to throw all manner of dirt and ashes into the streets: these walls inclose but a small compass, of a pentagonal form: four gates on four sides, and a postern on the other: from the south-west angle has been an additional wall and ditch carried out to the river; by which short work the approach of an enemy on two sides is cut off, unless they pass the river. The small compass of the city has made the inhabitants croud up the streets to an unseemly and inconvenient narrowness: it is handsomely built, mostly of new stone, which is very white and good; a disgrace to the architects they have there. The cathedral is a beautiful pile, though small; the roof of stone well wrought; much imagery in front, but of a sorry taste. Here they suppose (with probability) stood the Roman temple of Minerva, patroness of the Baths.[131] Before it was a handsome square area, but lately deformed with houses encroaching: on the south side are the justly-renowned hot springs, collected into a square area called the King’s Bath. The corporation has lately erected a pretty handsome building before it, called the Drinking-room, for the company to meet in that drink the waters drawn hither by a marble pump from the bottom of the springs, where it is near boiling hot. This water is admirably grateful to the stomach, striking the roof of the mouth with a fine sulphureous and steely gas, like that of the German Spa or Pyrmont: though you drink off a large pint glass, yet it is so far from creating a heaviness, or nausea, that you find yourself brisker immediately, by its agreeable sensation on the membranes of the stomach: at first it operates by stool, and especially urine: it is of most sovereign virtue to strengthen the bowels, to restore their lost tone through intemperance or inactivity, and renews the vital fire by its adventitious heat and congenial principles. Hither let the hypochondriac student repair, and drink at the Muses’ spring: no doubt the advantages obtained here in abdominal obstructions must be very great. The King’s Bath is an oblong square; the walls full of niches, perhaps the Roman work: there are twelve on the north side, eight on the east and west; about four larger arches on the south: at every corner are the steps to descend into it, and a parapet or balustrade with a walk round it: in the middle is set an aukward timber-work, like a cross, adorned with crutches, the trophies of its wonderful cures: around that emerge the boiling springs very plentifully: upon the south wall is the fanciful image of king Bladud, with a silly account of his finding out these springs, more reasonably attributed to the Romans: they no doubt separated them first from common springs, and fenced them in with an eternal wall. The people have a notion, and probable enough, of subterraneal canals of their making, to carry off the other waters, lest they should mix and spoil the heat of these. It is remarkable that at the cleansing of the springs, when they set down a new pump, they constantly find great quantities of hazle-nuts, as in many other places among subterraneous timber. These I doubt not to be the remains of the famous and universal deluge, which the Hebrew historian tells us was in autumn, Providence by that means securing the revival of the vegetable world. In this bath the people stand up to the chin, men and women, and stew, as we may properly call it; for the most part, in the way of gallantry, and as at a collation. I should judge the method used at Buxton preferable, where the sexes go in separately and privately, where they have liberty to swim about and stir the limbs, and exercise the lungs; whence the whole body will better receive the full force and benefit of the warmth: and this will more effectually put the humours in motion, that should be exterminated at the opened pores: this exercise of the solids sets the glands to work, and every secretion is promoted. Many are the diseases and calamities which here find a happy period, when judiciously applied, which, as a traveller, I need not discourse upon. This brings innumerable people to the salutiferous streams; especially in the summer time, which likewise seems an error owing to custom and fashion; for I doubt not they are equally, if not more beneficial, both internally and externally, in winter than summer. The carrying the water to distant places to drink, seems only a splendid fallacy.
I observe the whole country hereabouts is a rock of good lime-stone, which is the minera of the water’s heat and virtue: but how that comes to be calcined; by what refined chymistry of Nature sulphur and steel are mixed with it; by what means it acquires and conserves with so much constancy this equable and mighty focus, together with the reason of fountains in general; I profess, in my sentiments, is one of the great arcana in philosophy hitherto inscrutable.
Behind the southern wall of the King’s Bath is a lesser square, called the Queen’s Bath, with a tabernacle of four pillars in the midst: this is of more temperate warmth, as deriving its water at second-hand from the other. There are likewise pumps and pumping-rooms, for pouring hot streams on any part of the body; which in many cases is very useful, to dissolve sizy concretions about the joints and the like, and recovers the natural elasticity in the relaxed fibres of the solids. The area before this bath and front of the cathedral, is in the centre of the pentagon, upon which the city is formed. Why the Romans made it of this unusual figure, I cannot tell: nothing appears from the manner of the ground and situation; but I observe the same of Aix in France. One would be apt to suspect they had a regard to the sacred symbol and mystical character of medicine, which in ancient times was thought of no inconsiderable virtue: this is a pentagonal figure, formed from a triple triangle, called by the name of Hygeia, because to be resolved into the Greek letters that compose the word. The Pythagoreans used it among their disciples as a mystical symbol, denoting health; and the cabalistic Jews and Arabians had the same fancy: it is the pentalpha, or pentagrammon, among the Egyptians; the mark of prosperity. Antiochus Soter, going to fight against the Galatians, was advised in a dream to bear this sign upon his banner; whence he obtained a signal victory. This would make one believe a physician had a hand in projecting this city. Dr. Musgrave thinks it was Scribonius, who accompanied Claudius hither.
In the south-west part of the town are two other baths, not to be disregarded: for in any other place who would not purchase them at the greatest price? The Hot bath is a small parallelogram, not much inferior in heat to the King’s bath: it has a stone tabernacle of four pillars in the middle. The Cross bath, near it, is triangular, and had a cross in the middle; which now is a very handsome work, in marble, of three Corinthian pillars, erected by the lord Milford, in memory of king James the Second’s queen conceiving, as it is said, after the use thereof. Hard by is an hospital built and endowed by a bishop of this see. The water in these two places rises near to the level of the streets, because I suppose in this part of the town the earth is not so much heightened. On the south side of the cathedral are some parts of the abbey left, and the gate-house belonging to it. Not long ago, by money contributed, they made a cold bath, at a spring beyond the bridge, that nothing of this sort might be wanting for the benefit of the infirm.
Since Mr. Camden’s time two inscriptions have been set in the eastern wall of the cathedral, fronting the walks: but this is as imprudently done as those in the city-walls; for, besides the rain and weather, they are exposed to the boys, who throw stones at them: one is that of Julius Vitalis, published by Dr. Musgrave; the other, which he calls a basso relievo of Geta, seems to have been the top of a monumental stone over some common horseman. TAB. XLIX.Harrison’s house, they say, is built against some basso’s and inscriptions. In the 49th plate I have given the whole TAB. XLI. 2d Vol.stone and inscription, now in the wall near the north gate.
At Walcot has been a camp, and many Roman antiquities are frequently found. Lord Winchelsea has an urn, a patera, and other things, found in a stone coffin, wherein was a child’s body, half a mile off the Bath.
Riding upon Lansdown, I saw the monument, lately erected by lord Lansdown, in memory of his grandfather Bevil Granvile, slain here in a battle with the parliament forces. Hence, it being a north-west precipice, is a prospect of Bristol, the Severn, &c. This road seems to be the Ricning-street, called Langridge, going to the passage over the Severn, the ancient Trajectus and so along the east side of the Severn, and into Yorkshire. The ground hereabouts is very red, covering a solid rock of stone, which lies in thin layers parallel to the horizon, with as much exactness as if hewn for courses in a wall: this stone is full of little shells; and of this sort is the monument of Julius Vitalis: between the strata are crystallizations or fluors of petrifying juices: all the stone in this country abounds with curious fossils. As you walk along a new paved road, it is very common to find very great cornua ammonis, two foot diameter, laid in among the rest; and, though formed with such admirable curiosity, yet the country people walk carelessly over them, as I observed, whilst a horse will startle at so unusual an appearance: the first I saw in the Foss road, going up the hill south of Bath, I took for the image of the Sun, which I remembered to have seen prints of, as it was in basso relievo in the city-walls, with his hair flowing round like rays; and this was well enough represented in a stone that had been worn a little: but I was soon undeceived, when I found great numbers of the same sort further on.[132]
The Weddings. Br. Temple. From the Bath I went to visit the famous Celtic temple called the Weddings, in company with John Strachey, esq; who lives near there, a person well versed in natural history and antiquities, and fellow of the Royal Society. I shall describe this memorable curiosity upon another occasion. In the way hither, about Twyfordton, I found a Marsbury field.fallow field with but little quantity of earth upon the rock: this was as full of fossil shells as possible, let into a softish stone, which had preserved their very natural colour of blue and white as perfectly as at first. Near Stanton Drue, in a trivium, is an old elm-tree made infamous for the bloody trophies of judge Jeffrys’s barbarity, in the duke of Monmouth’s rebellion; for all its broad-spreading arms were covered over with heads and limbs of the unfortunate countrymen. In Chu parish is Bowditch camp.Bowditch, a large camp on a hill trebly fortified, whence you may behold the isles of Flatholm and Steepholm in the sea. I suppose the word means the circular form of the place. Here is a petrifying spring. This country abounds with coal-pits: the slates that lie upon it, and have not received their due quantity of sulphur, so as to make perfect coal, are most curiously marked with impressions of plants, capillary ones especially, and more particularly those of fern; all which grew in exceeding plenty in this country, and gave their forms to this soft matter at the Deluge. This is indeed a rock, and full of springs, very bad road for travelling, short and steep valleys, narrow lanes, intricate, dark and hard: so no wonder harts-tongue, liver-wort, maiden-hair, navel-wort, and the like moist plants, thrive here. The ground in these valleys is very rich: much wood grows upon it; though in some roads you ride upon the superfice of a rock lying flat in great slabs, as if artificially placed with good joints. Many wood-plants grow about here, such as wood-sorrel, strawberries, tutsan or park-leaves, &c. The neatness of the houses even of the poorer sort of people is remarkable, being generally whited over, and with pretty little gardens, which in pure and unartful nature is a necessary adjunct in the happiness of life.
There is a camp overlooks Stanton Drue, called Mizknoll; another at Elm, two miles west from Frome: in 1691 a pot of Roman coin found there, most of Constantine junior: it is upon the end of a precipice, and severed from the rest of the hill by a vallum on one side only: south of it runs a rivulet. Masbury castle upon Mendip hills, half a mile from the Foss, a mile north of Shipton-Mallet, of a round form, 150 paces diameter: the two entrances opposite: the environing ditch on one end laps over with a semi-lunar turn, rendering the passage to it oblique. Hereabouts are many camps, whose ditches are hewn out of the solid rock: that above Bristol has four trenches, as many vallums, and but one entrance: one would think it impregnable to any thing but hunger. A camp cut out of the rock at Churchill with a single trench. There is a cave equal to that of Ochey-hole at Dolebury. These are from information of Mr. Strachey.
In this county of Somersetshire are three remarkable hills, that make an exact triangle twelve mile each side, much talked of by the country people; Camalet castle, Glassenbury torr, and Montacute. They have a notion that king Arthur obtained from some saint, that no serpent or venomous creature should ever be found in this compass, though frequent all around it. I shall rehearse to your lordship what occurred to me at the places. All this country, though to the eye very pleasant with woods and prospects yet is very disagreeable to travel, for the reasons I just mentioned.
Camalet is a noted place, situate on the highest ground in this county, on the edge of Dorsetshire. TAB. XLIII.The country people are ignorant of this name, which has generally obtained among the learned: they call it Cadbury castle, from the village of North-Cadbury, in which it is: this caution is useful to those that go to enquire for it. Hereabouts rise the rivers of Somersetshire, which run into the Severn sea westward; and that in Dorset, which goes eastward, through Sturminster, into the southern ocean. It is a noble fortification of the Romans, placed on the north end of a ridge of hills separated from the rest by nature; and for the most part solid rock, very steep and high: there are three or four ditches quite round, sometimes more: the area within is twenty acres at least, rising in the middle: its figure is squarish, but conforms to the shape of the hill. There is a higher angle of ground within, ditched about, where they say was king Arthur’s palace: it was probably the prætorium and might be king Arthur’s too. who lived in this place: the country people refer all stories to him. The whole has been ploughed over since the memory of man, and much stone has been taken from the surface, which has altered it. The rampart is large and high, made chiefly of great stones covered with earth, and perhaps, in some parts where it was necessary, laid with mortar: here is only one entrance from the east. It is not unlikely there were buildings erected in the later British times, being of so great strength, and a perfect watch-tower, surveying the country round to an incredible distance. The prospect is woody, and very pleasant; here and there little hills, lofty and steep, peeping up with their naked heads: you reach all the Mendip hills and Black-down in Devonshire. In this camp they find many pebble-stones exactly round, half a peck at a time; whereas there are none such in the country: they suppose them stones to sling withal, fetched from the sea, or perhaps shot in cross-bows. Roman coin in great plenty has been found here, and all the country round: I saw vast numbers of Antoninus and Faustina, about that time and after. The entrance here is guarded with six or seven ditches: on the north side, in the fourth ditch, is a never-failing spring, called King Arthur’s well: over it they have dug up square stones, door-jambs with hinges, and say there are subterraneous vaults thereabouts. Selden, in his notes on Polyolbion, writes it was full of ruins and reliques of old buildings. At top they told me many pavements, and arches have been dug up, hand-grindstones, and other domestic or camp utensils. They say there is a road across the fields, that bears very rank corn, called King Arthur’s Hunting-causeway.
Cadbury.The church and tower of Cadbury is neat and small, built of stone. In this place they call walnuts Welsh-nuts. To the southward, on the opposite hill, corpses have been dug up: there was lately an urn full of Roman money found at Wincaunton. A little above Sutton, toward Beacon-Ash, in inclosing ground, half a peck of the same coin was found; I saw some of Tetricus. Roman pateras, a knife, and other antiquities, taken up thereabouts, sent to madam Thyns, now in lord Winchelsea’s custody. Many are the British stories told of Camalet, of the knights of king Arthur’s round table, of the solemn justings and tournaments there, &c. It seems, when the castle for its security was turned into a city, this was the Colomeæ of Ravennas, (as Mr. Baxter has corrected it) in the later times of the Romans; unless Quincamel, not far off, can better put in its claim, to which this might be the garrison. At Long-Leat, in my lord Weymouth’s library, is a piece of lead weighing fifty pound, one foot nine inches long, two inches thick, three and an half broad, found in the lord Fitzharding’s grounds near Bruton in Somersetshire, and was discovered by digging a hole to set a gate-post in: upon it this memorable inscription, which I suppose was some trophy; communicated by lord Winchelsea.
Hence let us go, as in pilgrimage, to the famous Glassenbury; for it is a very rough and disagreeable road, over rocks and the heads of rivers: but that is much alleviated by the many natural curiosities such places afford: several times I saw gilded ivy grow in the hedges, as yellow as gold; great plenty of viorna, purging-thorn, prim-print, and the banks every where over-grown with fox-gloves. Kyneton village, for half a mile together, is paved naturally with one smooth broad rock, the whole breadth of the road; so that it looks like ice. Great quarries of stone hereabouts, of the slab kind: all the uppermost layers are incredibly full of sea-shells, and would make admirable pannels to wainscot a virtuoso’s summer-house, grotto, or the like, and of any dimensions; not inferior, in true value, to those brought from Italy, but too cheap. I frequently took notice that the course of the vein of the stone quarry runs north-east and south-west.
Crossing the Foss road at Lyteford you enter upon a flat moorish country, full of artificial cuts and drains, like the levels in Lincolnshire. Not far before I came to Glassenbury, I observed a great bank, crossing the road, which seemed to be a Roman road. I guess there was a Roman road went from Bristol, through Axbridge, Bridgewater, Taunton, parallel to the Foss, and nearer the ocean. I have been told, between the two last places it is very fair, and paved with stone. With much labour I climbed to the top of the Torr, hanging over the town of Glasenbury TorrGlassenbury. This hill, with that called Werial hill, is a long rib of elevated ground in the midst of this vast level or isle of TAB. XXXVII.Avalon. I observed, in its several breaks or gradations, a steepness westward. Here upon the narrow crest of the Torr, which is much the highest, the abbots built a church to St. Michael, of good square stone: the tower is left, though ruinous; and it is an excellent sea-mark: it probably cost more to carry the stone up to this apex, than to erect the building. There is a spring half way up it. It is certainly higher than any ground within ten miles of the place. They say here is a passage hence under ground to the abbey.
This great monastery in superstitious times held the first place for fame and sanctity. Here the christian doctrine first found admittance in Britain, or early tradition has amused us: it is not unlikely the fact may be true, TAB. XXXIII.though the persons and circumstances invented: however, it is not to be doubted but king Ina built their church; as one of the most ancient, so the most wealthy and magnificent, loaded with revenues by the Saxon kings, and perhaps the British before them. Truly the abbot lived in no less state than the royal donors: no wonder, when his revenue was equivalent to 40,000l. per ann. he could from the Torr see a vast tract of this rich land his own demesnes, and seven parks well stored with deer belonging to the monastery. It is walled round and embattled like a town, a mile in compass: as yet there are magnificent ruins; but within a lustrum of years, a presbyterian tenant has made more barbarous havock there, than has been since the Dissolution; for every week a pillar, a buttress, a window-jamb, or an angle of fine hewn stone, is sold to the best bidder: whilst I was there they were excoriating St. Joseph’s chapel for that purpose, and the squared stones were laid up by lots in the abbot’s kitchen: the rest goes to paving yards and stalls for cattle, or the highway. I observed frequent instances of the townsmen being generally afraid to make such purchase, as thinking an unlucky fate attends the family where these materials are used; and they told me many stories and particular instances of it: others, that are but half religious, will venture to build stables and out-houses therewith, but by no means any part of the dwelling-house. The abbot’s lodging was a fine stone building, but could not content the tenant just mentioned, who pulled it down two or three years ago, and built a new house out of it; aukwardly setting up the arms and cognisances of the great Saxon kings and princes, founders, and of the abbots, over his own doors and windows: TAB. XXXVII.my friend Mr. Strachey had taken a drawing of it very luckily just before, TAB. XXXIV.which I have put in its proper place, plate 37. Nothing is reserved intire but the kitchen, a judicious piece of architecture: it is formed from an octagon included in a square; four fire-places fill the four angles, having chimneys over them: in the flat part of the roof, between these, rises the arched octagonal pyramid, crowned with a double lantern, one within another: there are eight curved ribs within, which support this vault, and eight funnels for letting out the steam through windows; within which, in a lesser pyramid, hung the bell to call the poor people to the adjacent almery, whose ruins are on the north side of the kitchen: the stones of the pyramid are all cut slaunting with the same bevil to throw off the rain. They have a report in the town, that king Henry VIII. quarrelling with the abbot, threatened to fire his kitchen: to which he returned answer, That he would build such a one as all the timber in his forest should not burn.
The church was large and magnificent: the walls of the choir are standing, twenty-five fathom long, twelve broad: there is one jamb at the east end of the high altar left: hereabouts were buried king Edgar, and many of the Saxon kings, whose noble ashes ought to have protected the whole: two pillars of the great middle tower are left next the choir: on the north side is St. Mary’s chapel, as they told me; the roof beat down by violence, and a sorry wooden one in its place, thatched with stubble to make it serve as a stable: the manger lies upon the altar and niche where they put the holy water. St. Edgar’s chapel is opposite to it; not much left of it, beside the foundations: the north and south transepts are quite demolished. They say king Arthur was buried under the great tower. A small part of the south side wall of the body of the church remains, which made one side of the cloysters; and the arch at the west end, leading to the chapel of Joseph of Arimathea, the patron and asserted founder of the whole. This they say was the first christian church in Britain. The present work is about the third building upon the same spot:TAB. XXXV. it is forty-four paces long, thirty-six wide without: it is so intire, that we could well enough draw the whole structure, as in plate 35. the roof is chiefly wanting: two little turrets are at the corners of the west end, and two more at the interval of four windows from thence, which seem to indicate the space of ground the first chapel was built on: the rest between it and the church was a sort of anti-chapel. Underneath was a vault now full of water, the floor of the chapel being beaten down into it: it was wrought with great stones. Here was a capacious receptacle of the dead: they have taken up many leaden coffins, and melted them into cisterns. Hence is the subterraneous arched passage to the Torr, according to their notion. The roof of the chapel was finely arched with rib-work of stone: the sides of the walls are full of small pillars of Sussex marble, as likewise the whole church; which was a little way of ornamenting in those days: they are mostly beaten down: between them the walls are painted with pictures of saints, as still easily seen. All the walls are overgrown with ivy, which is the only thing here in a flourishing condition; everything else presenting a most melancholy, though venerable aspect. On the south side the cloysters was the great hall. The town’s people bought the stone ofTAB. XXXVII. the vaults underneath to build a sorry market-house, contributing to the ruin of the sacred fabric, and to their own: what they durst not have done singly, they perpetrated as a body, hoping vengeance would slip between so many: nor did they discern the benefit accruing to the town from the great concourse of strangers purposely to see this abbey, which is now the greatest trade of it, as formerly its only support; for it is in a most miserable decaying condition, as wholly cut off from the great revenues spent among them. There are many other foundations of the buildings left in the great area, but in the present hands will soon be rooted up, and the very footsteps of them effaced, which so many ages had been erecting. Though I am no encourager of superstitious foppery, yet I think, out of that vast estate, somewhat might have been left, if only to preserve old monuments for the benefit of our history. The abbot’s hall I have been told was curiously wainscoted with oak, and painted with coats of arms in every pannel. The mortar of these buildings is very good, and great rocks of the roof of the church lie upon the ground, consisting chiefly of rubble stone untouched by the fanatical destroyers, who work on the hewn stone of the outside, till a whole wall falls when undermined a little. Throughout the town are the tattered remains of doors, windows, bases, capitals of pillars, &c. brought from the abbey, and put into every poor cottage.
In the town are two churches; the upper a handsome fabric, with a fine tower of good design, adorned with figures in niches: at the east end of the church-yard is a curious old tomb inscribed with ancient English letters, but so worn with trampling on, that I could make little out of it, except the name of the interred Alleyn. The George inn is an old stone building, called the Abbot’s inn, where chiefly the pilgrims were lodged that came strolling hither, and idling their time away for sanctity: stone and timber are liberally bestowed on it: a coat of arms of the kings of England, supported by a lion and a bull, over the gate, and many crosses: the bed I lay in was of large timber, with great embossed gilt pannels, and seemed to have been the abbot’s.
When I left this place, I passed through a great gate built across the road under the abbey wall, with a lesser portal by the side of it; which I suppose was some boundary of the abbey-lands, and part of their extravagance; for the abbot’s revenues being inconsumable in their way of life, they prodigally threw it away in building, as one method of perpetuating their name: another they had which was very useful, the making great and high causeways, along this moory country, for facilitating travelling and commerce; the remains of which I saw here and there, and wished they had been in better repair. I passed by the side of Werial hill, where grew the famous hawthorn that blossomed at Christmas; I suppose, an early blooming white-thorn: but that it so strictly observed Christmas day to an hour, nay a minute, as they here assert, I believe no more than the vulgar derivation of the hill, with more of the dregs of monkery. Somerton is an old town, that gives name to the whole county, once the royal seat of the West-Saxon kings: the steeple is octangular: probably it was a Roman town. I saw a camp upon a great copped high hill on the right hand, as I travelled. At Ilchester town end I fell into the Foss road again.
This station of the Romans is situate on the south side of the river Ivel, or Yeovil, the Velox of Ravennas. Pillbridge, a little lower, seems to retain the name: it is the Uzella of Ptolemy. I perceived immediately that this place had been originally encompassed with a wall and ditch, and traced out the manifest vestigia thereof quite round: it was an oblong square 300 paces in length, 200 in breadth, standing upon the oblique points of the compass, conform to the Foss way, which passes through the town exactly from north-east to south-west: the north-east side of the city lay against the river, where I saw foundations of the wall here and there, and took up several Roman bricks in searching for it in the gardens: the ditch on the north-west side is become a road, called Yard-lane, as going behind the yards and gardens: then it runs through the friery garden; for the religious had extended their bounds beyond the city, and turned the road on the outside: then it goes along the road on the back of Mr. Lockyer’s garden: it is now visible between the Yeovil road and the southern angle; then runs through another garden, being for the most part levelled by the gardener, who showed me the track of it, and had by times, in digging, taken up remainders of the wall, with many coins, bricks, tiles, and other antiquities. I bought some coins of him, among which the brass one of Antoninus Pius depicted in the plate; on the reverse, Britannia sitting on a rock with a military ensign. Sir Philip Sydenham has a great quantity of coins found here, and the minister of the parish gave many to the learned Mr. Coke of Norfolk. This gardener showed me many square paving bricks in the floor of his house, and told me he dug up a great brass coin, as big as half a crown, under the foundation of the wall, which doubtless would have discovered to us the area of its building. Crossing the Sherburn and Limington road, we find the ditch again, turning up to the river-side, on the eastern angle, conformable to the scheme; where it is again inclosed into gardens and pastures: the occupier of the gardens there informed me too, that he had frequently dug up the like antiquities, together with the foundations of the wall. The quickset-hedge that fences in the garden stands on the edge of the ditch, and observes its turn at that angle of the city: by the new mill it meets the river. In all the gardens hereabouts, by the Borough-green, they find foundations of old houses; and some run across the present streets, now visible above ground. This ditch, when perfect, admitted the water of the river quite round. Mr. Lockyer’s house is built upon subterraneous arches. They say here have been sixteen parish-churches, and foundations are to be found all the town over; and that the suburbs extended southward, especially on the Yeovil road, which formerly had a gate: it is not to be doubted but that there were gates at the passage of all the other streets. They say the bishop of Bath and Wells has a manuscript relating to the ancient state of this town. They have the same tradition as in many other places, that the old city was set on fire by matches tied to the tails of sparrows, let fly from a place called Stannard-cross hill. As soon as I came into the inn, (the Swan) I saw a great parcel of the little stones of a tesselated pavement, found but two days before, in a garden over the way near the river: a croud of people came immediately out of curiosity to see it, and tore it up: I saw some of the remainder in situ, about two foot deep, laid in strong mortar upon a hard gravelled floor: I made the owner melancholy with informing him what profit he might have got by preserving it, to show to strangers. The Foss-way retains its name, and makes the principal street: the pavement thereof, or the original ford across the river, may be seen on the west side of the bridge, made with great flag stones. Upon the bridge is an old chapel, called Little St. Mary’s: at the foot of the bridge within the town is another, called White-chapel; both converted into dwellings. Foundations of houses, chimney-pieces, and the like, have been dug up in the meads on the west side the town, and on both sides the river, with stone coffins and other funeral apparatus. The head of the mayor’s staff or mace is a piece of great antiquity in cast brass: there are four niches with four images, two kings, a queen, and an angel: it seems to have been the crosier of some religious house: round the bottom is wrote, in two lines, + JESU DE DRUERJE + NEME DUNETMJE. In the northern angle beyond the old ditch of the city, towards the river, have been some bastions and modern fortifications, of the time of king Charles I.
Beyond the river is a village adjoining, called North-over, with a church; at Mrs. Hoddle’s, hard by, I saw a grey-hound bitch, from whose side a skewer of wood seven inches long had worked itself out from the stomach: we have some such rare cases in medicinal histories. They talk of a castle standing where now is the gaol, and that the tide came formerly up hither, though now it reaches not beyond Langport. West of this, some time since, they dug up some bones in a leaden case, as big as a band-box, laid in a hollowed stone; and near it, under a tree, was a vault of stone, where a body was found lying at full length. Langport is moted about, as they tell me, and probably was a Roman town. These were all the remarkables I met with at Ischalis, where I staid but half a day.
Hence I continued my journey along the Foss, which I observed paved with the original work in many parts: it is composed of the flat quarry-stones of the country, of a good breadth, laid edgewise, and so close that it looks like the side of a wall fallen down, and through the current of so many ages is not worn through: a glorious and useful piece of industry, and, to our shame, not imitated; for small reparation from time to time would have preserved it intire, and where it is so much wanted in a dirty country. As I rode, on my left hand I saw the pleasant view of Montacute hill, a copped round eminence incompassed at bottom with a broad verge of wood, so that it looks like a high-crowned hat with a fringed hat-band: here has been a castle and chapel at top, and below it a religious house built by the earl of Moriton in the time of William the Conqueror.[133] Another hill near it, much of the same figure. Between them and the Foss, upon the same hilly ridge, is a Roman camp called Hamden-hill. Ro. camp.Hamden hill, with a double ditch about it; to which leads a vicinal Roman way from the Foss through Stoke. The Foss is very plain and strait hither, and to Petherton bridge near South Petherton, once the palace of king Ina:TAB. XLIV. here was formerly a wooden bridge, but ruinous, where two children were drowned, as they say; whereupon their parents rebuilt it of stone, and caused their effigies to be cut upon a stone which lies at the foot of the bridge. In a field not far off, two years ago a pot full of Roman coin, to the quantity of six pecks, was dug up. Beyond this the Foss grows intricate and obscure, from the many collateral roads made through the badness and want of reparation in the true one; yet it seems to run through Donington, which stands on a very high hill, and, when mounted, presents us with a vast scene of Devonshire. I suppose this Foss went on the east side of Chard, and so by Axminster and Culliton, to Seaton or Moridunum, where properly it begins; whence if we measure its noble length to the sea-coast in Lincolnshire, at Grimsby or Saltfleet, where I imagine it ends, it amounts to 250 Roman miles in a strait line from north-east to south-west. Your lordship presented me with an oyster, found a little northward of Axminster, where the very fish appears petrified with its cartilaginous concretion to the shell, all in their proper colours.