Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 29, 2025
WATCHET, a small port of some 2000 inhabitants, situated on the Bristol Channel. It has always been of some trading importance, as giving access to the valley between the Brendons and Quantocks, and has seen some history. In Saxon times it was more than once raided by the Danes, and on the road to Williton is a spot called "Battle Gore," which may preserve the memory of a fight with the invaders.
They were last held against Kenwalch, and now we were in that no-man's land which he had won and wasted. Then we climbed the long slope of the Quantocks, whence we might look back over the land we had left, to see the Tor at Glastonbury shouldering higher and higher above the lower Poldens, until the height was reached and the swift descent toward Norton began.
Then I told him that I need ask him but to guide me beyond Parret river, on this side of Bridgwater, for after that the long line of the Quantocks would guide me well enough.
In the wide and beautiful view from the earthworks the Mendip range runs away toward the Severn Sea on the right; to the left front are the broken summits of the Quantocks and to the extreme left the beautiful hills of the Somerset-Dorset borderland.
The purple and gold of Sedgemoor, relieved by the soft outlines of the Polden hills, the grim summits of Taunton Dean and the Blackdown range, the wooded Quantocks dipping to the Severn, and the giant mass of Exmoor bounding the far horizon, these great splashes of color, softened and blended by belts of farmland and the blue smoke of clustering hamlets, formed a picture that not even Britain's storehouse of natural beauty can match too often to sate the eyes of those who love a charming landscape.
Everywhere wild strawberries were flowering on the banks wild strawberries have been found ripe in January here; everywhere ferns were thickening and extending, foxgloves opening their bells. Another deep coombe led me into the mountainous Quantocks, far below the heather, deep beside another trickling stream.
The great plain of Central Somerset spreads away at the foot of the hill. In the foreground is the ever-conspicuous Glastonbury Tor; the Mendip ridge closes the horizon on the right; the Quantocks and Brendons are in front; and the Blackdowns and Dorset highlands lie jumbled together on the left. The arcade has octagonal piers. Two of them have small niches, and there is a clerestory above.
It is one of the loveliest spots in that district of lovely villages, lying in the Vale of Taunton on the southern slope of the Quantocks. The parsonage is entirely unchanged: there is Sydney's study, a low-ceilinged room supported partly by pillars, level with the garden and opening into it.
The careless rebuilding of the columns shows that it is not in its original position. Holford, a village 6 m. E. from Williton, at the foot of the Quantocks. Its church is picturesquely situated; in the graveyard is an old cross with a mutilated figure on the shaft. Near Holford is Alfoxden, the residence of Wordsworth in 1797, when Coleridge was at Nether Stowey. Holton, a village 2-1/2 m.
To the first draft of Youth and Age, written in 1823, there is a little prose introduction, a reminiscence of the Quantocks, which is a lovely example of the way in which one sensation gains by description in terms of another.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking