LYTES CARY MANOR-HOUSE.
In the wooded vale between Shepton Mallet and Wells is a pretty straggling village of whitewashed houses with Tudor mullioned windows and, some of them, Tudor fireplaces within. This is Croscombe, which, like Crowcombe in western Somerset, has its village cross, but a mutilated one, and a church rich in Jacobean woodwork. The canopied pulpit, dated 1616, and the chancel screen, reaching almost to the roof, bearing the Royal arms, are perhaps the finest examples of the period to be found anywhere. An inn, once a priory, near the cross has panelled ceilings and other features of the fifteenth century. Some old cloth mills, with their emerald green mill-ponds, are one of the peculiarities of Croscombe. Shepton Mallet is depressing, perhaps because crape is manufactured there. A lonely old hostelry to the south of the town known as "Cannard's Grave," not a cheery sign under the most favourable circumstances, but with padlocked doors and windows boarded up as we saw it, had a forbidding look, and seemed to warrant the mysterious stories that are told about it. The cross in the market-place was erected in 1500, but it has been too scraped and restored to classify it with those at Cheddar or Malmesbury. The church contains a fine oak roof and some ancient tombs, mainly to the Strodes, an important Somersetshire family with Republican tendencies, one of whom harboured the Duke of Monmouth in his house the night after his defeat at Sedgemoor. The remains of this house, "Downside," stand about a mile from Shepton Mallet, but it has been altered and restored from time to time, so that now it has lost much of its ancient appearance. The pistols which the duke left here remained in the possession of descendants until about eight years ago, when they were lost. Monmouth's host, Edward Strode, also owned what is now called "Monmouth House," from the fact that the duke slept there on June 23rd and 30th, 1685, upon his march from Bridgwater towards Bristol and back again. Monmouth's room may yet be seen, and not many years ago possessed its original furniture.[18]
LYTES CARY MANOR-HOUSE.
At Cannard's Grave we strike into the old Foss way, and if we follow it through West Lydford towards Ilchester we shall find on the left-hand side, a quarter of a mile or so from the road, Lytes Cary, one of the most compact little manor-houses in western England. But the fine old rooms are bare and almost ruinous. The arms of the Lytes occur in some shields of arms in the "decorated" chapel (which is now a cider cellar), and upon a projecting bay-window near a fine embattled and pierced parapet. The hall is entered from the entrance porch (over which is a graceful oriel), and has its timber roof and rich cornice intact. On the first floor is a spacious panelled room with Tudor bay-window (dated 1533) and open fireplace, which if carefully restored would make a delightful dwelling room; and it seems a thousand pities that this and other apartments dating from the fourteenth century should be in their present neglected state. The front of the manor-house reminds one of Great Chaldfield in Wiltshire, but on a smaller scale and exteriorly less elaborate in architectural detail.
