The rise and fall of the tide at Portishead, ranging from 33 feet at neaps to 44 feet at spring-tides, is said to be the greatest, not only in England, but in Europe.
IN PORTISHEAD CHURCH.
The old village of Portishead is quite distinct from the modern Portishead just described. A broad straggling street, a mile long, connects the two. Some very charming old-world houses are clustered around this original inland Portishead, whose noble pinnacled church-tower, rising in four stately stages, is one of the finest in these parts of Somerset. The north aisle has towards its east end a transverse masonry strainer, built in the middle of the fifteenth century to prevent the walls collapsing, owing to a subsidence of the soil. As in the case of the great stone inverted arches inserted to support the central tower of Wells Cathedral, a century earlier, the architects employed have attempted to mask the merely utilitarian addition by decorative treatment. The attempt has here met with a greater degree of success than was possible at Wells, and although the broad arch spanning the north aisle has obviously no ecclesiastical use or purport, save that of shoring up walls that were in danger of falling, it is not the offensive blot it might, with less careful treatment, easily have been made.
At Portishead is the terminus of that quaint short railway, some twelve miles in length with the long many-jointed name, like some lengthy goods-train—the Weston, Clevedon, and Portishead Light Railway; familiarly (for life is short and busy) the “W.C. and P.L.R.” This is a single-track line, of ordinary gauge, originally planned for a steam-tramway, when the Parliamentary powers for its construction, as between Weston and Clevedon, were first obtained in 1887. The Act authorising the extension to Portishead was obtained in 1898.
The first portion, between Weston and Clevedon, was opened December 1st, 1897. In the interval between 1887 and 1897 the Light Railways Act had been passed, and the methods of construction were modified in accordance. This was the first line to be opened under the Light Railways Act, and has therefore the interest attaching to a pioneer. The W.C. and P.L.R. has, in the few years it has been opened, conferred many benefits upon a district almost wholly agricultural and hitherto peculiarly inaccessible.
The coast between Portishead and Clevedon is formed principally by the long steeply shelving hill-range known for the greater part of its length as Walton Down, thickly covered with woods. The road on to Clevedon runs in the valley formed between the landward dip of these heights and the rise of other hills yet further inland, dominated by the camp-crested summit of Cadbury Hill. In the pleasant vale thus formed, runs easily the W.C. and P.L.R. aforesaid.
There are two villages along this road, Weston and Walton, both equipped with the “Gordano” suffix, lest they should, perhaps, be confounded with other Westons and Waltons. They are not remarkable villages, and the church at Walton has been rebuilt; so that the place holds no particular interest for the stranger. But the church of Weston-in-Gordano, a small Perpendicular building, retains in its porch an unusual and very interesting feature: a wooden musicgallery over the doorway, approached by a short flight of stone steps in the thick side wall of the porch itself. This gallery appears to have been used by the church choir in olden times, principally for the singing of the canticle for Palm Sunday, “Gloria Laus et Honor,” and for Christmas hymns; but it has, for centuries past, remained unused and is now merely an archæological curiosity.
As the stranger approaches Clevedon, his attention cannot fail to be attracted by a singular castle-like group of buildings upon the skyline, on the right hand. This is the so-called “Walton Castle,” built in the reign of James the First by the Paulets, then owners of the surrounding lands, as a hunting-lodge. Castle-building after the mediæval style had long been extinct, but this lodge was designed, for picturesqueness’ sake, in that old manner. It is a flimsy and fast-decaying sham.