The centre of this district is Yatton, which now draws all surrounding traffic by reason of its junction station on the Great Western Railway. Here the traveller changes for Clevedon, or for Cheddar and Wells, or for Wrington Vale. Yatton takes its name from the river Yeo, which oozes near by, and itself hides in that form of spelling the Celtic word ea, for water, akin to the modern French eau. Thus Yatton is really, derivatively, the same as Eton, near Windsor, the water-town beside the river Thames; Eaton by Chester, on the river Dee, and many other places throughout the country with the affix of “ea” or “ay.” An alternative derivation, as arguable as the first, makes Yatton derive from the “gate,” or gap, in the neighbouring hills, through which the Yeo drains on its way from Wrington. The village itself stands somewhat high, but overlooks a very considerable tract of low-lying country, formerly in the nature of a creek, as proved by modern discoveries of a Roman boat-house and similar waterside relics near by.
The business brought by the junction-station of the Great Western Railway at Yatton has effectually abolished the village-like rustic character of the place. It is more by way of a townlet of one long street, remarkable for the unpleasing prominence of blank walls enclosing the grounds of residents whose desire for privacy appears to be excessive.
The great feature of Yatton is, however, its fine church. No traveller can have journeyed much on the Great Western Railway without having noticed, as his train approached Yatton, the singular effect produced by the tall tower of this fine building, surmounted by a spire that has lost the last third part of its original height, and has been finished off with small pinnacles. The effect is almost uncanny, but by no means unpleasant, and the proposals that have from time to time been made to complete the spire are altogether to be deprecated. No records remain by which it can with certainty be said that the spire was ever completed when the church was at last finished, after building operations that extended from 1486 to 1500; but the evidence afforded by the Late Perpendicular cresting and pinnacles that finish off the incomplete structure, and are contemporary with it, seems to point to one or other of two hypotheses: that funds finally proved insufficient, almost on the eve of the works being brought to a conclusion; or that the builders were alarmed by signs of their having already placed as much weight upon the tower as it could possibly bear.
YATTON CHURCH.
It is a noble church, designed in the last phase of pure Gothic architecture, with some few remains of Early English and Decorated from a former building, demolished to make way for this larger and more splendid place of worship. Here in the De Wyke chantry is the altar-tomb of Evelina de Wyke and her husband, c. 1337; and near by is that of Sir Richard Cradock Newton, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, 1448, and his wife, Emma, or Emmota, Perrott. The recumbent effigies of the Judge and his lady are very fine. He wears the robes of his office and a collar with links of “S.S.,”—mystic letters generally considered to signify “Souveraigne,” and to be a badge of Lancastrian loyalty. This example is considered to be the earliest known. The “garbs,” or wheatsheaves of the Judge’s coat-of-arms, may still be traced, as also the arms of his wife—three pendant golden pears on a red field, in punning allusion to “Perrott.”
Here also is the tomb of the Judge’s eldest son, Sir John Newton, and his wife, Isabel Chedder. All these had, in their time, greatly to do with the rebuilding and beautifying of Yatton church.
A curious epitaph in the churchyard, to the memory of a gipsy who died in 1827, reads:
Here lies Merrily Joules,
a beauty bright,