In death’s cold pit I lay ore whelm’d with waves.
Beyond the village, the road winds again in fantastic loops, and is crossed, without the formality of gates by the W. C. and P.L.R. This weird concatenation of initials sounds like a mass-meeting of household sanitary appliances, but those readers who have diligently persevered through the earlier pages of this book will understand that the Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Light Railway is meant. Thenceforward, after more windings through a thinly peopled district, the road wriggles on to Worle; sending off a branch to the left hand for Woodspring, Swallow Cliff, and Sand Bay.
CHAPTER VII
WORSPRING PRIORY, KEWSTOKE
The Augustinian Priory of Worspring, or Wospring, now called “Woodspring,” stands in a very secluded situation in this little-visited nook of the coast, projecting abruptly into the Bristol Channel north-west of Wick, and terminated in that direction by St. Thomas’s Head: a promontory which owes its name directly to the Priory itself, partly dedicated to the Blessed St. Thomas of Canterbury. The roads of this district are perhaps better to be termed lanes; and they are lanes of old Devonian character: narrow, hollow, with high banks and hedges, stony and winding. The land is purely agricultural. Thus, except for a few farmers’ carts and waggons, or for those more than usually enterprising tourists and amateurs of ancient architecture and ecclesiastical ruins who spend their energies in seeking out the remains of Woodspring Priory, the stranger has until now been but rarely seen. A new complexion has, however, been put upon matters by the coming of what is known locally, “for short,” as the “W. C. and P.L.R.”; i.e. the Weston, Clevedon, and Portishead Light Railway, already described; and now learned archæologists, enthusiastic, but perhaps not always endowed with the stamina and endurance of explorers, travel hither in the company of picnic parties, to whom any ruin in a picturesque setting is a sufficient excuse for an afternoon afield. “Hither,” however, is here a generous term, for the railway does not come within a mile and a half of the spot. But “every little helps,” as the trite proverb tells us.
The name of “Woodspring” does not appear in print before 1791, when it is found in Collinson’s “History of Somerset.” Before that date it was always referred to as “Worspring.” The name has puzzled many, but it is really a simple corruption of the original term, “Worle-spring,” indicating the situation of the Priory on a rill that descended to these levels by the sea from the neighbourhood of Worle heights.
The Priory was founded in the first instance by Reginald FitzUrse, as a chapel of expiation of his share in the murder of Thomas à Becket. It was in 1210 refounded on a much larger scale by William de Courtenay, grandson, on the maternal side, of William Tracy, another of those sacrilegious knights. Courtenay endowed it as a home of Austin Canons and triply dedicated the establishment in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy and Undivided Trinity, and St. Thomas à Becket; and it was further enriched by lands bequeathed by Maud, the daughter, and Alice, the granddaughter, of the third murderer, le Bret or Brito: Alice expressing the devout hope that the intercession of the blessed martyr might always be available for herself and her children.
The seal of the Priory is curious. In the lower portion of the usual vesica-shaped device is an allusion to the dedication to St. Thomas of Canterbury, in the form of a representation of his martyrdom: Becket being shown falling by the altar, on which stands a chalice, at the moment of his skull being cleft by Richard le Bret’s sword, which protrudes, immensely large in proportion to the figure of the Archbishop, from the border.
WOODSPRING PRIORY.