The Somerset Coast

by Charles G. Harper

One of the very earliest discoverers of Weston was Mrs. Piozzi, the Mrs. Thrale of earlier years, friend of Dr. Johnson. Writing hence in 1819, she mentions the fine qualities of the air: “The breezes here are most salubrious: no land nearer than North America when we look down the Channel; and ’tis said that Sebastian Cabot used to stand where I now sit, and meditate his future discoveries of Newfoundland.”

The reference to “no land nearer than North America,” with the cautious proviso, “when we look down the Channel,” strikes the modern observer, who in fine weather distinctly sees the busy towns of the South Wales coast and the smoke-wreaths of its factory chimneys, not more than ten miles distant, as particularly quaint. The old county historians have little to say of Weston, and what they have to remark is concerned only with the descent of the manor.

Even so comparatively recently as 1824—five years, it will be noted, later than Mrs. Piozzi’s raptures—Weston remained a very small place, as shown in an old engraving published at the time in Rutter’s “Westonian Guide.” It consisted, it would appear, of the parish church of St. John, just rebuilt, and some thirty houses. A few trees, of a distinctly Noah’s Ark type, looked upon the sands, occupied by two bathing-machines, a shed, a horse and cart, and twelve widely distributed people of uncertain but pensive character. Such was the old inheritance of the Pigott and Smyth-Pigott family, who have owned the manor of Weston, with much else in the neighbourhood, since 1696.

But the evidence afforded by the frontispiece to “Rutter’s Guide,” which shows Weston like some sparse settlement on a desolate shore, does not tally with the statements contained in the booklet itself, in whose pages we read:

“The fishermen’s huts have almost disappeared and the town now contains about two hundred and fifty houses; a large portion of which are respectable residences,[^[2]] and even some elegant mansions; but notwithstanding this, its general appearance is little inviting to the stranger, especially in gloomy weather, or when the ebb of the spring tides leaves open large tracts of beach. But on a fine summer evening, when the tide is in, nothing can be more beautiful than the scene which it presents: numerous groups walking on its smooth and extensive sands, intermingled with a variety of carriages, horses, fishermen wading with nets, and the villagers enjoying the exhilarating breeze after the fatigues of the day.”

[2]. This is good hearing.

The seaside was at that time in process of being discovered. At innumerable spots around our coasts fisher villages were then being transformed into elegant resorts, which were saved from becoming vulgar by the sufficient facts that the working classes could not afford holidays, and that, if they could, the means of transport were lacking. When tedious and expensive coach journeys were the only methods of being conveyed, it is obvious that wage-earners could spare neither the time nor the money for what would have been to them, under the most favourable circumstances, an enterprise. But those classes were quite content to do without the week’s or fortnight’s holiday at the seaside which appears nowadays to be regarded as the birthright of most men, women, and children. They were not then educated up to holidays, and were content to work week in and week out through the year, never questioning the scheme of things that gave to the few that leisure they themselves could never enjoy.

It is a little difficult nowadays to realise the exclusive Weston that was; although, to be sure, those days when it still posed as exclusive are not so far distant but that many old people in the town can recollect them perfectly well.

The beginning of the end of this old-time attitude of aloofness may be dated from 1841, when the Bristol and Exeter Railway that was—the Great Western that is—was opened to Worle, in continuation of the line from Paddington to Bristol; being completed the whole way to Exeter in 1844.

The early history of railways is not yet ancient history, but it is already old enough to be obscured and made romantic by legends, some true, others coloured with that passion for the picturesque which transfigures history everywhere. Stories are told, as they are told everywhere, with a great deal of truth in them, of local objections to the railway. We hear of the passionate opposition offered by the Smyth-Pigotts and by the inhabitants of Weston to a proposal to run the main line near the town; with the result that it was constructed no closer than a mile away inland. The two thousand inhabitants who then constituted the town of Weston shortsightedly rejoiced at this victory, which was very speedily found to be a costly one; the branch tramway laid down from the main line, with railway carriages dragged slowly into the place, to a shed situated in the rear of the present Town Hall, proving an undignified entrance that not many visitors cared to experience twice. But for ten years this remained the way into the town by rail. A proper branch line was afterwards built from Worle, but still Weston station remained a terminus, until the new loop line was made, in 1884, coming through the town and rejoining the main at Uphill and Bleadon station.