Worle (locally “Wurle”) itself is a detestable village of vulgar and poverty-stricken shops and out-at-elbows cottages, a blot on its surroundings. As Weston rose from insignificance, Worle, which was anciently its market-town and centre of supplies, sank into obscurity, and now the sole interest of the place is its pretty church, containing some good miserere seats. It was of old the property of Worspring Priory, and Richard Spring, one of its later Priors, was at the same time vicar of Worle. He resigned the Priory in 1525. His initials are found carved on one of the misereres. A small stone in the churchyard is inscribed:
A Maiden in Mold
60 years old
JOANNA
1644
The registers contain some curious items, among them, under date of 1609, the following note:
“Edward Bustle cruelly murthered by consent of his owne wyfe, who, with one Humfry Hawkins, and one other of theyre associates, were executed for the same murther, and hanged in Irons at a place called Shutt Shelfe, neere Axbridge, and the body of the said Bustle barberously used, viz., his throte cutt, his legs cutt of, and divers woundes in his body, and buryed in a stall, was taken up and buryed in the church yard at Worle, March Xth. A good president (sic) for wicked people.”
Apparently the degree of criminality of the unhappy Edward Bustle’s wife was not great, for she not only escaped this hanging which, according to the wording of the above note, she suffered, but married in the following October a certain bold man, by name Nicholas Pitman.
A violent, but unexplained, local antipathy to lawyers was formerly manifested at Worle, by the contumelious drumming out of any member of the legal profession who chanced to be discovered in the village. Some embittered page of local history is no doubt concerned in this now obsolete custom, but this is probably almost as far removed in the annals of the place as those distant ages when Worle was by way of being a seaport. Where the flat meadows now spread, maplike below the village, and where the Great Western Railway runs, ships in dim bygone æons rode at anchor. Proof of that forgotten fact was accidentally discovered of recent years, when, in digging the foundation of a new brewery, an ancient anchor was unearthed from the sandy subsoil.