Thus shall we come at length to Brean, as into the end of all things; for, truly, the spot is desolate. Not, let it be said, with an ugly desolation; for, although as you approach the sea, and the good alluvial earth becomes more and more admixed with sand, the surroundings become mere waste land, these are wastes with their own charm and beauty to any but a farmer, to whose eyes nothing can be so beautiful as a ripening field of good corn when prices are likely to rule high, or a healthy field of swedes when he has much stock to feed.
Here a road runs parallel with the coast, under the lee of the impending sand hills, so that if you would catch the merest glimpse of the sea, you must climb to the summits of them and look down.
Brean church lies considerably below the level of these surrounding sand-towans, which menace it in a manner not a little alarming in the view of a stranger. But the sand here, at any rate, has done its worst, for although in places across the narrow road it stands higher than the church tower, it is largely held down at last by a sparse growth of coarse grass, and the very height and massiveness of these sandhills act, under the circumstances, as a shield against the clouds of other sand still blowing in during rough weather from the sea.
The church of St. Bridget is a small blue-grey limestone building of the Perpendicular period, of rough character, scarcely distinguishable from a little distance as a church, and remarkable only for having its dwarf tower finished off with a saddlebacked roof. It is, as a matter of fact, only the remaining portion of the tower, struck by lightning and thrown down in 1729. An inscription on it, “John Ginckens, churchwarden, Año Dom. 1729,” no doubt records the repairs effected on that occasion. “Ginckens” appears to have been the best local attempt possible at spelling “Jenkins.”
Although it is sand that now more nearly threatens Brean, the peculiar dangers of the place formerly arose from water. The ancient banks, supposed by some to be Roman, that kept the low-lying country from being flooded by the sea were burst in 1607, and a great stretch of land, roughly twenty miles by five, was submerged for a long time to a depth of from ten to twelve feet. A pamphlet published at the time says:
“The parish of Breane is swallowed (for the most part) up by the waters. In it stood but nine houses, and of those seaven were consumed, and with them XXVI persons lost their lives.”
Local farmers are busily employed in the making of what is known as “Caerphilly cheese”; sent across Channel to Cardiff and sold there as a Welsh product to the South Wales mining population.
BERROW.
Blown sand, “allus a-shiften and a-blowen,” is the most prominent feature of the way from this point, all the four miles into Burnham. The ragwort—“the yallers,” as the countryfolk hereabouts know it—distributes a rich colour by the wayside, and confers upon what would otherwise be a somewhat dreary waste a specious cheerfulness. But even this hardy wilding, content with the minimum of nutriment, grows scarce and disappears as Berrow comes in sight; Berrow, where the sand-hummocks broaden out and entirely surround the church that stands there in its walled churchyard with a solitary cottage for neighbour—as though defensively laagered against attack in an enemy’s country; as indeed it is; the enemy, these insidious sands. Berrow, there can be no doubt whatever, was one of the many islets that anciently were scattered about Sedgemere, and we have but to glance inland between Brean and Berrow for this aforetime character of the surrounding country to be abundantly manifest, and for the eye to be immediately fixed with one of the most outstanding features of old time; the hill of Brent Knoll.