Travellers to or from the West by the Great Western Railway are generally much impressed, between Yatton and Bridgwater, by the strange solitary hill of Brent Knoll that rises abruptly from the plain of Burnham Level, and looks oddly like some long-extinct volcano with its cone shorn off or fallen in. Fast trains do not stop at the little wayside station also called “Brent Knoll,” and while passengers are still gazing curiously at the hill, they are whirled away in midst of other interesting scenery.
Brent Knoll stands out prominently by virtue of its height of 457 feet, as well as by its isolated situation in the great alluvial plain through which lazily meander the muddy streams of Brue and Axe to their outlets at Uphill and Highbridge. It is one of those many scattered heights that are so strangely disposed about the neighbourhood of Sedgemoor, and give so romantic an appearance to these wide-spreading levels. Of these the most prominent, geographically and historically, is the famed Glastonbury Tor, which with its volcanic outline, crested with the tall tower of the ancient Chapel of St. Michael, is prominent for many a misty mile, like some Hill of Dream. Then there is the Mump at Boroughbridge, by the crossing of the Parret into the Isle of Athelney; Borough Hill, near Wedmore; and many smaller, together with those scarcely perceptible hillocks amid the marshes that are now the sites of villages, whose very names of Chedzoy, Middlezoy, Westonzoyland, and Othery, tell us that these, together with the larger hills, were all, “once upon a time,” islands in a shallow sea that stagnated over the whole of what is now called “Sedgemoor,” but is properly “Sedgemere.” Centuries of draining, of cutting those long, broad and deep dykes called “rhines,” that cross the moor for many miles, in every direction, and so carry away the waters, have converted what had become, after the sea had retired, an almost impassable morass into a fertile plain. The industry of peat-digging in the heart of the moor shows the nature of the soil in these parts, and modern discoveries of prehistoric lake-dwellings at Meare, whose very name contains evidence of the mere, or lake that once existed, indicate the manner of life these ancient inhabitants lived. King Arthur seems a dim and distant figure to us, but long before his time there lived a race of people on the islands of this inland sea; folk who, although they frescoed themselves liberally with red ochre, were by no means without a more artistic knowledge of decoration than implied by that crude form of personal adornment. They certainly made earthenware pottery of graceful forms, decorated with ornament of excellent design and execution. Their other habits were primitive. Largely a fish-eating folk, they often lived, as described earlier in these pages, in wattled huts built on piles or stakes driven in the waters. These forms of dwellings were readily adapted for defence, for shelter for their boats, and for fishing.
In those far-distant days Brent Knoll was an island. William of Malmesbury, whose chronicle of the English kings was written early in the twelfth century, and abounds in marvels and prodigies, tells us that it was originally named “Insula Ranarum,” the Isle of Frogs. It had been, moreover, he says, in times even then far remote, the home of three most famous wicked giants, who were put to the sword, after a long and evil existence, by one Ider, in the marvellous times of King Arthur.
Excellent roads completely encircle Brent Knoll, making the circuit around the base of it in some four miles, and a very pleasant and picturesque miniature circular trip it is on a bicycle beneath the great hill, which is thus seen to be as it were, roughly, one hill superimposed upon another, with a remarkably distinct ledge or broad shelf running around it, at half its total height; more noticeable from the north-west, perhaps, than from any other direction. The great bulk of Brent Knoll forming this base is composed of has rock; the upper part being of oolite. On the summit is an ancient earthwork, the centre of it marked by a flagstaff. No hilltop would be complete without its ancient fortified camp, but the story of that upon Brent Knoll has never been told, nor is now ever likely to be. Roman coins, found in almost every old fortified post, have been found here also, and down below, in the meadows, the name of “Battleborough” remains, with a tradition of Alfred the Great having here fought with and defeated the Danes, or been defeated by them; which, in its vagueness, shows how extremely little is known of old times here. But the name “Brent”—i.e. “Burnt”—Knoll is of itself evidence of warlike times, when the hilltop flared with beacon-fires.
There are two villages on Brent Knoll; South and East Brent, both pleasant places; the first with a noble Perpendicular church and stately tower; the second with a church less noble, provided with a tall spire that was formerly used as a landmark for ships making Burnham, and was kept conspicuously whitewashed, that the mark might not be overlooked. Since the tall lighthouses of Burnham have arisen, the spire of East Brent is no longer regularly made white.
BRENT KNOLL.
In the South Brent church a fine series of carved bench-ends includes satirical representations of the story of Reynard the Fox, here especially applied to the grasping conduct of the mitred Abbots of Glastonbury, who sought to seize the temporalities and emoluments of South Brent, but were defeated at law. Thus we find here a fox, habited as an abbot, preaching to a flock of geese and other fowls; the fleece of a sheep hanging from his crozier sufficiently showing that his wardenship of flocks does not go unrewarded. Three of his monks, shown as cowled swine, peer up at him. A lower panel on the same bench-end discloses a pig being roasted on a spit, which is turned at one end by a monkey and the fire blown with a bellows by another monkey at the opposite end.
On another bench-end of this series we see that the geese have revolted against the fox, who is found sitting upright in a penitential attitude, his hind legs in fetters. A monkey preaches to, or admonishes, the geese, in his stead. In the lower panel the fox is seen in the stocks, a monkey mounting guard with a halberd.
