The clammy slabs of clay thus formed are then taken by the “bearer-off” and placed in the “hacks”—that is to say, long stands—with a slight tile roofing, to dry. The tiled protection is to shield the unbaked bricks from being partly dissolved by possible rainstorms.
The final operations are the stacking into kilns and the burning, carried out precisely in the same manner as the burning of bricks to be used in building.
The river Parret—in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle styled “Pedridan”—is in other ways a river of considerable importance to North Somerset. Like the Avon at Bristol, it runs out towards the sea in its last few miles more like a deep and muddy gutter at low water than in the likeness of a river; but the Parret mud, as we have already seen, is at least useful, and a source of wealth to Bridgwater; and shipping of considerable tonnage, bringing chiefly coals from South Wales, and deals from Norway, comes up the estuary to Bridgwater’s quays.
The Parret is about thirty miles in length, rising some two miles within the Dorset border, near South Perrot, which, together with the two widely sundered small towns, or large villages, of North and South Petherton, and perhaps the village of Puriton also, takes its name from the river. In common with several other streams on either side of the Bristol Channel—with, of course, the river Severn at their head—it is subject to a tidal wave, known as “the Bore.” This is caused by the very great ebb and flow of the tide, here so much as thirty-six feet at springs. The flood tide comes up the deep and narrow estuary from the outer channel with such swiftness, and is so laterally compressed that a gradual rise is impossible and the water comes surging up as a great and formidable wave, like a wall, from five to six feet in height. At such times when westerly gales or spring tides prevail, the Bore easily rises to nine feet in height. It is always an impressive spectacle, seen from the river bank; and viewed from a boat, even when the craft is managed by a boatman accustomed to this phenomenon, is more than a little alarming. It sufficiently scared the French prisoners of war, confined by the riverside in an old factory, known as the “Glass House” and nowadays a pottery, from any serious attempts at escaping by water.
CHAPTER XIII
BRIDGWATER—ADMIRAL BLAKE—THE MONMOUTH REBELLION
The ancient town of Bridgwater can now produce few evidences of its antiquity. The siege of 1645, various conflagrations, and the very considerable modern prosperity of the place have all been contributory causes toward this—to the tourist—somewhat desolating result. The town straddles on either side of the Parret, the hither side named appropriately and inevitably “Eastover.” It is the less considerable and important portion, the chief buildings of the place being on the left bank of the river. A dull, undistinguished, heavy Georgian appearance characterised the town until quite recently, but a great deal of building activity has of late been manifested here, with results perhaps as yet a little too recent for criticism. At any rate, the old outstanding features remain; the large parish church, with curiously squat tower and elongated spire, forming with the Corn Exchange and Town Hall, the one striking group that alone stands in pictures recognisably for Bridgwater.
A great deal of argument has been expended upon the name of Bridgwater. The name is apparently of the most obvious and elementary derivation, for here is the “water” (largely impregnated, it is true, with mud) in the river Parret, and here is the bridge, the modern representative of others of different degrees of antiquity, erected at the lowest place down the estuary where it was possible to fling a bridge across. It is evident, then, that it must ever have been impossible to enter or leave the town in an easterly or westerly direction without crossing a bridge or ferry at this point. Other place-names in the district, those of Highbridge and Boroughbridge, for example, prove the word “bridge” to have been used in the ordinary way, when necessary, as an integral, and indeed scarcely avoidable, part of a name. Yet the derivation of “Bridgwater” has nothing to do, explicitly, with water, although “Brugge,” i.e. Bridge, the name of the place at the time of the Conquest, certainly implies water beneath. The manor was given, after the Conquest, to one of the Conqueror’s Norman barons, Walter of Douai, and became therefrom known as “Brugie of Walter” and by degrees, by a natural elision of letters readily dropped in ordinary speech, what it is now.
BIRTHPLACE OF ADMIRAL BLAKE