CHAPTER XVI
WILLITON—ST. DECUMAN’S AND THE WYNDHAMS—WATCHET
Leaving St. Audries, one also leaves the Quantocks behind, coming downhill into Williton, a place now by way of being a little town, with a railway station, a cattle market, a Union Workhouse, resembling the residence of some more than usually wealthy peer, a Petty Sessions Court, and a police station.
Yet, with all these adjuncts of an up-to-date civilisation, Williton does not enjoy the distinction of being a real, original, independent parish. It stands in the parish of St. Decuman’s, a church yonder on the hillside, over a mile away, near Watchet: the peculiar humour of the thing being that St. Decuman’s, save for a few rustic cottages close by, stands lonely, while Watchet and Williton are populous places. Thus we observe here the engaging paradox, outraging all the problems of Euclid, of the larger being contained in the smaller. At the same time, it must be allowed that the “chapel-of-ease” at Williton, however inferior ecclesiastically and architecturally to St. Decuman’s, is at any rate of a respectable antiquity. It originated in a chantry chapel founded by Robert FitzUrse, brother of that Reginald who bore his share in the murder of Thomas à Becket. In a district such as this, where churchyard and wayside crosses, more or less dilapidated, are common-places, it seems hardly worth while to note that the base of an ancient cross stands at the east end of Williton church, or that fragments of two others stand in front of that old white-faced coaching inn, the “Egremont Hotel,” one of them made to support a gaslamp which itself has been put out of action by effluxion of time.
St. Decuman’s, the parish church of Watchet, stands fully half a mile away from the little town, inland, within sight of Williton, on a conspicuous knoll. St. Decuman, to whom the church is dedicated, was one of those wonderful West Country saints for whom, as for Napoleon, the word “impossible” did not exist. He flourished at the close of the seventh century and the opening of the eighth, and came originally from South Wales, as a missionary to the heathen of Somerset. Crossing the sea on a hurdle, or on his cloak, according to the conflicting accounts given, he established a hermit’s cell on this spot and subsisted chiefly on berries and the milk of a cow which came from nowhere in particular, especially for the purpose of sustaining the holy man. The heathen, however, resented the hermit’s presence, and seized and beheaded him here, fondly imagining they had thus given him his quietus. But they little knew the virile qualities of this hardy race of missioners who came from across Channel and wrought marvels all along these coasts of Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. St. Decuman was beheaded, but that was by no means the end of him. He took up his head, washed it in a spring that gushed forth upon the spot (for he was a cleanly person for a hermit), and placed it again on his shoulders: probably remarking, in the manner of modern conjurors, “That’s how it’s done!” But of this we have no record. To convert the ungodly after this exhibition of his powers was easy. There would appear to have been no reason why so remarkable a man as this should ever have died, but he passed away at last, in A.D. 706. A grim little stone figure of him occupies a niche in the tower.
The existing church is a fine and stately building, chiefly of the Perpendicular period; the exterior remarkable for the extremely hideous carvings that decorate (if that be quite the word) the dripstones over the windows of the south aisle. Most of them are grotesque faces, but one is of a somewhat mysterious character and appears to be the representation of a little shivering nude human figure, threatened by a huge bird of the pelican type.
The interior discloses fine cradle-roofs to nave and aisles, with angel corbels and a deeply undercut frieze of conventionalised vine-leaves. The third pier from the west, in the north aisle, bears tabernacled niches filled with small statues of four bishops, and on that behind the pulpit are figures of an abbot and of St. George and the Dragon. The Egremont and Wyndham chapels are rich in memorials of the Wyndham family, formerly of Orchard Wyndham, close by. An old funeral helmet, painted and gilt, and surmounted with the crest of a lion’s head and fetterlock, hangs in the south chapel, and two others are suspended in the chancel and the north aisle.
The Wyndhams, who are represented here so numerously in sepulchral brasses and marble monuments, derived from the Wyndhams of Felbrigg, Norfolk, but originally of Wymondham in that county; John, second son of Sir Thomas Wyndham, having in the reign of Henry VIII. married Elizabeth Sydenham, of Orchard Sydenham, afterwards known as Orchard Wyndham. The Norfolk branch of the family in course of time replaced the “y” in their name by an “i,” but the West of England Wyndhams have generally (by no means always) adhered to the more picturesque fashion of subscribing themselves. The last Wyndham here was George, Lord Egremont, who died in 1845, when the title became extinct and the family property here and at Sampford Brett was sold.
The brasses include those of John Wyndham, of Kentsford, and his wife Florence, sister and co-heir of Nicholas Wadham of Merrifield, Somerset. He died in 1572, and she in 1596, many years after the gruesome adventure she experienced in being nearly buried alive.
The brasses of this worthy pair, half the size of life and most carefully, if at the same time coarsely, engraved, with a meticulous care for details of armour and costume, face one another on a huge stone slab, set against the wall. A smaller brass represents them and a third figure, intended for Fate, discussing their respective ends, with the following dialogue:—