WATCHET.
Watchet shares with the Italian town of Magenta the honour of giving a name to a colour; only, while the colour “magenta” is a modern and a horribly inartistic kind of reddish purple, introduced soon after 1859, when Louis Napoleon’s victory over the Austrians at Magenta was popular in France, “watchet” is certainly as old as Chaucer who, in 1383, in his “Canterbury Pilgrims,” says:
In hoses red he went ful fetishly,
Y-clad he was ful smal and properly
Al in a kirtel of lyght wachet;
the colour “watchet” being a light, or celestial blue, as shown in “Hakluyt’s Voyages,” in which we read of “mariners attired in watchet, or skie-coloured clothe.”
CHAPTER XVII
CLEEVE ABBEY—OLD CLEEVE—BLUE ANCHOR
Two miles inland from Watchet lies the Cistercian Abbey of St. Mary de Cleeve, or Clive; that is to say, St. Mary of the Cliff—the most notable ruin in these districts of Somerset. The church, the Abbey itself, has quite vanished, and its materials centuries ago passed into such commendably useful purposes as building-stones for neighbouring farmsteads, cow-bartons and linhays, while the many excellent roads of the neighbourhood doubtless owe their foundations to the same source. The very interesting and extensive remains of the establishment are those of the domestic buildings, which have scarce their equal elsewhere in England.
This once proud and beautiful Abbey was founded in 1188 by one William de Romare, of whom we know little else than that he was of the family of the Earls of Lincoln of that period. It stands, after the manner of all Cistercian monasteries, in a pleasant fertile vale, watered by a never-failing stream; for the White Monks were, next to their religious association, most remarkable for their agricultural and stock-breeding pursuits. They were not greatly distinguished for their learning, as were, for example, the Benedictines; but as farmers they were pre-eminent, growing corn and breeding sheep and horses more scientifically than any secular agriculturists of their age.