Is my Inheritance
R Q
E
MINEHEAD CHURCH.
The shaft of an ancient cross stands at one end of this row of cottages.
THE MANOR OFFICE, MINEHEAD.
In midst of Minehead, now overshadowed by tall business premises, painfully like those to be seen any day in London, stands a charming old building, long past used as the Manor Office. The original use of the building, which appears to be of the fifteenth century, is unknown, and perhaps hardly even to be guessed at. The walls, of red sandstone, are immensely thick and stoutly buttressed, with oak-framed windows of semi-ecclesiastical design, still displaying traces of rich carving.
Old customs survive at Minehead, in a half-hearted way, and not perhaps from any natural spontaneous joyousness, but because there is something to be made out of them. This does not, however, apply to the burning of the ashen faggot on the domestic hearth on Christmas Eve, and but partially to the “worslers”—i.e. “wassailers”—who every January 17th visit neighbouring orchards, and with song and dance invoke a good crop of apples in the forthcoming season. But weddings at the old parish church still form an excuse for levying tribute, and those who have attended generally discover their return barred until they have rendered the wherewithal for drinks round.