We crossed the Frome and Radstock road, and raced down a straight mile that is lined on the left by the high park walls of Ammerdown House, and overhung by beeches. At the bottom only an inferior road continued our line, and that dwindled to a footpath. For the descent to Kilmersdon by this direct route is too precipitous for a modern road. We had to turn, therefore, sharp to the left along the road from Writhlington to Mells and Frome, and then curved round out of it to the right, and so under the railway down to Kilmersdon. Before entering the village the road bent alongside a steep wooded slope littered with ash poles. The bottom of the deep hollow is occupied by a church, an inn distinguished by a coat-of-arms, and the motto, “Tant que je puis,” and many stone cottages strung about a stream and a parallelogram of roads. The church tower has three tiers of windows in it, and a blue-faced clock, whose gilt hands pointed to half-past three. There is a venerable and amusing menagerie of round-headed and long-headed gargoyles, with which a man could spend a lifetime unbored. Inside as well as outside the church the Jolliffe family, now represented by Lord Hylton, predominates, amid the Easter scent of jonquil and daffodil. For example, much space is given to the following verses, in memory of Thomas Samuel Jolliffe, lord of the Hundreds of Kilmersdon and Wellow, a “high-minded and scrupulously honourable gentleman,” “of Norman original,” who died in 1824 at the age of seventy-eight,—
“A graceful mien, an elegant address,
Looks which at once each winning charm express,
A life where worth by wisdom polished shines,
Where wisdom’s self again by love refines:—
A wit that no licentious coarseness knows,
The sense that unassuming candour shows,
Reason by narrow principles unchecked,
Slave to no party, bigot to no sect.
Knowledge of various life, of learning too,