VII
THROUGH SOMERSET AGAIN
Porlock is a word of dread significance to those who are interested in the roads of England. A precipitous hill nearly three miles long, with a surface of sand and stones and several sharp corners—such is the vision that this name invokes. There is, however, not the least necessity to lower ourselves into Porlock on these alarming gradients. Near the top of the hill there is a private road that turns off to the left, and may be used for the sum of one shilling. It is narrow, and has a poor surface and two “hairpin” turns, but it is nowhere steep, and the woods through which it runs are entrancing. The car slips gently down among the birches and rowan-trees, and soon we see the bay below us with its dark grey beach, and Porlock under the hill.
PORLOCK.
The two roads join, and run into the village together, at the corner where the “Ship” Inn and the cottages round it, with their thatched roofs and porches and gay creepers, make a pretty picture with the green hill for background. Indeed, all Porlock is made of pretty pictures: an inland village could hardly be more decorative. There was a time when it was not an inland village, but a favourite landing-place for visitors of various nations but of one marauding aim. It does not to-day appear a promising field for a robber of any ambition, but time was, I believe, when it was quite a stirring place, with a royal palace and much prosperity. When the Danes landed here in the night they were routed to their ships with empty hands: but when, a hundred and fifty years later, no less a man than Harold Godwinson sailed in from his exile in Ireland, he was not content with plundering and burning Porlock itself, but made it a centre for expeditions. He built himself a fort here, whence he could comfortably raid the country that was afterwards his own kingdom. The French invasion of the seventeenth century turned out to be a false alarm, but none the less the inhabitants arose as one man, armed themselves valiantly with scythes and pikes, and hurried away to Exeter to join William of Orange—which seems an original way of repelling invasion.
There is an interesting church here. The alabaster figures of a knight and his lady in elaborate headdresses represent Lord Harington of Aldingham and his wife, afterwards Lady Bonville; whose finely carved garments and faces have been thickly covered with deep-cut initials by those who love antiquities as the Conqueror loved the tall deer.
Those whose love of antiquities is of another kind will find it worth their while to run to the “Anchor” Inn at Porlock Weir, where every room is rich in ancient furniture and vessels of copper and brass. The road that leads to it is excellent, and so is the one that takes us on to Dunster, though the redness of its surface adds a new terror to dust. We pass through Allerford with a fine view of the hills and a glimpse of the old pack-horse bridge; but when we reach the by-way to Selworthy we shall do well to turn aside. For this pretty lane, which is roofed with foliage as completely as a pergola, leads not only to an interesting church and a tithe-barn, but to a group of almshouses that is unequalled in its simple way: half a dozen thatched and gabled cottages ranged, not in a stiff row, but round a sloping green, with wild woods to shelter them, and walnut-trees to shade them, and hollyhocks and fuchsias to make them gay. Between them and the woods a tiny stream trickles through the moss, and over it a rough tree-stem has been flung to serve as bridge.
After a few more miles on the fine red road, with Dunkerry Hill conspicuous on the right, we see, first Minehead lying by the sea and spreading up the hill, and then the watch-tower of Dunster. A minute later we drive into the Middle Ages.
This street of Dunster makes one half in love with the feudalism that could produce so perfect a picture. On one side are the porch and archway of the “Luttrell Arms”; on the other the octagonal yarn-market, gabled and tiled and mossy, with a little mullioned window in each gable; between them lies the straight, wide street; and in the background, dominating and protective, the castle towers are lifted high upon their wooded hill. Through all the centuries between the Conquest and to-day this castle has had no masters but the Mohuns and the Luttrells, and there is nothing in Dunster that is not connected, directly or indirectly, with one of these two ancient names. These buildings to right and left of us, for instance—this inn with the mediæval porch and the beautiful north wing, and this market-house that used to be the scene of “a very celebrate market at Dunstorre ons a wekes”—were both built by George Luttrell of the sixteenth century and repaired by George Luttrell of the seventeenth. And if we walk down the wide street and turn to the left we shall find the church of the Mohuns’ priory, the Benedictine priory that the first Mohun of Dunster founded, “pricked by the fear of God.”