High Ham and Somerset – Page 13 – For the fainthearted . . .

The commodification of rural England

It is a fine old farmhouse. Blue lias stone and a thatch roof give it a picture postcard look. A garden at the front is enclosed by a low wall and a neat wrought iron gate. Beyond the gate, a stone slab pathway leads to a solid wooden front door.

“Farmhouse” is, of course, a misnomer. It is two generations since the house was separated from the land for which it was the dwelling place. The fields once worked by the occupants of the house have long been part of …

In a country churchyard

Walking through the gateway of the churchyard, an instantly recognized names was inscribed in stone. He was a familiar presence in the farmyard, a firm friend of my grandfather. The soft cream colour of the headstone with the plain, unadorned inscription captured a sense of the man he was. Anyone who knew him would have remembered a man who was solid, reliable and unostentatious. He was a man with tough hands and a gentle heart. Of my grandfather’s generation, he had married late in life and his daughter was around …

Naming places

In Pursuit of Spring is Edward Thomas’ account of a bicycle ride from London to Somerset in March 1913. Riding westward to meet the signs of springtime in those days when the season arrived much later than it does a century later, he left the capital on the morning of Good Friday, 21st March 1913. At Garratt Green in south-west London, he notes:

As I left the Green I noticed Huntspill Road. Why is it Huntspill Road? I thought at once of Huntspill in Somerset. of Highbridge on the Brue,

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Glastonbury romance

The walls of a circular room at the county museum in Taunton are inscribed with comments on Somerset and its people. Quotes from famous writers include words that are pejorative as well as ones more complimentary, words from unexpected sources appear, among them a comment from John Steinbeck, who stayed in the east Somerset town of Bruton in 1959:

The other night, I discovered that fifty feet from my , through a break in the trees, you can see St Michael’s Tor at Glastonbury. There is no question that there

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Steaming up the street

One of the stories with which I grew up was that a locomotive had once steamed through the streets of Langport. It had always seemed an exciting story, the vision of a steam engine puffing its way up the street of our small town. However, the vision was clouded a few years ago by a railway enthusiast friend who questioned how such a thing might have taken place.

The initial question was “why?” Why would anyone wish to take a steam locomotive by road when all it needed to have …

Milk check

Milk churns seem now to be collectors’ pieces, purchased at premises specialising in reclamation and vintage items. Unused churns that once might have lain rusting in the corner of a yard are now put to new uses.

On my grandfather’s farm, milk churns were a measure of income. In summertime, when all the cows were in milk, there would have been ten put out each morning for collection by the lorry from the Milk Marketing Board.

Each evening the herd would be brought back to the farm, each cow having …