F b . /
Compton Mackenzie
IF a visitor from overseas, or for that matter from Scotland, Wales or Ireland, asked you to nominate the English county that could provide him with the most compre- hensive display of English scenery, architecture and antiquities, what would be your reply? Let me make the position clear. The visitor can explore only one county, and he has to be shown the greatest variety of scene within that area available anywhere in England. It is not a question of superlatives. Other counties may possess a nobler range of hills, a finer cathedral, a wilder moorland or a grander outline. The county chosen must be able to show to a greater extent than any other an example of everything. Before I nominate my own choice let me state that I have myself paid rates in seven English counties, and that the only English county in which I have not spent an appreciable amount of time is Rutland. Having, as I hope, presented qualifications that enable me to venture an opinion, I boldly fling a cider apple of discord into the arena and declare for Somerset. Hills, vales, gorges, moorland, marsh, seaboard, woods, fat pastures, several villages of surpassing beauty, superb church towers, one city that is without doubt the finest fruit of the eighteenth century in England and another city that can claim to be the loveliest relic of the Middle Ages : all this can Somerset offer. Salisbury, Winchester, Norwich, Durham, Richmond of Yorkshire, and above all Stamford, may challenge Wells, but I think that Wells just wins with Stamford second in a photo-finish. Be that as it may, the double of Bath and Wells is matchless in any other county. Of monastic remains, while Glastonbury Abbey as a ruin does not attain to the glory of Fountains or Tintern, it possesses a mystical sanctity beyond that of any fane ruined or whole in all England. Cleeve Abbey, although the church has-completely vanished, has more left of its domestic buildings than any I have seen except the incomparable Fountains Abbey. Of great houses two are outstanding in all England- Montacute House and Barrington Court, and as both these Elizabethan gems now belong to the National Trust they may be visited by all. The church towers of Somerset are re- nowned; I am tempted to proclaim the tower of Leigh on Mendip the most beautiful in England. Of small villages Selworthy would gain a very high place in any competition for beautiful small English villages and for large villages I would enter Dunster with every hope of its winning the first place.
I shall not argue that the sea-coast of Somerset is in the first rank. Still, we have to remember that Somerset does possess some sixty miles of seaboard which west of Minehead has much character and as it approaches the estuary of the Avon considerable charm. Variety in a single county is the theme and twenty-three of the English counties do not have any sea-coast at all.
Exmoor is- associated in the minds of most people with Devonshire, but the greater part of that attractive solitude is Somerset, including Dunkery Beacon, its highest point. may seem absurd to extol Dunkery Beacon as a height hen we have the fells and pikes of the Lake Country. How- ver, 1,700 feet is quite a good height for the south of England to reach, and where else in England except where Exmoor spreads into Devon will you see red deer ? The plateau of e Mendip Hills provides an equally attractive but less con- entional solitude. Wandering here, I fall more deeply under Holy Grail, but one feels that they must be connected. On the edge of the Mendips is that natural marvel, Wookey Hole, with the sound of its mysterious waters. On the edge.
too, is that other natural marvel, the Cheddar Gorge. This may seem cheapened by popularity, but it remains an astonish- ing sight for the south of England, and it should be approached first from the lonely heights of Mendip so that the vulgarisation of Cheddar itself may not be the disagreeable preliminary to the Gorge. The countryside between Glastonbury and the little Polden Hills is unique. Once upon a time it was under the sea and from it rose the Isle of Avalon, the fabled home of the happy dead long long ago. The Isle of Avalon is now Glastonbury Tor, which rises from a green plain and although it is only • 500 feet high is one of the most impressive eminences any- where in Britain. That green plain, threaded by the silver rhines that drain it to provide the lush pasturage, is magical and the green knolls that here and there rise from it may shelter the last of the English fairies. On the other side of the Poldens Sedgemoor offers almost as interesting a stretch of marsh as may be found in the Fens. Down in the south- east of the county is Cadbury Castle which was once King Arthur's Camelot and is as fine an example of earthwork fortifications as may be seen in England. What more can I claim for . Somerset ? The oldest licensed house in England in the shape of the fifteenth-century George Inn at Norton St. Philip, a most romantic hostelry, and to clinch the variety of scene the coalfields round Radstock so that the visitor who is allowed only one county will have maybe not a view but at least a glimpse of industrial conditions.
A couple of years ago, speaking in Bath at a gathering of West of England authors reinforced by that stalwart Devonian Ulsterman St. John Ervine, I claimed the variety for Somerset 1 have claimed for it in this Sidelight,' and there were cries of What about Devon ? " What about Dorset ? ' I reply that neither possesses a Bath or a Wells, and while I readily admit the great superiority of their seaboards I ask if either of them can show a Cheddar Gorge or a Vale of Avalon. I bow to the Cerne Giant of Dorset, but the White Horse does not entitle Berkshire to claim variety over Somerset. If Cornwall enters the fray I shall again put forward Bath and Wells as decisive in the placing. Wiltshire, Hampshire and Sussex are all strong competitors, but my own choice as a runner-up to Somerset in the south of England would be Gloucestershire.
From the north midlands Shropshire challenges Gloucester- shire in the list for the whole of England, and, if it had a sea- board, I should put Shropshire even in front of Yorkshire (which is surely the champion of the north) and when I say that I am not forgetting the grandeur and beauty of the Severn.
But I shall stand fast by Somerset. One of the reasons why the scenery of Somerset has failed to get the recognition it deserves is the railway journey in the Cornish Riviera Express because the dullest part of that journey is when the train is going through Somerset, whereas the journey through South Devon and on across the Tamar into Cornwall is continuously interesting and impressive. Even by road the run from Frome to Taunton, charming though it is, might be through any one of a dozen or more English counties. One must drive or ride or walk all over Somerset to appreciate the extraordinary amount of variety achieved by what is only the seventh in size of the English counties. Let me close on that word ' variety' and let the offended supporters of the thirty-nine other counties of. England who write to tell me that I do not know what I am talking about remember that except for Bath and Wells I have not claimed the superlative and except for the Vale of Avalon I have not claimed the unique.
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